This year has been a turbulent one in the crypto markets, with the price drop in line with the decline in asset prices across the board.
A combination of runaway inflation and political pressure has forced the Fed to eventually take a tougher stance, with interest rate hikes lowering earnings expectations and dragging the stock market down.
Of course, wherever the stock market has been to date, crypto markets have followed suit – only with more volatility. And that is exactly what we have seen so far this year as well.
it’s more than the price
However, it’s important to note that there’s more to value-seeing in this industry. Sure, many people speculate to get into the cryptocurrency space and get rich quickly, but this, like any nascent industry, has expanded to the scale that crypto has hit in its youth so far. has done. We only need to look at past bear markets in crypto – of which there have been plenty, despite the fact that Satoshi Nakamoto’s bitcoin whitepaper was published only 14 years ago.
The most recent was 2018/2019, when the markets were similarly bad. Many projects were ongoing, yet resilient remained, and even more projects were closed.
To give an indication of the building and hard work that believers put into crypto over this period, I recently This by lecture/interview Richard K. lyonsAs Chief Innovation and Entrepreneurship Officer at UC Berkeley, I am perhaps best positioned to comment on what the younger generation is looking forward to.
The fascinating part of the interview, and what makes it quite relevant now, is that it happened in April 2018, which was in the middle of the last bear market.
Restoration
As for what they are doing now, prices have come down, Lyons appeared unfazed, adding that “there are companies that are inviting our undergraduates to talk about blockchain… are much closer to this stuff than any of them”.
Of course, he was right. Blockchain was just the beginning.
Barely two years later, we had the explosion of decentralized finance on the scene, a massive vision that targeted the way traditional finance was funneled through centralized agencies. The innovation didn’t stop there – NFTs went mainstream, opening up possibilities for artists, collectors and creators to own and monetize their intellectual property.
The above are just two examples of developments that sprung up in 2020/21, with the foundations being laid during the fallout years of 2018/2019.
So while it is true that there was a lot of foam around the space (and this includes selling NFTs in amounts estimated on the Greater Fool Theory), which is nothing more than bull market hysteria, the natural cyclicality of the market means it Natural and a pattern we have seen over and over again throughout history.
In slightly less eloquent terms, the tweet below from Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson summed up the bear market well. In such a disgusting macro environment, the price of high-risk assets like cryptocurrencies is always going to fall, regardless of fundamentals.
Yes, it’s called a bear market. This is what happens. Nothing changes it. The announcement doesn’t matter. Cardano can cure cancer, give you a ten-inch dick, give you a personalized poker-playing robot that takes Grandma to church on weekends, and we’ll still fall
— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) 9 May 2022
conclusion
The market humbles all and sheds the excess. But the proponents remain here, the fundamentals of blockchain technology are strong, and the industry has a much better foundation than in previous cycles.
However, one thing that needs to be considered is that this is the first cryptocurrency to occur in conjunction with a bear market in the broader economy. This means that despite everything discussed above, it is largely unprecedented.
But with the development of technology and the industry bootstrapping itself, there is still a lot to be optimistic about, despite the disgusting price action.