The cryptocurrency industry has officially gone mainstream. This has led to an increasing number of investment opportunities in the industry. Coinmarketcap.com lists more than 1500 cryptocurrencies, 900 of which are coins and 600 tokens. In 2017, the market capitalization of cryptocurrency grew by over 1600%, finishing off above the $600 Billion mark. Projected growth of this industry is over $2 trillion by 2020. Crowdfunding generated by the numerous ICOs in 2017 rose to nearly $2 Billion.
The primary reason for this tremendous growth is how the mainstream public have begun to embrace cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. While cryptocurrency was once something only discussed or understood by technology enthusiasts, mainstream media has contributed to a widespread awareness, particularly of Bitcoin and Ethereum. In 2017 the world saw a major shift of visibility and interest for cryptocurrency as a technology and an investment opportunity.
For investors, the cryptocurrency industry is more lucrative and faster-paced than other markets, albeit more volatile. There are two main reasons for this highly lucrative nature of cryptocurrency investing.
The first is the liquidity of the cryptocurrency market. With so many new exchanges, investors have more options and access to the markets than ever before. It is easier and faster than ever to exchange fiat (physical currency) for cryptocurrency, and vice versa. Because of this liquidity, cryptocurrency has become an ideal asset for investors.
The second reason, is the ease of entry for anyone, even the most inexperienced, to become a cryptocurrency investor. The decentralized and unregulated nature of cryptocurrency allows anyone to participate. Inexperienced investors mean more lucrative movement of assets and higher volatility.
As the investment opportunities within cryptocurrency evolve, new complexities have grown with them, leading to confusion and increasing the risk level for even the more experienced investor.
Unlike traditional markets where certain predictable and time-tested economic and technical factors help the skilled investor make smarter decisions, cryptocurrency is still inherently unpredictable. And with no trusted entity to ensure the authenticity of specific decentralized assets, ICOs, Coins, and TIFs (Tokenized Investment Funds) many scams, Ponzi and MLM schemes have sprung up.
As a result, most cryptocurrency investors, skilled and unskilled alike, are finding it increasingly difficult to distinguish between good and bad crypto investments. This often leads to legitimate projects lacking sufficient investors while scams, overt or covert, generate false hype while collecting large sums of money. Many investors have lost their hard-earned life savings due to a lack of awareness, a trusted entity on authenticating investments, and cryptocurrency knowledge. This diversion of focus and funding has caused injury to trust, projects, people and innovation.
Because cryptocurrency is unregulated it is up to the community to provide the needed measures to authenticate and educate investors. Until now savvy investors have relied on digging for information or looking up to other community members to do so, in the hopes they are providing unbiased and quality information. Most of this digging takes place in online communities such as reddit, slack, twitter, discord, facebook, and telegram. The problem with this approach is the difficulty in determining the authenticity of the information provided.