Ten Crypto Myths

There is a lot of false information and fuzzy thinking in the crypto world… especially for newcomers. Here are ten crypto myths (in no particular order) that need to be slain by Hercules.

1. Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme. Ponzi would take people’s money, promise to invest it, and then give them their return on investment. In reality, he would get money from a new investor to pay the old ones off. Eventually he ran out of money and got in trouble. With Bitcoin there is no Ponzi and there is no “investment scheme”. When you buy one Bitcoin you have bought one Bitcoin. Whether it goes up or down in value is for the free market to decide.
2. Bitcoin will die any day now. According to mainstream news Bitcoin died in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020. Yet, it continuously goes up in value and now has institutional investors like MicroStrategy and Tesla.
3. Bitcoin is the only legitimate cryptocurrency. There are several high quality cryptocurrencies on the market. Ethereum for instance, has ran strong from 2015 and hosts a wide variety of DApps like the Brave Browser and Uniswap.
4. Only cryptos that have a high price are worth buying. What matters is growth. If Bitcoin goes up 10,000 Dollars that is a nice gain. But if Dogecoin goes up 10 cents the investment just doubled. Always take growth over a big number.
5. Cryptos have no real value. The value of everything is determined by the laws of supply and demand. Government money like the US Dollar is not tied to anything except what the US government says it’s worth. With cryptocurrency it’s supply is tied to the code which is not easily changed. With fiat money it’s whatever the government and central banks want.
6. Governments want to outlaw crypto. There are some countries that have outlawed crypto but for the most part that’s not happening. Would large institutions like: MicroStrategy, Tesla, Grayscale, and MassMutual buy it if were going to be outlawed by the US government?
7. Cryptocurrencies have no practical use cases. There are many different use cases cryptocurrencies successfully do including: remittances, smart contracts, Non fungible Tokens, trading, passive income and a hedge against traditional financial markets (alongside many other use cases).
8. Crypto is for criminals. Bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies are quite easy to track. If the governments suspects you are money laundering they can most likely figure it out. Traditional cash is still the best money for criminals.
9. Easy to Hack. Blockchains like Bitcoin are not easy to hack. Many people have heard about the Mount Gox exchange hack so they assume blockchains are easy to hack. These are not blockchain hacks but are exchange hacks. That’s why it’s important to use high quality exchanges like OKEx to keep your cryptocurrency secure.
10. Hard to learn. Cryptocurrency continues to improve and have better and better UI and UX design. There is also the OKEx Academy that can teach you how to trade cryptocurrency, understand cryptocurrencies and cryptocurrency updates.

What other cryptocurrency myths can you think of?

Ten Crypto Myths was originally published in OKEx Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.