The crypto winter continues. However, after the recent Messari Mainnet conference in New York last … [+] getty It’s been two weeks since the latest cryptocurrency/blockchain conference in New York, where the mood was “as usual” for crypto – the future is ours. Just keep calm “hodl” on. But roughly seven business days after the Messari Mainnet Conference in Manhattan, cryptocurrency investments still stink. Ethereum ETH 0.0% , whose investors had hoped that “the merge” would help their investment turn the corner, is down over 65% year-to-date. Perhaps the good news is that since the New York conference, both ETH and bitcoin are beating the Dow. Given the dour market, it’s nothing to write home about.
David Morris, who attended the conference last month as both guest and moderator, called this the “most important crypto bear market in history.”
“The trap for many crypto projects is that while the big, easy returns come from whales and (day traders), those users are also hyper-agile ‘rotator capital,’ willing and able to pull up stakes and move their entire net worth to a new system for a few extra basis points of APR,” Morris says.
Some industry leaders were excited about “regulation” – which seems anathema to crypto. Granted, the serious cryptocurrency/blockchain developers want regulation insofar as it lends their segment of the tech world some credibility. Regulation means ‘you can trust us, we’re not doing scam coin projects .’
So when Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, known as “CZ” in the crypto world, told Mainnet gatherers that governments are making “positive progress” toward regulation, one understands it to mean that investors can trust Binance – they welcome the scrutiny.
The thing is, CZ and the like have so much money in bitcoin from the early 2020s (remember, BTC was under $10,000 before Covid panic set it) that they can cash out some of those losses and throw lavish parties to hobnob with the A-list blockchain bloggers, egghead coders, and a few venture capitalists for whom the yacht rock music is really playing in the Hudson River. They’re upbeat because they’re still loaded. Most of the crypto day traders and “hodlers” (a typo that’s become a real word in the crypto universe – it means hold) have been crushed. I know I have. I’ve lost the equivalent of a middle-class salary (though I have no sold, so I’m a hopeful hodler ).
There are people like that, and there are people like CZ.
What’s in this market for the retail trader at this point? Bitcoin’s BTC 0.0% down. Should we be buyers? Or, as they say on Wall Street, never try to catch a falling knife. Bitcoin and Ethereum investments got a lift after the Messari Mainnet conference. Both … [+] KMR Images Úrsula O’Kuinghttons, director of communications and partnerships at Web3 Foundation and Polkadot DOT 0.0% , is not scared. She was in attendance.
“The crypto market has plummeted, but it will survive,” she says. “We are definitely at a turning point, where new players in the ecosystem arrive with greater knowledge of the market. At Messari, I saw many relevant players in the industry are increasingly aware that if we want to grow, we need to reach the masses. While the builders will continue to develop blockchain technology, regardless of the histrionics of the market.”
Like in the initial coin offering days of old, there was a lot of talk about new projects coming up, even more than there were in the last down cycle – which was the death of the ICO cycle. And in that happy hour chatter, there is enthusiasm and hope because, what else do you have? Either cryptocurrency is going to become a thing for the masses to maintain a decentralized, uncensored, transactional existence in cyberspace, or it becomes a thing for the Sheldon Coopers (Big Bang Theory character) and The Gamblers of the world – whether from Seoul or San Francisco; a story of sci-fi tech dorks playing with math and algorithms, and new-world casino wizards betting on tokens like $5 chips at a Bally’s casino.
“A favorite saying among the cryptorati is bear markets are for builders and the vibe at Messari echoed that,” says Jeremy Epstein, chief marketing officer at Radix, a smart-contracting platforming tool for developers of decentralized finance applications. “There are massive macro headwinds and a freezing cold crypto-winter, but the attendees at Messari … [+] getty “They know crypto will win. Companies and people are investing in this generational opportunity,” Epstein says.
Some notable takeaways at Messari include uncertainty surrounding the […]
source Messari’s Mainnet Conference Two Weeks Later: Crypto Winter Has No End In Sight
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