Why focusing on price is giving a completely wrong overview of the blockchain protocols?

Since my early days as a smart contract developer, I was fascinated why people are more focused on the token price than what the token actually offers? The answer is quite simple: people want to get rich, and when they put their savings into the project or cryptocurrency, they want to get rich fast. It was very apparent during ICO Boom in 2017/2018. With every bubble that eventually burst, leaving many early backers empty-handed.

In my view, it wouldn’t have to look like this, only if they would actually look behind the token “curtain” and see what does the project really offers and how realistic are theirs claims? I thought people who learned the hard way will never make the same error, but 4 years later, the same mentality as before is still present. Many projects are launching; tokens are all that matters. If someone can get a high yield on it, the better. It doesn’t matter to the investors/users what does the project has to offer. Only high returns are essential.

And oh boy, how they get frustrated and throw tantrums everywhere when this doesn’t happen. They feel cheated, scammed. But if only they looked a bit deeper, read the audit reports, or look what other community members have to say about it and what the general consensus on the project is, they wouldn’t feel cheated. They simply would not invest in another clone, fork of a project that doesn’t bring anything new to the table.

Many token/project-specific communities are very defensive when talking about their project, not in fondly way. I wonder if they really think constructive criticism is something terrible? Is it they don’t want to accept the truth? Or they really think the project is bringing value? In most cases, I’m afraid it’s the combination of all three, resulting in a really toxic and defensive community.

Recently, during the Bitcoin Miami conference, this got a lot of traction.

I won’t comment on how stupid and illogical this sounds. I’ll just leave this here.

The bitcoin community isn’t the only one with such problems. Interestingly, not only community drives such narrative but sometimes also the creator of the project. Cardano is such a project, in my opinion. I won’t go into the details why, as The Defiant did a great video about it.

BUIDL!

What I’ve been trying to say up to this point, price isn’t important. It’s one of the metrics, many metrics on how you can view a project’s development, success, or failure.

Instead of a price, people should focus on the project itself. Does it bring value to the market, to its new user, does it solve a problem?

If you don’t know how to verify these things, check the news about the project, if there are any. Read audit report. Read it, not scan through it. Most of the time, auditors will present the overview of the project ideas. Read the whitepaper or documentation. Ask the community about their experience. Check the creators and their background, build before or worked on prior to launching this new project.

There are many things new investors could do to verify the project's legitimacy and value it brings. But unfortunately, people primarily focus on the token price and if there is a bull market.

This only shows how early we are in the global adoption and how blockchain space resembles the internet in the 90s.


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