An Ugly Day in the Life of Crypto
Snapshot taken, Bitcoin Cash birthed, and Bittrex retweets a Richie Lai tweet stating that "no decisions about BCC markets will be made until the chain proves viable", yet a few short hours later they decide to make a market in Bitcoin Cash anyway, while still being unviable and its wallet activation impossible. With trading limited strictly to funds already deposited on Bittrex, Bitcoin Cash proceeded to shoot up to a high of $1,470.00 over the course of the next 18 hours on total volume of around $90,000,000.00 - up to that time - making it the BTC market volume leader, and all the while the Bitcoin Cash wallet remained in “maintenance”.
Kraken announced during that same timeframe that it was likely that deposits and withdrawals wouldn't be available for days, yet they too opened trading, along with other, lesser well known exchanges.
The key question at that point - in my opinion - centered around the issue of “how could” and “why would” these exchanges begin trading if the network wasn’t functional, and, of course, who were the main actors involved.
It was obviously people who already had tons of BTC ready to go on Bittrex, and speculation had it that it was “China Billionaires and its banks”, as well as the possibility that Bittrex market makers also had a hand in things, and, not to be left out, there was also the establishment narrative ‘move on, there’s nothing to see here’ meme that it was all due to “noobs”.
Quite a show! A renegade fork of the world’s first and still foremost crytpocurrency, traded irresponsibly on several select exchanges before the forked coin’s network even became viable (as of this writing, the Bittrex wallet is still “under maintenance”). It’s the story of an utterly deplorable spectacle of wolves overtly and unabashedly fleecing the innocent that is happening center stage with the world’s most important and best known crypto (this ain’t some obscure shitcoin that we’re talking about) with mainstream media coverage taking it into everyone’s living room and severely damaging the whole of crypto. An ugly day in the life of crypto that shed a lot of light on just how unpalatable the space is for the vast majority of normal, honest, hard working people.
What can we do about this? How can we reverse this ugly, extremely myopic, systemic gaming of crypto and start projecting the opposite to the world?
I suggest the high road and staying completely clear of the fray so that there’s no chance of guilt by association or any other type of possible misunderstanding that maligns our good name. We already have the products and tools with which to radically change crypto’s reputation and we can do that by moving forward in the positive promoting both STEEM and BitShares as THE solutions – because they’re both solutions, the first from a community communication point of view, and the second from that of a legitimate, non-manipulated exchange where honest people can do honest buying and selling.
But what’s more, and this is key, they're also THE solutions from a storage of wealth and a means of exchange standpoint - who needs anything else if you’ve got STEEM or BTS? Your money is completely safe and you can send a payment of any sort to anybody anywhere in the world almost instantly. Why do we need any other cryptocurrency? To top things off, they're also thriving businesses! Thriving businesses held in the form of ultra liquid shares that are 100% safe and so easily transferable that they are also as good as, if not better than, cash! Businesses whose value will continue to increase, whose shares’ ownership are as well documented as traditional savings accounts and whose liquidity rivals that of cash! That's having your cake and eating it too! What more does anybody want? What more do we need? Who needs anything else?
I remember when working my way through college in the construction industry asking a contractor friend of mine if he was worried about the competition. His answer to me was: “I’m the competition”. I’ll never forget that, and it totally applies here: STEEM and BTS are the competition that everyone else will need to worry about, and ultimately imitate if they have any hopes at all to survive!
STEEM and BTS are the future of crypto, they are BTC’s replacement. With STEEM and BTS nobody will ever need BTC again (or BCC, or whatever the clone may be). STEEM and BTS bring integrity and confidence to crypto, will finally take it mainstream in a way the average person can understand and trust, and those first generation embarrassments will eventually become long lost memories.
The future of crypto is in our hands. It's a matter of investing in the solution and then taking it to the rest of the world.
I’m extremely clear on my personal roadmap: over the next 6 months or so I plan to execute a slow, intelligent liquidation into strength of all my Altcoins and combine that with a slow, intelligent move into STEEM and BTS . . . and most likely EOS too. 😉
I encourage all like minded thinkers to do the same.
Full Disclosure: My “portfolio” of crypto is currently made up of roughly 15% STEEM, 15% BTS, 45% LTC with the rest being an assortment of Alts. As a swing trader, I’m looking to take advantage of the next cyclical swing higher by raising cash, that, in turn, will be used to “load up” on STEEM and BTS on the following swing lower.
Informative ! Looking forward to more. Thanks
Thanks. Appreciate it!
Thanks for synthesizing these activities. Very enlightening for crypto novices. Appreciate you sharing your strategy going forward. Please keep us updated with your posts.
Will do!
And thanks for the feedback.
Edit: Don't miss my latest: Bitcoin - A Good Break Higher?
Future of bitcoin cash ???
Will it go to $1000...At all.☺😊
Personally, I think it's a long term zero, but that's just me.
I asked this question in another post, but do you see any correlation between the price of bitcoin and bitcoin cash? I have never seen volatility like i did in the last days watching bitcoin cash trade. Thanks great post
Personally, I don't see a clear correlation, but others see as much as a 1:1. It seems to me to have just as many flaws as BTC has though! 😅 But seriously, BTC has a reputation, widely distributed network, hashrate, acceptance, etc., etc., that will take BCC (or BCH, depending) a long, long time to duplicate, if ever. So, in summary, I think it really depends on whether you think Bitcoin Cash is viable long term or not, and even then, IMO, it will be a slow process at that.
Thanks for the reply, right now bitcoin vs bcash is trading at around 8% there must be an opportunity somewhere
It is a minefield with all the different types of crypto currency available these days. Steem sure seems a great bet and hopefully will go from strength to strength.
Good article, i resteemed & upvoted!
Thanks so much for that support and feedback. I've been in crypto since the early mining days when there was abundant camaraderie and we all worked together. Since those early days the number of offerings (and most detrimental of all, scams) have greatly increased, and things have progressively just got nasty in general. It's not an easy task to sort through all the trash and filter out real and legitimate long term prospects. That's what I'm trying to do for myself, and in sharing my findings, ideas and observations I'm hoping not only to help others do the same, but also hoping that others contribute back in kind, thereby leading us all to a clearer and better understanding of what we're dealing with and hopefully some long term collective success as well!
Cheers, and thanks again!
Good post. Agreed. Steem is definitely the future for wise investment, I believe. Upvoted and Resteemed.
Thanks @carlobelgado. Interesting service you’re providing that could be successful so long as it doesn’t turn into spam. My recommendation would be to add an element of selectivity, say by only resteeming articles you like, for example, or posts that you endorse and support, to put it another way. Regardless, I would highly recommend broadening your Step 2 filtering of adult content to “I reserve the right to not resteem anything I deem unacceptable” and then you’ve got your back covered for things like hate speech, obvious spam and/or scamming, etc., without need to explain why. Anyhow, just a couple of things that came to mind, and best of luck with your endeavor.
Great write up. Wondering if you suffer from blockfolio addiction too? - https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@cryptocoinclub/confessions-of-a-blockfolio-addict
😂 😂 😂
Not sure if my case is that severe [yet]. Maybe I'm in denial though. 😜
Thanks for the comment and upvote!
Hey @cryptographic I saw that you transferred 4SBD to Carlo Belgado to resteem this post! Would love to hear your thoughts on whether it was worth it as I feel like he is trying to scam new users in to giving him 4SBD for little return. Hope you can share your thoughts on whether it was worth the 4SBD or if you regret transferring the money!
@hannahlicious,
@carlobelgado’s resteem of my post increased the number of “Views” by 50% and doubled the number of “Likes” that it had previously received. Not bad if your goal is to disseminate and try and reach a larger audience. I’d say that it brought this particular post the same exposure that the promotion of $20 brought, although the promotion continues to run it course still. That having been said, as a believer in organic growth, I wouldn’t recommend abusing the service. This is the first post I’ve ever promoted and I only did so because I’m passionate about the need to clean crypto up. Also, as I mentioned in my reply to Carlo, I think he should also be more selective so as to further add value to what he’s resteeming. In short, going by the limited metrics cited, I think it was well worth it, but this is obviously dependent on other, more subjective factors like the value of the post to begin with, the frequency with which you use the service (as I said before, abuse would not be recommended as it could backfire in the long run), etc.
Hope this helps, and thanks for asking.
P.S. I see that you have posted an article on the subject, and will repost this there as well. Also followed you!
Trading the cypto's is very messy. Proceed with caution. Just when you think you know what will happen it slaps you in the face.
Good advice. Thanks for contributing.
I agree, I was dumb when trading and held BCH for too long. Thought I place a sell order at .3 but I guess I didn't go through the system.
There's always could have, would have, should have 20/20 hindsight, but don't be too hard on yourself. Anyone who had gone 100% BTC just prior to the screenshot and then sold their BCC ~18 hours after trade opened on Bittrex (oh, and remember, you also needed to have it all on Bittrex 😜 ) would have made a killing. I chose to stay away and stay with my game plan = zero profit in this case. I also don't much like scammers and the promotion of personal agendas that are harmful to others . . .
Don't feel too bad, what you've got is still "free money", as the majority has come to say. 😵
Your completely right. I am sure many have lost as much money and more than I have. Yeah I had my BTC in bittrex but I passed out and didn't wake up early enough:( I calculated that If I started to buy right when the markets open on BCC (BCH) I would have made up to 14 BTC :( It is all good in the end though like you say. was depressing for a while but I am over it.
Well It is partially free money, I have invest about 2000-3000$ of my own money. but yes most of it is money I made with my time invested.