The Cryptosphere Nears $40 Billion

Yesterday, the cryptosphere neared $40 billion with over $1.5 billion in volume for the day with bitcoin leading the pack with over $750 million in volume. Early adopters will still remember the day when the bitcoin hitting $750 million in market cap was just a dream and now that’s the volume of bitcoin in one day. Meanwhile, the entire cryptosphere saw a volume of over $1.5 billion and this is an industry that didn’t even exist a decade ago.

Ether and Dash Join Bitcoin: Mint Millionaires

Bitcoin minted the first round of millionaires as a crypto-token. This year, Dash and Ether have joined bitcoin, minting millionaires with graphs showing uptrends since their projects started. If they continue to innovate, they may remain as serious players in the cryptosphere. Meanwhile, we’re beginning to see the evolution of ideas expand – like dot com stocks helped create the rise of other related industries, we’re beginning to ideas unrelated to tokens in the cryptosphere. For instance, BHP Billiton is using Ether for its supply chain. In general, blockchain technology will disrupt the commodity industry, among many others.

Keep in mind that this is a new industry that’s just starting and most people have no idea what bitcoin, a crypto-token, or the cryptosphere even is. As these projects innovate, they will know what all of those are. For the time being, I fully expect we’ll see a correction from this overall high value; timing tops is not something I’m interested in, so where this round will end remains to be seen, but velocity is slowing.

Global Wealth
The cryptosphere makes up a total of 0.00019% of global wealth at the time of this writing, which means we aren’t even close to 1% of global wealth. I view that number growing as more people discover other ideas where this technology can be applied – and will be applied. For now, one could argue that we may see a limit of $100-300 billion over the next few years with the current set of ideas, until other applications are discovered.

If the industry as a whole continues to innovate, make itself relevant as new challenges appear, and leverages existing ideas and new technology, the cryptosphere as an industry may grow into the trillions. Ether, Factom and a few other projects have caught significant attention, as people have begun to see their potential and are willing to work with them.

Cryptosphere Expectations
As I type this, over 1,000 ideas exist and some of these ideas have become crowded – such as the cryptocurrency space, with new cryptocurrencies even though these have been overdone. I fully expect that the top projects will eventually command 80-90% of the total market cap. For the time being, we should expect people to debate what these top projects are and like the top companies of any industry, I fully expect these will change in time too.

Bubbles Validate Good Ideas
Bitcoin has validated Austrian economics, though I find it humorous that some of the beneficiaries of this want the industry regulated in the name of “preventing bubbles”, which will harm the industry (Mick Mulvaney agrees with me here). Bubbles happen whether you want them to or not, but the price of quality projects after a correction is still higher than when the bubble began. You can be wise like Vitalik Buterin and see this, or you can be ignorant like Wired and fail to see this reality. A correction destroys bad ideas, bad projects, and deceptive innovation; Americans would be extremely wealthy now if they let the S&P 500 experience a correction – which companies could survive? Which new companies would enter? Yet, Americans think stability is great, when several corrections would flush out the bad while creating room for the good with the index hovering at over 5,000 right now (if they allowed corrections).

Bubbles raise awareness, but they also flush out the incompetent. Prosperity destroys fools and a bubble makes people feel prosperous. Only the people who don’t trust prosperity and success survive: they were the ones from day one who were focused on their vision, not on the distraction of success. This is why I welcome bubbles and in the end, the quality projects (like the quality companies) will always reset at a higher price after the correction than their price before the bubble began.

Never forget that bitcoin’s most spectacular bubble – the 2011 bubble – saw a rise of bitcoin from less than $1 to over $32 with bitcoin experiencing a 93% drop in price, yet still above $1. Bitcoin never fell below $1 again and today bitcoin is over $1000. That is the power of allowing extreme prosperity so that we can all see who’s using it the best and who’s really fake, because when the chips fall – and they will – no faker can hide.

The Time To Leave
Last year, I created the course Retire Early With Cryptocurrencies and the material has been right on the money. Like many early industries, the students have won. As the industry evolves, obtaining disproportionate results becomes harder, since everything regresses to a mean. Still, I think we have some time and I think people are only on the tip of the iceberg when it comes to ideas – I can think of many ideas that people have missed for now, so there’s more room for growth.

You’re on the race, thinking you’ve almost won, then you may find, you’ve only begun.
Eventually, there will come a time to leave the cryptosphere, but that time is not yet. We should consider this perspective in everything though; we love seeing the growth and recognition of this industry, but we won’t be here forever.

Warning
The following article covers a token or element in the cryptosphere. The cryptosphere is new and exciting, but changes rapidly and often in ways that do not benefit users. By the time this article is published, changes may have already occurred. Most tokens in the cryptosphere are complete scams that are get-rich-quick-schemes for insiders. Often, we cannot know this beforehand and only later discover this. A person should only trade with money that they’re willing to lose because losses are guaranteed. If you choose to participate in purchasing a token in the cryptosphere, you should do so with the full expectation of a loss and you should also expect it to change in a manner that does not benefit you. There are very few good ideas in the cryptosphere. Finally, by reading this post, you agree that you’ve read our disclosure.

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