Bitcoin’s been going down all week long. It’s been bad, and it could go as low as 3k in the next few days, despite several days moving sideways. It could remain moving sideways for a while which is terrible for investors that are either buying or selling short. In other words, current market conditions make you damned if you do and damned if you don’t. So what to do now?
In this article, we’ll try to share our perspective with you, but before we try that, we have to remind you that this is not financial advice at all. If you choose to get into Bitcoin or to get out, it has to be your own decision, which should be informed by doing your own due diligence and research.
We will start by acknowledging the elephant in the room. The year has been terrible for Bitcoin. There’s no doubt about that. Next Monday it will be a year since Bitcoin has kept going down constantly (save a few meaningless fluctuations) and it’s lost roughly 80% of its value. This is terrible news for those who bought tokens almost a year ago when it was at its peak. But does it really mean that BTC was a bubble that popped? We don’t think so.
Today you have a bank account and a brokerage account.
Tomorrow every stock, bond, currency and commodity will be digital and you’ll hold them all in one account.
Just a matter of time.
— Pomp 🌪 (@APompliano) December 13, 2018
First of all, this has happened it the past. Bitcoin has sunk four times already by more or less the same percentage that it’s lost this year. And every time, it’s managed to recover and skyrocket again, beating every prediction and reaching previously unsuspected heights. Despite the current situation, Bitcoin remains the most profitable asset over the last ten years (and this includes traditional financial instruments such as stocks, forex, and commodities).
Second of all, you and us, and everybody else need to understand that Bitcoin is not just a digital currency. It is, but it’s also an international payment system. In that regard, it’s been (and it remains) incredibly successful. Whatever way the market behaves Bitcoin is moving money around the world at quantities that are comparable to those of MasterCard and Visa.
In other words: it remains a useful resource, and as long as it’s useful, it will be valuable. In fact, the more useful it becomes, the better suited it will be to be independent of speculative pressure which is what is ruining the market for everybody as we write this.
The third is this: for the last decade the crypto market has been in the hands of retail investors because institutional investors have been too afraid to join the action. That is changing. A partnership among Microsoft, Starbuck’s and ICE (the company that owns the New York stock exchange) is about to bring online a new venture called Bakkt.
The new company will strive to offer financial services based on digital assets so that you can pay for your latte using bitcoin on your mobile phone. And this is not the only such initiative. Many big players in Wall Street are getting ready to wet their feet in crypto finally. This will inject a lot of money and demand for Bitcoin tokens, and it will create a bull run the likes of which have not been seen in ten years.
So what to do? Be patient, be intelligent, be disciplined and well informed. Think usefulness and vision of a coin. Tron, for example, has a powerful vision (of decentralizing the whole internet) and incredible real-life use cases – of course, Bitcoin has a strong case too. Consider value before price. Don’t try to win the lottery in a couple of weeks. We can’t tell you when but things will pick up.
Image courtesy of Pixabay.