Winter is coming... for crypto.
Back in 2018 when I wrote The Truth About SEO I made a reference to cryptocurrencies...
Concurrency is the measure of how well a system copes when the number of parallel operations (or users) increases. Con-currency is another word for Bitcoin
I've never wavered in my belief that the crypto market is basically a scam, an enormous Ponzi scheme predicated on people believing that there is somehow "free money" available on the Internet and with limited real practical applications unless you are in a line of work that benefits from being able to move large amounts of money across borders without traceability. Or, as my Dad would put it
Nothing is worth more than people will pay for it
Little did I know when my Dad was dropping this little nugget of wisdom on me that he was giving me an inverse example of the Greater Fool theory. Greater Fool theory is the idea that, during a market bubble, one can make money by buying overvalued assets and selling them for a profit later, because it will always be possible to find someone who is willing to pay a higher price.
Bill Gates agrees with me (or my Dad... I've lost track), saying that NFTs are "100 percent based on greater fool theory"
As we enter the depths of what is being called the "Crypto Winter", the loud voices of "Crypto Bros" legions of and NFT owners online have fallen silent, shares in Coinbase have tanked and even the Bored Ape NFT themed Bored and Hungry restaurant has stopped accepting cryptocurrency. Bill Gates and I don't agree on much... but this time it looks like we were both right.
Ultimately, I can't see a place in the world for an unregulated currency. Even so-called "pegged" currencies have failed recently calling into question whether cryptocurrencies actually work harmoniously with tradition fiat currencies. Even stable coins backed by real-world assets such as Tether, allegedly attempting to launch a GBP-linked stable coin are massively vulnerable to market manipulation, such as the rumoured short-selling of the coin that has driven down the value of the coin.
The downside to this, of course, is that a lot of small investors have lost money and continue to lose money. For all the warnings and caveats and "your money may be at risk" notifications, there will be investors out there who have ploughed hard-earned money into cryptocurrencies in the hope of building a nest egg and who are now sitting on piles of coins (well, not literal piles because the things don't exist) the value of which may never recover. Good luck everyone - I hope you can claw a little back before we see the end of the cryptocurrencies for good.
(We never will see the end of them, their utility for those engaged in nefarious endeavours will keep them going, but they are unlikely to now enter the mainstream)
