This might become a short post actually as it features just an idea. Many people are still puzzled about the bear market and why it just not seems to find its end. Crypto is the future, right? Why does it not reflect in the market prices and will ETF's bring the money back into the game or will they work against the goals of crypto, like Andreas M. Antonopoulos thinks? This actually correlates with why I think smart money might (temporarily) moved out.

Has crypto been massively overvalued in 2017 and therefore the massive drop was due? Many people ask themselves why so much money has left the market and tend to overthink the situation in my opinion. People get their crayons and draw countless charts to predict the bull market and all failed hard until now.

So what determines the price of a market?

This year the crypto markets have fallen by almost 80% – the big guys, and I am not talking about that common “whales” which are accused to manipulate the market for each trade that fails. The market is driven by supply and demand – no news here. The price reflects one thing alone: how the technology is perceived by the masses and how they are willing to value it. Hope into a technology that will be accepted and widens its reach more and more is a big catalyst for the price for an asset. Over time the price reflects also the increasing actual usability of an asset – for what it is used, always trying to answer the question if it is it really valuable for its purpose,

Has Crypto delivered?

Probably it is just something different than we assume, something we just cannot see because we are way too involved into crypto and also just don't want to see it. In the world of ZEN, it is a goal to achieve a so-called “beginner's mind”. This means to keep the ability to see things from the outside, like a beginner – like a pair of fresh eyes, while still having the expert knowledge available we gained already. If we apply this to crypto, it might enable us to see the markets more like big investors, for an example a venture capital firm. They are not fans of crypto or anything – they just place their money without emotions where they can see growth to participate in its success. The world became digital, crypto became available and accompanied this movement for the money side of things. Many projects have been build on the find blockchain technology and the hopes have been high…

Though problems like scalability persisted and have not evolved significantly. We still experience clogged networks and slow transactions. Imagine ordering a Pumpkin Latte at Starbucks to be paid in Bitcoin. “That would make $8 and $1.08 mining fees, please take a seat and wait aside for at least 6 confirmations. We will call you in approximately 45 mins once the transactions went through.”

Which value shall Bitcoin provide? It shall be a decentralized, autonomous way to pay for things and still fails with profane things like a Pumpkin Latte. The more you look into it, the more you will find the examples: Take Cardano – a red-hot product in '17 – what have they actually delivered? A great roadmap, a fantastic concept – but right now it is nothing more than vaporware. Ethereum – a project that got hit hard by a kitty game. Do we really need to go further?

Smart Money Wants To See Progress

Smart money wants to see progress and mass adoption. It is really that simple. The hopes have been high, the progress too slow. And what did we, the community? We traded shitcoin for shitcoin, Sat for Sat and while we thought, in all our narcissism, we mastered the art of trading in '17, the smart money has left without a goodbye. Not even Uber-money for a ride home on the nightstand, after we have been f#cked hard all night long.

Depressing, right? But we should take it for a lesson – Spreading the word, using the actual technology like supporting bitcoin-enabled retailers and talking about the actual technology – this is what we can do. We, the traders, the fast-money guys searching for overnight-riches, the shitcoin shillers, we helped in building the base of the bear market. Delivering working products instead of fluffy words and pumped ICO websites – this is what the industry should do, instead of hyping stuff to drive the prices of their shitcoins.

Read this awesome thread of tweets by Chris Burniske to see the numbers behind. And now, let's buy stuff with crypto, let's make use of tokens, let's show the world the value of crypto and how it can make our lives better!