Understandably the bear market of the last couple of months and the return to all time to lows for many altcoins has been tough. Crypto twitter is awash with angry posts about failed investment. Many people seem on the point of dropping out of the crypto game altogether. In my opinion stopping now would be as bad a decision as buying Bitcoin at it’s January high turned out to be. Now is the time to be making a fiat investment not trying to extract it.

The last 6 months has helped sort the wheat from the chaff. We’ve seen investment flow out of underdeveloped and even scammy projects and drive the Bitcoin dominance back up. In a relative sense the top 10 altcoins have lost less than the projects further down the market cap list. Litecoin, Ripple, TRON and Stellar Lumens et al are trading cheaply but haven’t crashed to all time lows. I think the real losers in this period have been the projects we all held that were in the 100-300 rank for market cap. This has created a market of great opportunity.

3 Reasons to feel good about your investment

Upcoming ETF Decisions

The recent Van Eck decision delay is credited with kickstarting the last Bitcoin price drop from the $8k range right back to bouncing off support at $5.8k. The new decision date is at the start of September. The SEC are also considering an ETF proposal from Direxion with that decision due in September also. There are a number of other Bitcoin related ETF proposals before the SEC currently. I could not understand the market reaction to the decision delay. It is standard practice for the SEC to extend its decision dates in line with their regulations.

My personal outlook on a Bitcoin ETF is that it is a matter of time. The SEC’s concerns continue to be met in an increasingly satisfactory manner. There is increasing demand. With each proposal denied and each decision delayed we get closer to approval. Already we know future proposals will benefit from the learnings of the Gemini refusal. We have all seen the comparative historical price graph of gold trading pre and post ETF. It seems certain to me that there will be a Bitcoin ETF approved in the next 12 months.

Adapting to Adoption Challenges

I have always maintained that adoption is the greatest single facing cryptocurrency and blockchain solutions. The first strategy for widespread B2C adoption consisted of enabling developers. Ethereum is the best example of this. ConsenSys is a massive hub of smart people with the ostensible goal of coming up with ‘something’ in dapp form that everyone will flock to. This hasn’t really worked to date and dapp usage stats are unimpressive.

I am really excited by a differing approach to adoption I am starting to see now. TRON have a different strategy to Ethereum. They are looking at ways to implement their coin in existing projects that TRON will improve. The team identified pornography payments as something people do not like on their bank statement. Now you can use TRON to buy porn. They recognised the flaw in the torrent ecosystem – not enough people seed. They purchase BitTorrent and pretty soon there will be a TRON incentive for seeding. Stellar Lumens are developing a benefits payment system trial with the Australian government and Deloitte. This will be a fascinating use case.

Global Regulatory Climate

There have been a number of positive and important regulatory decisions around the world in the last few months. South Korea has made major strides in legalising and regulating cryptocurrency exchanges. They South Korean government have moved to clarify taxation issues around income from crypto trading also. This facilitates a safer investment climate.

The security and exchanges commission (SEC) of Thailand introduced regulations around ICOs. This involved. The SEC will allow 7 cryptocurrencies to be used for initial coin offerings (ICOs) and to be traded as trading pairs. They are bitcoin, ethereum, bitcoin cash, ethereum classic, litecoin, ripple, and stellar.

Japan is building a clear framework for how virtual currency exchanges, and soon initial coin offerings (ICOs), should operate there. In doing so, Japan is becoming a hotspot for virtual currency exchanges that can afford to comply with its strict rules, while also creating a regulatory template for the rest of Asia to follow.

In Europe the pace is slower. Malta and Gibraltar have introduced regulations which has seen firms flock there. Binance setting up in Malta is the most high profile example of this. Elsewhere in the EU there is Bitcoin City in Ljubljana, Slovenia and a progressive crypto business zone in Zug, Switzerland.

Uganda in Africa became the first country for Binance to roll out their new fiat to crypto exchange platform. In South America, Venezuela has mandated for the Petro to become it’s official second currency. The Maduro government have floated the Petro. It is tied to Venezuelan oil production.

All these small victories for cryptocurrencies give me great confidence that we will see increased demand in future for cryptocurrencies.

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