Rewind about 7-8 months ago…
The crypto space seemed to be on fire. Bitcoin was crashing through all time highs everyday, the markets were green and moonshots were a regular thing…
ICO’s were all the rage and it seemed like all you had to do was drop a dollar in these markets and then it would double instantly.
Was it all just a dream? Did it really happen? Or maybe the better question is…Will it happen again?
My biggest concern with the crypto market isn’t the fluctuations in price, because something like this is so new, people are not sure what to make out if it yet. No my concern is that it attracts the wrong audience…
You might have seen a few of them back in late 2017 and early 2018…They were everywhere!
The YouTube ‘experts‘ that showed you how to get rich with crypto in a week or less – Of course you only had to drop about 500 bucks on their ‘online training services’ to learn the ways.
There was also an influx of highly visible ‘content creators’ here on the STEEM blockchain as well that seemed tp say all the right things like; “I’m here for the long run!”, “We’ve got so much planned for the future!”, “I’m going to only use STEEM from now on, I’m done with SnapChat!!!!”
Lots of talk, lots of hype and a whole lot of promises…
So what happened?
Obviously at first glance, one would say that the markets haven’t been that great in crypto this year. It’s hard to get excited for something that you lose money in daily…
But I feel that’s the easy way out. To blame the markets. Personally I feel because of the hype and hoopla of the ‘all time highs’ we attracted the….Get rich quick crowd!
A little back store of mine, I’ve been involved in the internet marketing industry for almost 20 years now and these type of people are common place in my line of work. They will hear stories of instant riches and drop everything (including the childs college fund) into a brand new shiny opportunity that is guaranteed to make them rich…
Of course, this doesn’t happen and they end up giving up and saying ‘internet marketing is a scam’…I ‘lovingly’ call it the internet marketing vortex of doom…
(I’m a horrible artist!!! But this a visual representation of the ‘vortex of doom’)
And yup…This is true for crypto (and STEEM specifically) as well…
People join this platform because they hear they can get paid for blogging and sharing content. They spend about 2 weeks to a month, learning the ways and poking around. They may even buy 50 bucks worth of STEEM to power up…But then, it starts to spiral down…
The markets take a hit, and they aren’t making any huge return from their efforts. Less people seem to engage with their posts so they stop engaging with others. The fear mongers start screaming that STEEM is going downhill and it catches their attention…
They give up!
And then they find EOS…Rinse and repeat!
So I thought long and hard about what I was gonna do for this month’s HODL challenge and I came to the conclusion…Right now…I don’t WANT any other ‘opportunities / crypto’ in my portfolio. I refuse to become a victim of this vortex of doom and will focus my energy, research and promotion of the projects I already hold and will continue to hold for the long term.
And yeah, that means I’m all about STEEM going forward!
Call me crazy, ignorant, naive…Whatever, but I will not end up like the get rich quick crowds because when I say I’m holding long term…I mean LOOOOOOOOOONG term!
That doesn’t mean I’m not doing any more HODL challenges going forward, in fact I’m always looking for some awesome crypto projects…But unless I can actually USE the token now, and it has value for me right now, I’m not interested.
So apologies if you were looking forward to the HODL challenge this month…But now I think we need to start USING these coins and crypto currencies as much as we ‘hold’ them!
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Catch me live in Toronto this September at the Steem Creators Conference and SMT Summit!