A Long, Long Time Ago In Cryptoverse

I wasn’t interested in research on Bitcoin during 2017 besides the bare minimum, but solely trying to place trades correctly and profit in dollar value.

Trading worked even though 2018 was identical to 2022 and produced losses for investors. It is difficult to avoid losses as we will also have to forfeit the incredible profit and exponential price increases until we find the top.

While I am not optimistic regarding the chances of BTC, perhaps it can make a new ATH by 2025, but the price action afterward will disappoint speculators.

BTC today offers a high risk / low reward ratio, as experienced in the last bull run and compared to the previous ones. Therefore, it is not even worth it for speculation reasons.

With this story, we will explore my experience in crypto and how research was the decisive factor that defined my future perspective and choices.

Five Years in a Nutshell

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My journey in the crypto field began five (update 204: seven) years ago, in March 2017.

I immediately got my hands in some Dogecoin and started testing it.

Eventually, I started buying slowly with $50-$100 monthly for the first months and higher in September and October.

I was trading at Bittrex and Poloniex, mostly buying and selling XRP pumps and other coins I don't even remember. It was mostly a test mode and not with money that could change a lot if I lost. Still, the prices of some of the altcoins I traded would have delivered life-changing wealth as they did reach prices a hundred times higher by the end of 2017.

As a beginner, I lost my chance to make a significant profit, but this is almost the same for everyone else. Few can manage to "hodl" for more, especially after a trade makes up for a yearly wage. Yet, the peaks do not last and prices will retrace, and so did all the cryptos I traded eventually.

In 2017, my (main) investment was BTC with most of it bought in September that year.

I had to find a dip to buy a lot since I felt the price was about to grow fast. So the September 2017 dip happened as news of a Chinese ban emerged (China has banned crypto several times already).

I traded BTC and Ethereum, but when the market is in extreme fear, it affects everyone. Risk is reduced, and it takes a different kind of mindset to resist fear and uncertainty. Still, it is the best time to buy. We defy the overwhelming fear and defeat the market by buying when there is blood on the street.

In the meantime, with research, I discovered no hope and no willingness from the BTC camp to pursue global adoption as P2P Electronic Cash.

The Lightning Network was just a facade, a pointless, complex, and dysfunctional network, to support financial hubs and regulations.

It took me until 2019 to understand that LN was never going to be adopted massively due to the restrictions in the main chain blocksize limit.

Trading

I was unaware of the technicalities or the permissionless and decentralized nature of (some) cryptocurrencies, but still, trades were profitable.

However, I was pretty clueless regarding everything but trading until 2019.

I had limited knowledge of what BTC represented and was deceived by the prevalent narrative that Bitcoin was fixing everything. Despite the brainwashing, I always made clear points about the need for merchant adoption, low fees, and fast transactions.

Before entering the crypto field, I envisioned digital cash with fees lower than bank cards and instant transactions.

Still, looking back to some of my thoughts and writings from that era (2017-2019) in forums, I only demonstrate how clueless I was about Bitcoin and, to a certain extent, how millions more are likely thinking similarly while in their first years in Bitcoin.

It takes time to realize the deception and find cryptocurrencies that work toward fulfilling the P2P Electronic Cash dream for the world.

My 2018 prediction for BTC:

This was my BTC prediction (July 7th, 2018) on Steemit (I can verify this is my article, still got the keys), one year and a few months after delving into the crypto space.

The trading aspect was accurate and based on long-term chart analysis, although I'm still not proud of this post as I had the wrong impression of Bitcoin's vision, thinking it was still following the whitepaper.

Some parts I mentioned in Steemit:

My prediction was 100% correct regarding the BTC bottom ($2-$4k) and about 80% correct on the target ($70k instead of $100k).

Even so, that should have brought a 10x return even with the current standards.

I did buy BTC at that range and did profit from this trade, however, I didn't entirely believe in my prediction and did not profit as much as I should have.

I explained more about this prediction in an article I published years ago on read.cash: A bold BTC prediction since three years ago.

The prediction was correct and my charting abilities are better than any random trader who disappeared from the internet in 2018 after selling snake oil and trading courses. Surely this is the worst kind of trader, those that act like used-car salesmen when charting and link to their overpriced and useless trading courses in their profile and content description.

My $100k prediction was wrong, but only because I had the wrong impression of Bitcoin back in 2018. If I had known back then what I know now, it would have been more accurate.

See, Bitcoin (BTC) did not achieve global adoption as a P2P Electronic Cash System.

The narrative had already shifted into digital gold (store-of-value) and the target group had also changed.

The target was institutions and bankers now, which in my opinion is the wrong approach since it only makes Bitcoin look like a scheme targeting big money, but has no utility at all. Therefore, the target group is only limited to fund managers buying pure speculative assets (which is way less than what maximalists tend to believe).

The outcome in 2021 wasn't what maximalists expected either and they still pursue it, but the facts are undeniable.

Each BTC ATH is way lower than the previous one, and only driven by short-term speculation the halving event brings, while a lack of utility is obvious.

I did buy BTC at $3,000 and bought also Ethereum at $100. I profited but also lost interest in both these cryptocurrencies as they are both massive failures.

With time, it became evident both BTC and Ethereum were not going to fulfill their initial vision but had to make trade-offs and discount their revolutionary potential.

By the end of 2020, I had exited both.

It was profitable of course but this is also where my skills end.

I've noticed a similar issue with most traders, even the top ones. Their skills have limits.

Finding the top is impossible, so when making these trades that can last two years, we have to take profits in steps.

So, I sold almost everything by the end of December 2020, but Elon Musk had different plans and decided to prolong the bull run.

See, you can't predict the top as there can be so many unforeseen events.

The Lightning Network Expectations

As a beginner in early 2017, I'd never expected BTC to completely abandon scalability and proceed with an absurd and complex sidechain project, the Lightning Network. Abandoning P2P Cash that brought public attention with price speculation is an approach that only limits the actual potential. Economic principles suggest that the price of Bitcoin would have been a lot higher today with usage increasing instead of halting.

The Lightning Network was a disaster, and upon examining it carefully, it becomes clear it can only work with regulated financial hubs dominating the network.

Today, we watch the rise of custodial wallets on the Lightning Network since the decentralized approach is quite costly for the user. Few run their own node as opening and closing channels demand on-chain fees that vary between $20-$70 since late 2023.

The Lightning Network reversed the P2P adoption and now proceeds with a centralized approach and trusted parties that Bitcoin was eliminating.

Bitcointalk

During our first few years in crypto, we begin by adjusting and following the mainstream while seeking research and education.

Sadly, my sources were bitcointalk and a few biased crypto websites like Coindesk and Cointelegraph.

Unknowingly, the Bitcoin that I described in the aforementioned story (the one Steemit that I published in 2018), was Bitcoin Cash.

It takes a while to realize Bitcoin Cash is the version of Bitcoin that works since all of the crypto media is only generating confusion and publishing propaganda to sustain BTC as the dominant version and Custodial Lightning as the (centralized) scaling approach.

Merchant adoption, low fees, and fast transactions are exactly what Bitcoin Cash pursues.

Nobody can dive into a vastly fragmented cryptocurrency market and instantly identify the deceptive and fraudulent points influencers make.

Therefore, I was stuck with BTC for the first few years, but constantly asked questions at the right places, and eventually I discovered by myself what was the actual intention after 2015 and the capturing of developments by Core/Blockstream.

Separating honest statements from the apparent noise requires experience and deep knowledge in the field.

On a few occasions in 2018, I made negative remarks about Bitcoin Cash in the Bitcoin forum (bitcointalk), as I was temporarily a victim of the maximalist deception and narratives. However, it was also the connection with Craig Wright that pushed me far from BCH, as he promoted himself as one of the leading forces in Bitcoin Cash and was popular for one year after the 2017 hard fork.

In the chaotic bitcointalk forum, I'm definitely not proud of two or three comments I made in 2018 and 2019, but it also seems I was right about most other things.

It takes a long time to research or avoid the vast deception and misinformation in this field, yet as beginners, we have to start somewhere.

Of course, these were only a few comments, and I never reached the poor-minded state of the BTC maximalists and the network of spammers on social media.

Nonetheless, I was even more critical of BTC from the beginning and had plenty of heated debates and arguments with maximalists that led me to believe there was no hope for BTC. I kept coming back to bitcointalk as it felt impossible that these people had decided to entirely abandon the payments aspect of Bitcoin. Yet, every time I kept identifying more clues on what led to the current humiliating state of BTC, and today the results are obvious with maximalists cheering for the banks, Blackrock, and legacy finance.

I don't feel my first one or two years in crypto are something I was proud of, beyond the trading aspect. Frankly, I did great as a beginner and profited in ways I could have never imagined. However, I wasn't able to make life-changing money, probably due to my lack of experience.

I am also certain that many others don't feel proud of their history and some of their past comments after having the same experiences and asking the right questions.

The time I allocated to research Bitcoin Cash wasn't what it deserved, perhaps because of the vast hatred expressed against it.

With enough research, though, the false narratives collapse, and the truth will be revealed, no matter the propaganda.

Between 2017 and 2019, I used the Bitcoin forum, trying to find answers but only found decay, propaganda, infiltrators, and bankers in control of the narrative.

This forum is a waste of time and only relevant for historical reasons.

It is a great source of information for researchers who want to discover the mindset of the early adopters between 2010 and 2012, who, most of them, by the way, are long gone from what today is Bitcoin (BTC), with a few exceptions.

Another interesting fact to discover was that almost everyone who joined Bitcoin in 2010 is not a vocal supporter today. The OGs are not into Bitcoin anymore, except for a small minority. Even that small minority are

BTC altered the narrative with Blockstream in charge.

The Previous Bear Market

The bear market was a great chance to investigate startups that could become the next Ethereum or XRP. Yet, 99% of them failed.

I followed Ethereum for almost two years until mid-2020 when fees started rising and making it impossible to move tokens or work in this network as previously.

The 2018 bear market was not worth all the effort I put in, as I was mostly following projects from the ICO days which were shutting down one after another.

Developers had limited funds to sustain platforms, and too many scams were damaging the remains of the ecosystem.

Still, a few of them had a decent run during 2020-2021, but, as expected, they still failed to produce something exceptional besides a temporary price pump and a return to obscurity.

The 2018-2019 bear market helped mostly the established projects develop and create terms for adoption that would follow.

The 2022-2023 bear is similar for Ethereum and all the Ethereum clones that fall one after another into irrelevancy.

In Conclusion

Bitcoin BTC will have more bull runs, but it will be nothing like what we've seen in the past. It has limited odds of delivering life-changing profit to speculators, therefore it is not even worth it for speculative reasons.

However, we can't predict how irrational a market can be and how fast a scheme can expand.

The most possible development would be a renewal of interest after the next halving in 2024 but at a much even lower rate than in 2020.

In the long run, the driving force for BTC, which is speculation, will only reduce until its effect entirely disappears.

The interest in BTC will slowly fade, and innovation will flourish once the crypto exchanges stop supporting a walking corpse or bringing it up to life as the decisive leader of this industry.

Clearly, BTC is not even needed anymore.

The third BTC halving was the final one in terms of vast profitability. The fourth halving (2024) will make it so much more difficult for speculators to profit, that maximalists will unplug their laser eyes (some already have) and switch off the spam bots on social media.

The survival of the crypto industry and innovation in the field will actually depend on de-pegging the entire market from BTC.

• Cover Photo:  Pixabay

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