Tales from the Crypto: Hold on to you butts; Where is crypto heading?

If you're at all into cryptos, I'm sure you'll have been caught up in all the action over the last month. Highs have been high. Lows have been low. All sorts of negative stories coming out of which seems to be a different country every week. In the last month crypto has been through:

• China tightening up exchanges
• Korea banning crypto!! ... or not
• Japan exchange gets hacked
• Bitconnect scammage
• Tether being looked into by the feds
• Bitcoin futures ending
• India banning crypto!! ... or not

Any sector that had a run of news like that over the period of a month wouldn't do so well I'm sure. Crytpos are no exception. The entire market swinging twenty percent over the course of a day isn't uncommon over the last couple weeks. But why? Most if not all negative news lately turns out to be unfounded or egregiously misrepresented. Maybe President Trump is right on his war against fake news. It seems to be everywhere and there seems to be no responsibility for what is true and untrue. A market as young and fragile as the crypto one seems to live or die by the news. It definitely goes to show the immaturity of the whole sector, as well as it's investors. But why the big sell offs? The vision hasn't changed. The technology hasn't changed. The companies still work hard everyday to fulfill their aims of bringing blockchain to the world.

I think for blockchain to have gotten this far, there is definitely something in it. Like the dot com bubble before it, where the cream had risen to the top and what was not needed just fell away. The same will happen here and now. I believe too much happened too soon. Too much money, too many users, too much focus and pressure on the whole sector to perform. Exchanges could barely keep up with the growth. The system is still not equipped properly to conduct activity the way it needs to be done. It's still tricky getting money in and out of the market. We've got coins paired with other coins. If Bitcoin tumbles it takes everything else down with it regardless of them being even remotely the same kind of project.

Market maturity is what is needed now.

Coins standing on their own due to what they are getting done and not what they are attached to. Coins that can be bought and sold anywhere, anytime with the click of one button. The ability to jump in and out of fiat currency. International money transfers being done in seconds, for next to nothing, to anywhere in the world. What we don't need is getting a bead of sweat rolling down your forehead as you transfer 20k in funds from one string of 30 random characters to another; hoping you got it right.

Solutions to these problems are already in the works. Bittrex has just announced that they will be getting into USD funding and expanding the USD pairings to include many more popular coins. Hopefully this starts to stabilize the relationship between coins and actually currency. Not just Tether/USDT, which is basically just a placeholder. COSS.io is another team working toward securing coins against the USD pairings. The sooner we get away from attaching coins to BTC and ETH, the better off the whole market will be. Stellar Lumens are aiming to make all kinds of trading and transactions both easier and more effective as well.

So in the end, hold on to your butts! This market will continue to entertain. Look for coins that people are actually using in commerce. Which coins are people using as money. Which tokens are people using for things other than pure speculation? The coins with real world utility are the ones that will appreciate in value. Find those coins. Buy those coins. And use those coins to add to their value.