What Do You Remember Most About 2009?

Cryptocurrencies
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That plane crash-landing on the Hudson River? The deaths of Patrick Swayze and Michael Jackson? Alistair Darling’s budget introducing a 50% tax rate for earnings over £150,000?

Or was it Bitcoin heralding the arrival of digital currencies in January 2009?

Well cryptocurrencies live on, much to the astonishment of many observers – in fact as of today, according to Investing.com, there are 2,428 currencies fighting for your investment with an astonishing total market capitalisation of $210,307,561,611.

It seems that today pretty much anyone can create a digital token, just grab yourself a bit of open source software and off you go. We are now at the point of seeing daily start-ups being funded all over the globe to ‘mint’ tokens and market their ICOs.

I have a little secret to divulge here. I was approached by an anonymous ‘group’ just a few months ago to write up a complete new release funding mechanism, or ICO, without even being privy to any of the actual data. It was readily transparent to me that I had been approached to help create a scamming ICO and offer it a veneer of reality with my professional experience - needless to say I rapidly declined.

Just a few more stats to add: $96 million was raised via ICOs in 2016, this was ramped up in 2017 to $6 billion via ICOs and now we have had over $6.3 billion raised by April of this year!

So how is Satoshi Nakamoto’s dream playing out? Well, if he exists, then he will be mightily perturbed by the reporting of Cryptocompare.com, a crypto currency assessment company.

They have declared that over 50% of crypto assets on the market today aren’t just securities they’re also heavily centralised. Probably more disturbing to you the investor should be the side note that at their own discretion almost 85% of development teams have the authority to alter their crypto assets’ protocol.

So where does this all leave me? Well, I’ve never been a fan of volatile markets and the crypto is certainly that – you need to keep a 24/7 watch on any assets invested or you could lose the lot overnight – it can be brutal.

On the occasions I have been drawn to the market then diligence, diligence and even more diligence has been my watchword, using as many (and there are hundreds) of platforms for reference - Onchainfx.com is always a good starting point – and I’m still cautiously ahead.

So where does that leave you? What are your observations/wins/losses on this market?

2 Likes
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Sadly, probably AD’'s budget comes to mind first, as I’d just got my first big bonus from the city that year and it impacted directly.

Needless to say, that was lesson learnt and I now ‘manage’ my funds much better and more creatively.

To the meat of your comment, the cryptocurrencies - probably as a counterpoint to your view, it’s the sheer volatility of these markets that draws me in with the numbers offering continual excitement. Warren Buffet’s continual doom-mongering doesn’t do wonders for any crypto dabbler’s blood pressure - but stress is what this business is all about

I agree that it is a time-consuming investment but, as both an insomniac and someone who has the advantage of working in this environment in both my ‘day job’ and in my meagre spare time, apart from one scare back in the 2015 tumble I’ve managed to ride out the painful declines of early this year and stay ahead.

I’m still trying to forget 2009 though!