If I wanted to make a guess about the future of the crypto, I'd ignore everything it's price has done so far and read:
Mandelbrot: The Misbehaviour of Markets
Taleb: Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, Antifragile
I borrowed and read the Taleb series (also Skin in the Game), and I came away from it a bitcoin-skeptic. I've mellowed since then, mainly because I think I've made other parts of my life more durable, so I can withstand the losses that crypto- not working out would inflict on me.
I don't think they say anything one way or the other. But I think they imply that if the past ten years of crypto are normal for crypto, then just think what happens when it has ten wild years by crypto standards.
There are also two totally different concepts when it comes to crypto.
The speculative gains and the actual future use. The actual gains of specific coins are largely based on hype, not on actual use. It still remains to be seen which coins will have utility in the future and what use they will perform.
I for one, despite not being impressed with ANY use cases I've seen presented in this thread, am actually quite interested in future uses of crypto, and happen to currently be running a non profit with a very, very prominent player in the crypto world.
He's really opened my eyes to the difference between utility and the current unhinged value of high priced coins.
I've read every word Taleb has written at least 3 times. I totally agree that individual crypto coins as an investment right now are kind of insane, because it's a gamble as to who in the end will end up the most utilized once actual use is shaken out.
Whomever compared crypto to the internet early on really had an excellent example. It's one thing to know a technology will be major in the future, it's another to effectively invest in the exact right avenue and not get wiped out along the way.
Is it smart to just by Bitcoin? I don't know, it's value is so insane right now and it's coin has so many drawbacks compared to some newer coins, not the least of which is the environmental concern in a time where world governments are all starting to turn their creaky old machines towards sustainability.
Then what about Etherium? Sure, okay, good coin, but also very expensive and there are other coins that are basically identical.
Well what about EOS? The "Etherium killer" that Block.one totally dropped the ball on? It's selling for a measly $3-4/coin, and yet is still considered a "top 10 coin" and can actually handle high volume transactions, and currently does, although most of those current transactions are totally worthless.
If we go back to the example of the internet, none of the early players survived except for Yahoo, which was the first big dog and substantially better than the other garbage services, but it did eventually die after being so bad for so long and making the dumbfuck decision of not selling.
So is Bitcoin the crypto Yahoo? The biggest of the first gen with serious staying potential as long as it adapts to the rapidly changing ecosystem? Can it adapt as needed?
So then who ends up being Google? Who ends up the one coin to rule them all? Is EOS the sleeping giant that will finally overcome its leadership in-fighting and keep working in the background until it can forge a path forward, or will the bickering between Block.one and the community drag it down in the mud until it drowns?
Or will we all end up buying our cars and houses with Dog Money at the end of the day?
There is a TON of randomness in the crypto world right now, and Taleb is right, it's virtually impossible to know what the smart play is, just like it was impossible to know exactly which business was the right bet at the beginning of the internet.
It's one thing to see the vague shape of technology coming, it's another to know exactly where to invest your dollars.
If I were to buy coins, my bet would probably be EOS, because I wouldn't buy individual coins unless I was willing to lose my money and hoping for a moonshot. Just because it's cheap and still feasibly could take off if they can get past their initial faceplant. I would consider a top coin ETF though.
FTR, I was just away for vacation visiting DH's family, some of whom are working class O&G folks and very anti-establishment but with no real rationale, and who have been crypto-crazy, and I am bloody exhausted from total fucking clueless crypto-pushers. It's these pushy conversations that make even talking about crypto so tedious sometimes.
I've also had a good laugh at a whole new type of crypto article that I'm seeing, which is basically explaining the basics of crypto risk to idiots. The concept of meme coins, how speculation works, why some coin investments might be risky. Basically, explaining Shit-coins to the kind of people who call every crypto coin a "Bitcoin"
When you see the fucking idiocy that is propping up some of these values, it's entertaining, but also so very tiresome.
One cousin paid for a coffee with his phone and used that as evidence that crypto is the future. "See, with technology, we don't even need banks. See! I don't even need a bank card! That's the future, that's crypto!" The dude was using his bank card...on his phone.
I said "there was a dude years ago who put an RFID chip in his arm to pay for things, well before crypto" trying to point out that RFID tech has nothing to do with crypto and that the tech in his bank card is the EXACT same thing, and the guy enthusiastically responded "yeah! The future! Crypto!"
*Facepalm*
Fooled by randomness indeed.
Anyway, idiots and even idealists aside, I'm still avidly paying attention to how this will all play out. As someone who was dating the founder of a tech startup in the early 2000s, was very much part of that world, and saw far more individual investors lose money than make money, this is feeling very familiar, and I'm rather interested to see how it plays out.
The hype, the idealism, the idiocy, the floods of money not really having clear direction as to where to go, it feels the same. We'll see if the absolute gruesome carnage of that time plays out in a similar fashion or not.