Crypto-Investing FTW?

For the past years investing in Bitcoin, Ethereum and most of the other Cryptocurrencies has been a smart move and many people have become very rich. Understandable that this attracts a bigger crowd and many providers are already or want to address this desire: Revolut was one of the first players who had an Fintech offering before and enabled now their users to trade three selected cryptocurrencies. In the last weeks, we have seen other big-names in FinTech like Robinhood moving into this space. And even in countries like “put-all-your-money-into-a-savings-account-Germany” the FinTech startup Savedroid is trying to break into this space (and even doing an ICO, which I still have not understood why this is either necessary or helpful but that’s another story).

I believe the motivation of these players is (at least partially) to benefit from the current trend (which is mainly based on the price surge) of cryptocurrencies. Which makes sense as promoting “old-school-financial-services” is not easy for a FinTech as well and if you can benefit of such a hype as a startup, you should make use of it. However, what I am afraid of is that most people do not (want to) understand what they are in for. Price surges and drops are quite common for cryptocurrencies and until now the price drops have not had any massively bad impact on the general trend and usage of cryptos. What I am trying to say is: if the masses will be able to easily invest in cryptos (because “traditional” exchanges do have some barriers for new traders), the impact of a price drop could be a lot worse. If crypto would only be an investment or currency vehicle, I would be fine with that. However, there is a lot more crypto will be able to enable and I am just hoping that price surges and drops will not have any negative impact on the general opportunities of this technology.

Or to put it in the words of my favourite blogger Fred Wilson: “Will the crypto markets continue in their bull cycle? I have no clue. I was showing my daughter’s friend an app that helps people save and invest and he said to me “I don’t need that, I just buy some ETH every week.” I said “that’s a good plan until it isn’t.” I just don’t know when buying crypto will stop being a good idea. (…)”.