Why Everything You Know About Investing In Crypto Is Wrong

in #crypto7 years ago

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So you want to make a million dollars, eh?

Well I got news for you bucko, that shit isn't going to happen any time soon. It takes a massive amount of work to get there. Not a very popular thing to say, but it's true. There's no magic pill you can take, no audio book you can listen to, no video you can watch that's going to suddenly spark your mind into a fire of success.

If anything, it's like learning a language from scratch. Takes an enormous amount of work. You have to be in many situations to blah blah blah.

Fuck I'm so over writing this article. So over it.

I'm over everything in general lately. Not sure what the fuck is wrong with me. Just affected by a general malaise.

In fact, I've tried to write this article many times but always end up deleting it. I figure if any of my remaining clients saw it, it would be bad for business. But thankfully they're all in safe hands now. And if this blog post is what prevents them from being successful companies, well then at least I'll be famous.

Malaise = Malaysia? Illuminati confirmed

So two weeks ago I lost a big client who was paying me a lot of money to work on their social media. Ok fine. Happens. It was a pain, but what can you do?

Then I had to go to Malaysia to renew my visa for Thailand. Without getting into too much detail, to stay in Thailand long-ish term, you have to do visa runs which is basically where you just cross the border and come back a few days later.

I decided to go to Malaysia because it was the cheapest flight. Looking back, I should have paid the extra hundred bucks and gone to Vietnam. The Malays I met were unfriendly and Kuala Lumpur is a dumpster of a city. I have absolutely no desire to ever go back there again. Sorry to any Malays reading this. I was not impressed.

This is especially true coming from a place where I have scantily-clad females walking around half drunk at all hours of the day. A place where there's a 2 mile stretch of beach, a walking street where people party 7 nights a week, and my own cozy little hostel with acceptable internet speeds and periodic visits from slutty European girls very, very far from home.

After four days in KL I was miserable. I wanted to come back to Phuket so bad. And finally I did.

This was about a week ago. But I was so shaken by the experience of not being able to spend 3 hours a day at the beach with half naked women that my depression lingered. I just couldn't shake it.

It was right about this time where the whole crypto market started deteriorating. I'm a bag holder extraordinaire, which for you non-crypto "investors" means I have a bunch of worthless tokens that I bought during the Great Crypto Boom Of Q4 2017. I've got so many coins that I don't even remember them all.

They're all down right now. So is Bitcoin. Everything is down. It's gotten so bad that I don't even check my portfolio anymore. I just wanted to focus on making new money and getting new clients. Not a bad idea, right?

It's not what you know...

Two interesting things happened around this time.

The first is that I was able to hook up with an international marketing syndicate that specializes in promoting ICOs on various social channels. These guys are what they call "shills" on Reddit. Basically they go places where crypto "investors" gather and talk about whatever company they're trying to promote. It's also sometimes called grassroots marketing or guerilla marketing.

When I made this connection I almost shit my pants. Without a doubt, this was THE MOST powerful way to promote any company, let alone an ICO, that I had come across during my time in the crypto space. With tens of thousands accounts across dozens of platforms in various languages, these guys can put any company on the map. And more exposure means more investors.

After solidifying this connection, I felt like I was walking on air. I remember walking through one of the main streets in Patong feeling extremely powerful. It was like I had the keys to the castle. I could make a king or destroy one.

Now here's the thing: people hate shills. They're essentially salesmen and everyone hates them too. And I say this as someone who has worked as a salesman for his entire professional career. I know everyone hates us. I don't give a shit though. I'm trying to make some money.

The thing with shills though is that they need to stay under the radar. They're 100% confederates and have to make it seem like they're just a random person talking about a random thing like people do.

Who you know > what you know

The second interesting thing was actually set in motion a few months ago as a result of the networking I've been doing in the crypto space. One of the connections I made was an individual who is very well-connected in the crypto space. After our first phone conversation I knew I had found my role model. This guy was a straight hustler.

You know that feeling when you meet someone and you're both on the same level? Like right away? That was me and this guy. Made me very optimistic, as this guy is worth mega bucks.

A few weeks go by and we exchange a few emails. Nothing much happens until I'm working on a deal with a new client who has an ICO coming up. I'm pitching him on my PR services as usual when he hits me with an amazing offer: he won't pay a monthly fee, but instead will give me a fixed % of the total amount of money raised during the ICO.

Now, I won't say how much exactly, but suffice to say that it would be a seven-figure payday for me. Just for a few months work.

So I'm thinking "alright, that's a great offer - but how the fuck am I supposed to help this guy raise $20m?" I mean, sure I can run this guy's Twitter account and write him a few blog posts, but $20m? Nah. I'm good, but I'm not that good.

I reach out to Mr. Well Connected and tell him about the offer, adding that if he gets involved and works his magic then I'd split it with him 50/50. And not only that, I'd lay it on the prospect so thick that I'd even get him to increase the fixed % of the total raise. Mr. WC likes that and refers me to his partner.

So now I'm acting as a dealmaker for the dealmaker, pitching these consultants on why they should work for this guy for free. And on the OTHER end I'm pitching the CEO on why they should pay the consultants an exorbitant % of the total funds raised.

Long story short, both sides agreed. And just like that, homeboy is virtually guaranteed a successful ICO.

These consultants have mega connections with crypto publications, private investors, angel groups... fucking everything. And not just in the West either. They have their hands in the Asian markets too, which have way more money than we do.

Not only that, I was able to work out a deal between these consultants and each one of my clients. So take that deal that I told you about before and multiply it, plus add it to whatever I was making before.

Sounds good, right? So why the fuck am I so depressed?

I can't really put my finger on it, but I think it's because I realized that all this crypto shit is basically 100% speculation and bullshit. Okay fine, that's what everyone has been saying all along. But I was drinking the Kool Aid and didn't believe it.

Crypto was supposed to redistribute the wealth! It was supposed to be our generation's way of making the big bucks without putting in years of hard work. Like the Boomers who bought cheap houses and paid $500/year for college, this was our "right place, right time" moment.

But nope, looks like it was a bubble after all. We got taken for a bunch of fools. Suckered by Wall Street and beaten at a game we had no experience playing.

It's not even that, though. You have all these shit ICOs with their irrelevant ERC20 tokens that literally have 0 use case. Literally none of them are necessary. It's all just a cash grab pitched as "a way for people other than institutional investors to get involved with early stage projects."

Give me a fucking break. People were throwing money at blockchain startups just to create their own coins. I can make a hundred million tokens right now and sell them in my ICO for $0.10 and make ten mil. No product, no team, nothing. Just an idea and a whitepaper.

And the worst part? It doesn't even matter if my platform, token, team, website, idea, and whitepaper are ALL shit.

Why? Because I can use the paid shills to pump the ICO to the stars and get the few people who aren't bleeding to death to invest in it, OR I can just hit up my new best friends and be like, "yo bro, I negotiated another deal with this client. Tell homeboy to go to Asia and bring back $20m."

Why am I depressed? Fuck, I don't even really know. A lot of reasons I guess, but the main thing is that I realized that the project doesn't matter. The team doesn't matter. The tech doesn't even matter.

All that matters is the hype. Hype = money.

Time to find a new hobby

Now that the market is contracting, it's hard to BUILD the hype in the first place. The crazy thing is that even THAT doesn't matter, as I can put together a deal with these ICOs and some fundraisers and they'll get the money anyway. And once they get the money, they can throw some at the project until they have a working platform that changes the world (lol) or create enough hype to jack up the price of their token so they can dump it on an exchange and collect their money.

Don't get me wrong, my conscience isn't bothering me. I don't give a shit if you think this is unethical or not. I'm not promoting scams and all these companies truly 100% believe in the work they are doing. They're dedicated and work on their projects 7 days a week. At least the ones I'm working with.

I mean, I should be happy, shouldn't I? If these deals go through then I'm on track to make millions of dollars this year, just from a few emails. I guess I just didn't know it would be so easy. But now that the bubble is popping, what's the future for ICOs? I have no idea.

The worst part is that now I feel like I have nothing to do. No more ICOs to pitch, I lost my biggest client and I just don't have the motivation to write about crypto that I had a month ago. Why the fuck am I even writing this blog post? Steemit is just another cash grab by some people who were smart enough to make their own version of fake internet money.

Honestly, you know what I'm thinking of doing? Just starting my own ICO. Put together a website and talk a few developers into letting me put their picture on there. Tell my homeboys I want to raise, oh I dunno, $20m maybe. Yeah I think that'll do it.

You want to talk about instant fame, if you convince anyone to give you $20m you better believe TechCrunch is going to write an article about you.

But then the problem is that I'll have to actually do the work to try and build the company. I won't be able to do Muay Thai every day, spend 2-3 hours at the beach and chill with slutty European girls.

Decisions decisions.

What do you think of the current state of the crypto markets?

Let me know in a comment!

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It's not over this is the result of simple economics if you have bitcoin and you see it crashing logically you trade for cash and wait, don't have to be a genius to figure that out. The cause is someone holding over a Billion dollars of BTC and must sell it off to fulfill his mandate . When will it end? My guess is after the MTGox guy has less than 10,000 BTC left to sell. Right now he has 166,000 to go. After that everything can go back to normal trading.

I think the MTGox guy will wait till the next bull run to dump on us again.

it's very hard to imagine But the Marketcap was 820 Billion in December and he sold off 400 million it just dosen't make any logical financial explaination, were talking over 400 billion drop on fear of someone selling 1 billion ?

The marketcap is just a representation and interpolation of the current trade volume.
So it was only theoretically at 820 billion. This number might be way lower.
Tether is also contributing to the fact and you don't really know how much it is actually backed by real money. We might be looking at 1:10 , some people believe its 1:50 or even worse. If you consider this fact it doesn't look too suprising anymore that the market is in depression after 400 million USD worth of crypto were sold.

166,000 what to go?

166,000 left to selloff BTC and BTCC each. But it's manipulation big time just take a look, in 24hrs the market-cap increased 40 Billion do you really think 1Billion in coin made it drop 80 Billion? Well question is answered it was all caused by the G20 Meeting :)) were good

Thx for the great insights into a crypto holders heart and soul.. in regards to the major coins and tokens IMHO nobody knows where it is going.. but having been an long time skeptic currently I can see that a lot of people have not been involved at all.. especially not institutions.. ist not over until they are in...
so I believe its a 50/50 chance between a further crash towards 0 oder another boom hitting higher highs..
but everybody should take care of good money management and only spend his gamble money... unfortunately boom and bust cycles always have the same news headlines... first lucky overnight zillionairs followed by mom and pops loosing their house and last shirt... yet I did not see the later headline... so fasten your seat belts in both directions..
I would especially recommend everybody: only buy what you understand... and yes that requires to read the whitepaper and secondly ask yourself the question: is the token really necessary for the ecosystem / business model described --> e.g. it will not work without application of blockchain technology or is it just a "oh OK.. we have a token.. now lets find a good story.."
..same applies for all doing promotions..

https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@blockchainbeta/bitcoin-hit-by-regulation-expect-massive-dump

Read this article it basically says that at the moment crypto is speculative like the internet in the 90's-2000 @blockchainbeta

So, @yallapapi, are you now a depressed and dis-illusioned multi-millionaire counted in USD?

I think you are DEAD ON. I realized this immediately. Now, need to ask more questions to the one person I know who IS connected. I'll work with you, I get this.

Hahaha have you seen Useless Ethereum Token? It's great

I think the market was long overdue for a correction but I hope the prices start climbing soon!

That's how I view this too. I'm not expert, but just looking at the graphs you can clearly see that there was roughly consistent growth for a while, then it suddenly took off. Now we are back down near where we would have been if that consistent growth had just continued instead of a huge growth and crash.

I will say, not as exciting now though.

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Bubble...

Eventually BTC and all its brethren, turn around and gives us the middle finger.
All the shillers and experts, who talk up a coin, based on Elliott waves or Fibonacci levels, all of them, will eventually come to the realization that every chart eventually is one giant FUCK YOU!

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Congrats, you have now entered the 'Crypto Veteran' stage and you are now able to see through the bullshit.

You're now at the point where you no longer think market manipulations and such are 'nutty conspiracy theories' but in fact realize that this is exactly what's going on on a daily basis. News is being manipulated, shilled, and whatnot. 90% of the altcoins are indeed shitcoins, including some of them that sound great.

With regards to the paid shilling you really need to remember this too and most of all remember that it is not just in crypto where this happens. These paid shill tactics are 1000% also going on in political campaigns and other initiatives to try and attempt to change the public opinion. Most of the loudest voices on pretty much any subject have a big chance of being 'fake'.

It's like the early days of commercials where people were unable to seperate truth and lies in commercials either.

Now that you've discovered the dark sinister truths of crypto, it's time to seperate the crap from the gems and ditch the 'shitcoins' or simply start seeing them as ways to earn more of the gem-coins.

While much of crypto is a money-grab, there are projects which are solid and have actual purpose and value. For me, these are some of the more established coins. Bitcoin being the primary one, but coins like ETH and XMR have merit too. Personally I am leaning toward Bitcoin maximalism more and more, though the majority of my portfolio is in alts.

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XMR 4 lyfe

Hey yallapapi,
well done absolutley greate article... leaves me really thinking about some problems you literally hit!
I guess in the end you can rely on your stomach and the best thing is a) reflecting and evaluating for yourself what has potential b) finding various experts. Only if both points are hit by 100% you should go in! You maybe not in everything that booms but you higher your profit/risk-ratio :)

Thanks for sharing your Thoughts!
Absolutely the content I was looking for, great i discoverd your Channel :)
All the best from Germany my friend,
johannes (: