Happy New Year! From....Utah

Happy New Years My fellow Steemians. And what an end 2018 has been for markets and myself. Its hard to be believe what has happened this year in markets, especially Cryptocurrenices. What started the year with high hopes and euphoric aspirations, has ended with a large thud. And in many ways, this has been a very sobering year for investors. And my biggest take-away from all of this is.....

Nothing goes up for ever....all good things come to an end....or a large decline.
This was true for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, and as well as the broader equity markets.

After a run of 9 years of up and up, markets came crashing....and it was driven mostly by negative sentiment. Its hard to look at fundamentals and just make any conclusions. But it seems that if you want to pull at straws, then the perception of "expensive~ high P/E" multiples and "fear of recession" and "trade wars" were very negative on peoples minds. Ultimately that negative fear/uncertainty drove markets lower.

The Cryptocurrencies had their own issues and it seems that nothing was good enough or quick enough to mitigate risk...and at the end of the day, your retail/pedestrian Bitcoin buyer just sold....and sold and sold....And the original holders of bitcoin, who had sold earlier have not come back ....at least not year.

What are my predictions for 2019? I think more of the same. I think investors will realize that they need to do more research and not chase returns. People will be more selective about what they put their money in....and as a result, markets will be moderate (expect returns of 3-5%) next year.....What about Bitcoin and ICO? I think that will also tame. Blockchain technology is here to stay. How its implemented and the ICOs that will come from it will be tempered. My desire is to not see any more tokenization of stuff....its too crazy. I think there were like +4000 ICO's last year. And thousands of them went bust, and only <100 ICOs are really worth following. All this to say, it makes more sense for us to focus on Blockchain and less on ICOs......I also predict that Ethereum will come back but Stellar will probably dominate Ethereum becuase of ease of use.

Enough about Markets...is Jan 1, 2019....time to rest and get ready for a new year, a new game, and new tasks.....to conquer.

Lastly, just wanted to wish all of you out there a Happy New Year....from Brighton Utah!!!! Dude it is cold here 7 degrees on the mountain!!!

Evan