A Winter Summer (or something clever)

Granted that is not a great title, but you get what I am going to discuss in this post. If you haven’t noticed – things have been down. Like really down… They have started to plateau (kinda – I mean at least they are not free falling)

So that is a good thing for all of the time being. I have noticed my colleague in the “crypto-alive-and-well” camp seems to be have been silent. That is probably because the future of crypto seems uncertain.

Let’s recap: All crypto had a major downturn in April. A major player in the crypto financing space Celsius Network went bankrupt was no longer able to pay people their money they “invested”. Crypto kept spiraling down lower and lower. More companies went down. People pulled out their money for a loss. And the world keeps spinning

I know the fervent supporters will say, “This is just part of the crypto game”. But c’mon this is a shitty game. There was major hype in crypto and a lot people lost TONS of money.

The value of the global crypto market has tumbled 70% to under $900 billion from a peak of $2.97 trillion in November, CoinMarketCap data shows.

Yahoo Finance

Now I would not be super upset it was was billionaires losing this money. I know some did, but I am not crying for them. I am crying for the regular people that gambled on crypto because of the hype around it in the beginning of the summer.

In a recent, Economic Well-Being ofU.S. Households in 2021 report it was shown that about 30% of Americans putting money into crypto had an income less than $50,000. It is those people who where truly hurt. Those hopeful people who thought hat crypto was a safe way to save and make money for the future were caught up in the excitement. NFTs and those strange monkey men were all over the news. They thought everyone could make a quick buck, but they were wrong. The wealthy investors will get their money back some how, but those individuals, not part of a big firm or investment group will not recover it. The wealth will say that is the game, but the little guy is the loser in that game.

Part of the reason for the individuals getting in the crypto space is now the ease of putting money into the system. Coinbase, Robinhood, and others made it so that everyday people could get into the crypto space. They made the barrier to entry much lower. All you need is smart phone and you can start turning your FIAT into crypto. While this did get more people in the space, after this summer, how many people lost their $ and will now never go back to crypto. I recently read an article that warns that Amazon will exhaust their labor pool, meaning they will have hired, fired, or lost every eligible working in certain areas. How many people are turned off crypto because of downturns, scams, or crashes? I wonder at what point will crypto exhaust their pool of supporters.