Late 2017 happened to be so far the best of times for the cryptocurrency industry. With Bitcoin hitting its all time high around this time last year (December 2017), cryptocurrency had a lot of excitement around it, with Bitcoin valued around $20,000.00 USD, but which as of now has deepened to 85%. Given these there have been series of panic in the crypto landscape, which aroused many opinions and claims that the death of cryptocurrency is near.

So, what's happening to crypto? For more clarity I will be pointing out some factors to look into considering "Amara's Law" and "Gartner's Slope"

Amara's Law states that: "We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run"

While this law, coined by the then President of the US-based Institute for the Future, Roy Amara, has been associated with both cyber attacks and nanotechnology, another area where it has shown its truthfulness is in the Internet itself.

Amara's law applied to the Internet

As the World Wide Web began to take off in the 1990s, generating great amount of hype or belief in its power and ability to make money for investors and hard-working entrepreneurs, the power and importance of this Technology (Internet) was initially overestimated by venture capitalists, causing them to make massive and often unrealistic investments in online start-ups, which resulted in the over-inflating of their value and their subsequent economic crash, something similar to the experience now with Bitcoin and other deepened Cryptos. This, now known as the 2001 dot.com bubble, is on itself an example of an economic bubble, which, when it gets pricked, loses money for many investors and businesses.

A BBC TV documentary at a time illustrated this very well. A farmer's wife was selling women's clothing online from her kitchen table, and without any help, had a higher turnover than a company which had attracted investment through its business model of selling products for cats online, and which had an office large enough to contain 100 workers, with ten full-time employees already. The farmer's wife had a realistic business model whereas the cat products company was a victim of Amara's Law, overestimating the short-term power and importance of the Internet, and was itself a victim of the pricking and deflating of the dot.com bubble.

The Technology Hype Cycle, a graphical representation of the life cycle stages a technology goes through from conception to maturity and widespread adoption. A branded tool created by Gartner an Information Technology (IT) research & consultant company, which stages are often use as a reference point in marketing and technology reporting.

From the viewpoint of fifteen years, later it is clear that the reason for the dot.com bubble was not because the Internet was never going to be a place where companies can make money, as thousands of incredibly successful and highly prosperous Internet start-ups have shown, but due to overestimating the short-term effects.

The first part of Amara's law has been described as an example of a hype cycle, as explained by the information technology research company - Gartner. A high-point of "inflated expectations" is followed by a low-point or "trough of disillusionment", which is what happened during the dot.com bubble. Yet, in the longer run, it turns out that both the high-point and the low-point of the hype cycle were only the beginning of the story just as it is now with cryptocurrency. The low-point of 2001 turned into a new and very real high-point in the 2010s, with the importance of the Internet for all types of businesses continuing to grow massively today, which also depicts the nearest future of cryptocurrency.

The hype cycle identifies five overlapping stages in a technology’s life cycle:

1. Technology Trigger

2. Peak of Inflated Expectations

3. Trough of Disillusionment

4. Slope of Enlightenment

5. Plateau of Productivity

Technology Trigger: A potential technology breakthrough kicks things off. Early proof-of-concept stories and media interest trigger significant publicity. Often no usable products exist and commercial viability is unproven.

Peak of Inflated Expectations: Early publicity produces a number of success stories—often accompanied by scores of failures. Some companies take action; most don't.

Trough of Disillusionment: Interest wanes as experiments and implementations fail to deliver. Producers of the technology shake out or fail. Investment continues only if the surviving providers improve their products to the satisfaction of early adopters.

Slope of Enlightenment: More instances of how the technology can benefit the enterprise start to crystallize and become more widely understood. Second- and third-generation products appear from technology providers. More enterprises fund pilots; conservative companies remain cautious.

Plateau of Productivity: Mainstream adoption starts to take off. Criteria for assessing provider viability are more clearly defined. The technology's broad market applicability and relevance are clearly paying off. If the technology has more than a niche market then it will continue to grow.

So, what happened to all cryptocurrencies?

As we've discussed above, the Technology Hype Cycle and the trough of disillusionment is the point where many new technologies and their users are right now. At first, when people learn about the new technology and the promises it holds to make things better, everyone gets very excited, and with time when reality sets in, i.e delay in development which always takes longer than thought, the excitement begins to wane. As an example, developing complex software platforms which always take some reasonable amount of time and even after completion, when the customers or users get access to it, then some might happen to like its features and some might not , which takes developers back to the drawing board, to figure out how to take away the parts users complained about, leaving in the parts wanted. That is usually not a trivial process.

Given the challenges of environmental complication, i.e the Government regulations and inconsistency in some Government policies which can also constantly send everyone back to the drawing board, in the end, with most new promising technologies, everything takes much longer than everyone wants it to be which in most cases causes majority of the people to lose interest. In the case of cryptocurrency, people’s dreams of doubling their money every few days has disappeared. A lot of crypto companies have run out of money and have stopped operating.

Considering the above, we believe the cryptocurrency industry is now in the stage called the ‘Trough of Disillusionment’:

Why are many people feeling so negative about cryptocurrency?

The answer becomes evident when you examine this question:

How has this new technology changed anyone’s life? Take a moment to think about this question.

So far cryptocurrencies use case hasn't really been established which is one of AFRICUIAN BANK‘s goals with its utility coin - AFCASH – i.e creating reasonable use case for Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain.

So we put it to you, when and where have you actually ever truly utilized cryptocurrency? If you’re like most people, your answer is simply: Never and Nowhere. In reality most people have never owned cryptocurrency and most who owned some cryptocurrency -- purchased it in the hopes that its value would go up. In other words, it is merely seen as an investment, thereby leaving very few persons who have actually utilized cryptocurrency for something other than hoping its value will go up.

Why is this? Why have so few people ever actually utilized cryptocurrency?

Again, the answer is because it takes a long time to build the products, business models, communities, techniques and approaches that will allow cryptocurrency to bring value to consumers or anyone else. Until cryptocurrency starts being used to make lives better in some way, it will be (and should) be viewed skeptically by smart people, especially now that the first crazy phase -- the ‘Peak of Inflated Expectations’ phase -- is behind us.

What happens next to cryptocurrency?

Many persons who were initially excited about cryptocurrency have moved on, taking their focus onto the next ‘shiny object’. Most crypto companies have closed their doors, and most employees of the few remaining cryptocurrencies companies have departed. The ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings) have also lost its savour because a lot of coin investors have left, having lost more than 90% of their coin investments. And yet just a few people and companies keep marching forward.

Right, despite the depression many people are feeling, the small percentage (%) of people that – from the beginning – have understood the ‘Technology Hype Cycle’ have kept moving forward, laying brick on top of brick, rolling with the punches, trying hard to not let themselves get (or stay) down and most importantly staying focused on their work.

These few persons understand that the faster they move, and the harder they work when the tides turn the much greater the odds that they will emerge on top, and soon all the effort they put into their work, all the bricks they have laid will begin to show signs of promise, making their creations, a great asset which in the long run improve one person’s life, two lives and reeling into hundreds, thousands and millions of lives. Then gradually the original promise that the technology had will start to shine through and the excitement starts up once more.

This time you may notice, however, that the upward slope is not quite as steep at the first upward slope. The excitement is more measured. People have been bitten once, so they are more careful. You could say that they are more ‘enlightened.’ But since -- in the ‘Slope of Enlightenment’ phase -- real lives are being improved by the technology, people will be able to see that for themselves.

The smartest people, investors and customers, the ones that are able to more quickly shake off the sense of ‘disillusionment’ with the technology because they understand how the Technology Hype Cycle works will be the first to put aside their skepticism and capture the opportunity before others in the phase called the “Plateau of Productivity.”

This is where it gets more interesting…

The company (AFRICUNIA BANK) and the people ( AFCASH COIN HODLERS) that arrive at the Plateau of Productivity before others will be first to hit the ‘Inflection Point.’ This ‘Inflection Point’ moment in the management field of study has another name often called the ‘Boiling Point’ and sometimes it’s referred to as the point when the platform or technologies reaches a certain adoption level called ‘’Critical Mass.’

The inflection point is a magical moment when all of a sudden the company, product and community seem to be able to do no wrong. Everyone is lifted up as if some mighty wind or wave came straight out of nowhere and is giving lift to everyone and everything associated with the product. And the first company to reach the inflection point will benefit from what’s called ‘The Network Effect.’

The Network Effect which means it will be nearly impossible for competitors to catch it – as usership, revenues and other key business metrics explode. With each person that joins the community, a ‘lock-in’ further increases... accelerating the momentum of the platform in ways that competitors -- that may have only been a few weeks away from the inflection point themselves will never be able to replicate.

The bottom line is that the platform that hits the inflection point first usually wins the whole industry which AFRICUNIA BANK project is sternly positioning itself for and which other new and competitors might find hard to catch up with.

We enjoin you exhibit confidence in our project and support our cause – the promise it holds in the final analysis is mind boggling!

For more information about us please visit our site at www.africunia.com and study our business prospectus. You may join our Telegram Group: t.me/africunia to meet our team of professionals, have a livechat interaction with us and feel free to ask more questions.