Crypto Enthusiasts Should Love FUD

It’s no mystery that FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) has been dominating the crypto-sphere for the most part of 2018. The swift decline of the market from the dizzying heights in December overshadowed the majority of technological developments taking place in the first quarter. Only recently has the total market capitalization nearly doubled reaching $400billion reigniting positive press and green charts all round.

But the recent fear-mongering and negative press has been one of the most positive developments in blockchain. While sceptical journalists and FOMO-stricken investors were screaming the ‘bubble has finally burst’, ‘blockchain has no utility value’ and ‘tulip analogy this, tulip analogy that’ the rest of the community were laughing at the brazen ignorance of the cryptocurrency sheep.

You may be asking why? Surely as investors you were losing money too? Well, yes to a certain extent, but like a phoenix rising from the ashes, destruction is absolutely integral to creation. As Kurt Vonnegut wrote back in 1990:

“Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.”

Behind the scenes, developers, marketeers and the rest of the tech-savvy community were relieved — it was a chance to do technological maintenance rather than building meaningless marketing hype trying to push the next ‘shitcoin’ to the moon; it gave everyone who understood the utility value of blockchain technology a chance to catch their breath and put their nose to the grindstone without the distraction of everyone’s grandma buying Bitcoin off Coinbase.

Where’s the evidence? Well for starters, Mastercard have filed numerous patents based on blockchain tech since the start of the year. Big news. And they’re not the only big player to have done this — Bank of America have also filed several patents, as well as Amazon Web Services and IBM.

You may be screaming, these are centralized entities that are going to ruin the democratic underpinning of blockchain technology. Yes, you may be correct, and by no means am I using this example as the apogee of blockchain utility; i’m using this to highlight how the big players know this technology is disrupting their respective industries, and they can’t afford not to integrate it into their businesses. Like a wolf in sheep’s clothing they’ve been eyeing up their dinner whilst the rest of the sheep have been declaring ‘bitcoin dead’ (again). This means two things: blockchain technology is here to stay, and the next crypto-meal is going to be a crypto-feast.

Analysts have also been using the recent FUD to comparatively study the crypto-asset generation with that of other generations investment picks. Some incredible statistics affirming just how pervasive blockchain tech is becoming and how crypto-assets are no longer the reserve of a niche area of internet-geeks are slowly being revealed.

My generation, dubbed ‘millennials’ dwarfs both Generation X and the Baby Boomers by a significant margin; we are undoubtedly the biggest categorised generation to date. This gives us the most pulling power when it comes to adopting technologies. The Baby Boomers during their twenties saw the development of Personal Computers and GPS, and Gen X during their twenties adopted wireless technology like email, SMS and e-commerce. Each of these technologies have been severely misunderstood by the previous generation due to their disruptive nature. My generation — social media, apps like AirBnB and Uber, and blockchain.

During prime earning years, the Boomers favoured equities as investment options, fuelling the stock market boom up until 1999. Gen X favoured hedge funds, with the number of funds peaking in 2007 and steadily declining since. Bitcoin’s rise in 2016 coincided with the earliest millennials reaching their prime earning years. See where i’m going with this yet?

Today, for every billion dollars that goes into crypto, it’s turning into $25 billion of price appreciation. If millennials decide to put ten percent of their savings flow in to crypto (let’s say $100 billion for arguments sake) that’s a $2.5 trillion dollar rise per year…

Crypto-assets are on track to being one of the favoured investment options of millennials, and seeing as we’re the biggest categorised generation to date, the potential over the next 5–10 years for crypto-assets is astronomical. All it takes is a little due diligence during periods of FUD, where the movers and shakers in the crypto-sphere can reassess the patterns underlying the growth of similar disruptive technologies.

The FUD has been healthy for crypto-assets. Now those invested in the area can rest assured that the cycle is natural, the technology is better than ever, and the path to the moon is the clearest it has ever been.

So be patient, strap in, and watch the rocket go.

Crypto Enthusiasts Should Love FUD was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.