Following on from our article titled CRYPTOCURRENCIES – FOOLISH AND GULLIBLE? published last month where we quoted the crypto views of Paul Krugman, opinion columnist with the New York Times, a client replied that he “would like to point out an extreme inaccuracy in the article around crypto currencies. Feel free to publish this too.
In the interest of openness I am an investor in crypto assets and hold Bitcoin and Etherium in my port folio along with several more Alternative [ALT] coin assets too.
Points that are wholly inaccurate:
- Perpetual adoption of crypto assets through successful advertising campaigns lead new interests to over the counter purchasing platforms such as Coinbase and Crypto.com; which offer facilities such as holding, storing, staking and earning. Not trading platforms, where most users actually lose out in highly leveraged trades. These are not every day retail investors as the article suggests. You only lose if you sell as a retail investor and nobody would sell at a loss without extreme fear being instilled by third parties such as the writer of this article.. who seemingly has done no research other than to repeat wholly subjective opinions rather that facts.
- The comment “and have therefore lost a lot of money in the crypto crash” is wholly inaccurate.:
a. Only people who decide to sell at a loss actually lose money. Most newbies I deal with are always categorically advised not to sell at a loss and that markets always fluctuate like this. I do not know anyone who blindly hands over money for an investment they have done no research in.
b. The only large losses were on leverage trading platforms. Nobody new to crypto would even know what that was let alone dabble in it. And in the case of most trading platforms you cannot enter leverage trading without passing a questionnaire showing competence. - Usage; reference to debit cards. Everyone knows that visa and mastercard for a start have exorbitant fees for merchants, and the likes of western union are 10 x higher than even these. But sending crypto over a blockchain costs as little as Eu2.00 to send Eu1,000,000 Bitcoin! So the argument is in fact in favour of Crypto rather than against it. Case in point, most El Salvadorians now send their money home from USA in Bitcoin rather than Western Union and are subsequently some 10% to 15% better off financially.
- Crypto assets play an ever increasing role in economic transaction and this can be clearly seen in El Salvador, Central African Republic, Iran, Ukraine, Russia are all accepting Bitcoin as forms of payment for charities, businesses and trading commodities.
- El Savlador have not “tried to force the process by making Bitcoin legal tender”, but voted this through unanimously and it has been a major success in ex pats working in USA for sending money home! Also there are many schemes now that are using volcanic energy for bitcoin mining which is 100% green energy.
- I think the only gullibility here is that of the writer in thinking his opinion is going to held with anything other than comedic essence. Clearly this is an article written on behalf of the institutes and banks who will longer be able to manipulate the market and operate under the radar; which they certainly wont be able to do with a mass crypto adoption because what he fails to mention in the “open source” nature of Blockchain technology meaning that all transaction irrespective of size are transparent for the world to see. THAT is the reason for articles like this trying to scare potential investors who will only ever achieve financial freedom should they take that leap of faith into Bitcoin.
Bitcoin and crypto assets are a new era of finance, we are in fact at the same stage the Internet was in 1990, when everyone was a sceptic and the “.com” early era made many rich and many investors poor! Yet 20 years on and since there is not a business on earth that can operate without the internet.
Ditto mobile phone networks and data.
So yes we are in the crypto futures’ infancy and there is risk on crypto assets that will undoubtedly go to zero, but for new investors the only advice can be buy and hold, buy and hold. Do not expect to be in the 1% that make 100x because these are experienced traders spending $1000’s a year on specialist indicating software. Yes unscrupulous people try to sell investments to inexperienced people, but hey this happens in Weight loss industries, pharmaceutical advertising and pretty much anything that can be engineered to look like an opportunity to anyone who does not do their own research so is certainly not specific to Crypto…
And as adoption continues to be considered by investment houses and platforms only 1% of the investments currently held globally would constitute a $10 to $20Tr market cap for Crypto….
Thanks for reading.
And thanks to our client for taking the time to hit the keys!