Answer to a very common question nowadays "Why are cryptocurrencies going down?" by Tim Venture.

We’re in the “Trough of Disillusionment” right now, which is part of the cryptocurrency hype cycle. It’s defined as:

“Interest wanes as experiments and implementations fail to deliver. Producers of the technology shake out or fail. Investment continues only if the surviving providers improve their products to the satisfaction of early adopters.”

Most people hadn’t heard of Bitcoin until 3 months ago, and others like myself knew about it but weren’t taking it seriously. Bitcoin went from unknown to the hottest thing since the dot-coms, and most of the fledgling exchanges suffered outages just trying to keep pace with user registrations. Now we’re seeing regulatory jitters from various governments, and I think a lot of people are just taking a moment to catch their breath.

I spend a lot of time in the news forums & exchanges, and I can tell you that for the last week things have been pretty quiet. We had an explosion of interest over the holidays, and now it seems that everyone is taking a step back, trying to catch their breath, and holding what they have until we see where the market is going.

Crypto is big - the implications are huge. It’s a completely new form of money changing a social institution that’s more or less been in place for close to a thousand years.

It has bugs, quirks, and failures - and it’s opened up so many new doors for innovation at once nobody knows what will come next. This is the calm before the storm.

Want a better analogy?

Rookie steps up the plate, swings wild at a bad pitch - and hits it out of the park. For a second the audience goes completely quiet (that’s where we are right now). Any moment now you’re going to hear that one guy in the back of the stadium stand up and shout … “RUN”!!!!

My standard disclaimer: cryptocurrencies are highly volatile. Never invest more than you can afford to lose. This post contains personal opinions only, and not financial advice. I take no responsibility for any financial decisions that you make