The Reality of The Cryptocurrency and ICO Landscape
The year of hype for cryptos in 2017 was an amazing opportunity to exploit all interested investors in the crypto-markets. Teams were getting together, copying whitepapers word for word and publishing it as their own. This strategy was working, as these projects managed to convince people to invest money that accumulated millions. Arguably, it was never easier to fake an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) , and at the same time make a fortune. Investors would be buying ethereum, a working and real life project , to convert it into an ICO that was close to no real value. This also caused a crash in ethereum as the ICOs were slowly dying out in 2018. This led to the general cryptocurrency market taking a hit, even for well-established projects who have their priorities aligned with its community.
Today, ICOs are declining both in popularity and supply, which shouldn’t be the case. Projects that can make a difference feel like they are no longer capable of doing so, and believe they will not get the support of the community. Great teams, with great aspirations are now fearful of taking a leap and going public, choosing instead to pursue their projects in private. This leaves a small group of individuals in control of a meaningful project, which goes against the purpose of cryptocurrencies. There are two main reasons why the sudden collapse happened:
A) Too many investors didn’t take the time to analyse projects thoroughly, nor read the white paper. Afterall, you are putting your hard earned dollars into this coin.
B) The projects who built an attractive website, sold a “token” which may have not even existed, and then pulled off an exit strategy like never seen before.
The community trusted every good-looking website out there and actually went through the effort to buy their coins. However, that trust was abused and once broken is difficult to rebuild.
Decentralized Hopes & Tokens:
What actually happened to the concept of decentralization? As far as I’m concerned, this concept is deteriorating and is being used as a keyword, rather than being implemented in real life projects. How can a project which has pre-mined all its coins, and only released 50% of its tokens to the public marketplace, call themselves “decentralized”. This pretty much undermines the concept completely. Also, a 50% stake indicates that once the public sale is completed and the coin has appreciated by 200, 300 or 400 percent, they can sell their share of the coins, flooding the market and making the coin worthless by “dumping”. Once again, this is taking advantage of the trust which the community has invested in you since real believers may have wanted to keep their tokens long-term. It truly is disappointing to see the landscape move backwards, with every project like this we are by no means developing the space, we are just building a horrible reputation which is affecting everyone else involved.
Decentralization was all about restoring faith in the system, and making sure that everyone has the chance to benefit. Rather than the 1% being in control, the odds are now in favour of the 99%. Unfortunately, this concept is being promoted as a facade in order to trap you into buying the coin. What happens afterwards, doesn’t seem to be anyone’s business. I have had plenty of conversations with members of a new ICO project and had to ask them “What is the true purpose of buying your coin”, the responses were “It will go up in price if you buy it now” or “You benefit from all the functionalities of the coin”. If the coin is not even listed on any of the legit exchanges, how will this benefit the user? And what if I am not looking to invest into the coin only for short-term monetary gains? What if I wanted to believe in your value proposition and support your purpose by investing money into it?
The Lost Purpose of Meetups & Communities
I remember going to meetups still back in 2015 in London and having real conversations about how exciting the prospects of the technology are. I would look forward to meet with like-minded and curious supporters who would genuinely give a helping hand to beginners and encourage them to keep learning and understanding the concept first, before even thinking about putting a single cent into cryptos. I remember when people started installing their first ever bitcoin wallet and showed them how transactions worked…that was the stuff. Meetups would be about projects that were using this technology for the better in order to improve society as we know it. It was a time where you could go to a meetup without being pitched 8 different ICOs. A time, where knowledge of cryptocurrencies, was more important than making a quick buck. Meaningful conversations were normal, no one was after your money or giving you false promises for their “successful” ICO. All of this has changed, and the “commercialization” of cryptocurrencies has ruined its fundamentals and the importance of a true community. At the end of the day, the community is a true reflection of the space.
Most of the individuals that would approach and try to convince me to buy their coin, couldn’t even explain to me what the purpose of decentralization or blockchain technology was for their project. Usually, before you can sell any project to a person, you first have to understand the meaning behind it yourself and be convinced by it. If you can’t understand what you are trying to sell to me, how should I? Perhaps there are tokens which do have fully functioning Minimum Viable Product (MVP) but they couldn’t get the point across. I have seen projects that send an experienced sales rep to wrap a lie in a beautiful facade and convince you that the coin adds value to all stakeholders. Stakeholders just means all parties which are involved in the process e.g. you as the buyer, me as the seller and the marketplace.
The issue is that it’s all about mass-scale conferences now, speaking slots of 5 minutes starting at a minimum of £6000 and the biggest sponsor dishing out £250,000 on one event, just to be the big-shot! Whatever happened to engaged communities, sharing knowledge and imparting wisdom for a fair price? How are you meant to have meaningful conversations if over 5000 people are present and most of them have one objective in mind…making money. I don’t see this helping support the growth of the community, if anything it helps the growth of a few bank accounts. Don’t get me wrong, events can be very fun and insightful, if the objectives are aligned and the purpose of the event is useful, by all means I am a big fan! I myself do small-scale events but limit numbers to around 200 people just to ensure we have meaningful conversations and information sharing.
Blockchain Experts?
I do believe that there are a small number of people who have been engaged from the start and have been true believers e.g. cryptographers , tech enthusiasts or “Cypherpunks” which today are miles ahead of beginners in the industry and in comparison may be called experts in the field. However, the problem doesn’t lie with them, it lies with all the members in the community who have neither prior tech experience, nor blockchain development and go out there and call themselves “experts”. Experts is a strong word and realistically, no one at this point comes even close to this. Bitcoin just recently celebrated its 10 year anniversary. It is a constant learning curve, no one has “mastered” crypto currencies and is an expert in them. If anything, we are all curious learners and interested in the long-term and bigger picture. Once “experts” realize that there is so much more to learn and implement, maybe we will see more of these titles diminish and replaced by words such as “enthusiast” or “supporter”.
Experts have to be certified and awarded this term; you cannot just decide to call yourself an expert. Of course everyone is entitled to their opinion, and this is just my point of view. I believe an expert needs to not only have the knowledge of the subject, but he needs to have implemented his work, had reasonable success and been acknowledged for his achievements.
My Perspective:
I am by no means against the field of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. Quite the opposite, I have dedicated the last three years expanding my knowledge in this area and have been a crypto consultant at a bitcoin retail store. I have also been a co-founder for a recruitment agency focusing on helping you land jobs in this field and held several small-scale events.
I wanted to share my experiences and insights into the current reality of the space, what it is moving towards and that this is not a sustainable path. If everyone is an expert, then equally nobody is an expert and the expression becomes worthless. If everyone is focusing on trying to sell you their cryptocurrency and cold pitch you in the first linked in message or email, then that is the first impression people will have from “professionals” in the space. If all conferences are large-scale and overcharge you for tickets and deliver undervalued content, then they are missing out on the true purpose of getting communities together and this may leave newcomers shocked.
It clearly is an eye-opener if you ever want to work or have any kind of business/start up in this field. Make sure to stick to the basic fundamentals every decent human being should have. Honesty, mutual respect for one another and respect towards one another’s privacy.
Summary:
The field has undergone a series of events that have led to a massive sell-off and disbelief. Every market has experienced crashes and will continue to, but I do not believe the issues lies with the technology itself, but rather with the greed of people, control issues and instead of providing a supportive helping hand, they step on it and try to secure the glory for themselves.
What I am really trying to get at, is for the community to understand that this is not how it is supposed to be. We are going about this all wrong, and although I know plenty of people in the field that are genuine, honest and hard working people, they are left in the shadows and not recognized to the extent they should be. This technology was created in order to support one another and to bring back freedom amongst people, especially financially. It was introduced so that the 99% understand they have rights too and everyone deserves an equal shot at life.
I would like to encourage everyone to reach out and support one another, if you are a true believer, then we should all align our priorities by shutting out all the negative thoughts. The space has been flooded by greed,disrepsect and dishonesty. We should start working towards a future where we stand up for one another and work towards the goal that Satoshi Nakamoto had in mind in the first place.
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Thank you Ladies & Gents!