When moon boys become cry babies the bottom is near.

In 11 days on December 19th it will be a year since bitcoin topped out at around $19,000. Since then, most investors have seen their portfolios shrink between 8o% and 95% depending on the crypto asset being held.

The sentiment now is almost as irrationally negative as it was exuberant in December 2017 and many retail investors online who are left holding bags are making a sorry spectacle out of themselves. The moon boys have become cry babies and it has shown us all that ideas of freedom, censorship resistance, immutability and sound money were never that important for them to begin with.

The fundamentals at the end of last year did not to count for much, when forked clones of Bitcoin traded for thousands of dollars and ICO mania swept through the community, raising millions for companies with nothing more than an idea on a white paper.

It is the same now.

Bitcoin’s fundamentals are without doubt stronger than they were 12 months ago:

• Bitcoin has survived for its tenth year. A fact that the Lindy effect would predict a high probability of another 10 years of survival at least.
• The Bitcoin fork, Bcash has forked again showing the world that there is only one Bitcoin and to fork off the main chain is extremely costly.
• Institutional custody solutions for crypto assets are being developed by numerous companies including the security firm G4S, the financial services firms like Fidelity and BAKKT plus of course Coinbase to name just a few. Finding a trusted custody solution has been the most important road block for institutional investors to begin participating in bitcoin and crypto markets.
• Second layer solutions like lightning have begun to be adopted and the number of lightning network nodes has quadrupled in December alone.

Nevertheless, you don’t have to spend long scrolling down the crypto currency groups on facebook to see the level of fear that has gripped the community.

Source: Facebook

Source: Facebook

These are just a few posts scraped off today’s mountain of ill-informed negativity. The problem is that the tech or even the possibility of banking reform wasn’t really the reason many of these people entered the market. Instead it was the price and more specifically, the possibility of making money without working for it.

Source: Facebook

As the bitcoin price approaches pre-bull prices, we’re likely to see fear tip finally into capitulation and the last of the weak hands sell their remaining assets and for the market to begin to recover in 2019.

Whether the price floor for 2019 and the next installment of the Bitcoin market cycle is $1500 or $2500 is largely irrelevant. Bitcoin transactions are on consistently rising, adoption is growing almost every day with McDonalds expected to be the next large retailer to accept BTC.

Source: Blockchain.com

BAKKT will launch in January of next year and 2019 is also likely to be the year large institutions begin making their play in the eco-system with an eventual ETF approval inevitable at some point.

As Baron Rothschild famously said:

Buy when there’s blood in the streets, even if the blood is your own.

The same is true for salty tears…

Who you’re reading:

David Black is a staff writer at The Decentral, living and writing in Chiang Mai, Thailand. He’s also the author of both fiction and non fiction books and likes to debate the finer parts of crypto currency and politics to anyone who will listen.

For questions or story ideas, you can contact David

Email: david.black@thedecentral.com

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Disclaimer: Any and all opinions expressed here are those of David Black alone. The article is for educational and/or entertainment purposes only, so please use it at your own risk.

Originally published at www.thedecentral.com on December 7, 2018.