Beacon: Evolution of Investor Psychology

2018 was a weird year, we can all agree on that. Our expectations changed drastically. Most of that change was due to the severe pain of losing significant money in the boom and bust. The strongest steel is forged in the hottest fire. For those who made it through the barren desert of 2018 have come out the other side with a new resolve and fortitude. Most importantly, we came out with a new set of rules on how to judge a project.

Past

During the run up of 2017, there was very little critical thinking on the part of the investors. And frankly, on behalf of the project leaders. Money was flowing in from all sides and you could launch a project about nothing. The outcome? You all made money. That was the beauty of the euphoria of 2017. The price of Bitcoin went hyperbolic. No project could fail and no project needed to convince investors of their intentions.

My favorite example is the Useless Ethereum Token that was created for the sole purpose of being purposeless. Literally useless. And yet, it raised almost $50,000 USD in Ethereum. Capped off with a middle finger logo, UET was the epitome of a reckless, flippant industry on the rise.

And can we talk about the endless string of terrible ICOs? Between the idiotic ones and the major money grabs, money was being gleefully lost in the millions. There was nothing more exciting than investing in a hype-fueled ICO, hoping for a moon shot and a big cash reward. Sadly, that rarely happened. That anticipation was almost always replaced with extreme buyer's remorse and deleting of social media posts. Let's just sweep that one under the rug.

Present

After the market turned south at the beginning of 2018, investors started to focus on utility. What else could we do? Money making was gone. It was a race to how to lose the least amount of money as the market crashed into April. When Bitcoin hit $6,000, a 70% plunge from December 2017. Having to engage in some form of critical thinking, we started to take a serious look at WHY a project was being created. What purpose did it serve? And how did it plan on surviving?

As investors, we became obsessed with the utility. As project creators, we saw it as the only way to launch a new project successfully. If the utility seemed weak or far-fetched, the project wouldn't succeed. If the utility appeared to have legs, that it would work long term, the project would have a successful launch and first few months. Then the utility would take longer to get working than expected, paired with hyperinflation, the coin value would plummet 80-90%.

How was this better? It wasn't, but at least we weren't getting scammed, right? Actually, you were. Most of these projects designed themselves to attract short-term investors who had no interest in the project beyond the hype. They were there for one purpose, to make fast money and exit early. That was if the developer team didn't exit first. A new scam was born. Creating a project that appeared legitimate but disappearing once the Pre-Sale was over.

These project creators had to evolve to keep scamming people. No longer could people throw money at a random project and make 5x their money. Now, these scammers needed to play to people's intelligence and only exit after hitting an exchange or claiming that an exchange was incoming.

Even if a project is legitimate, they still suffer from the mindset of the industry. Investors are so used to the hype and dump of a new project they have made rules for themselves. Either get in early and out early. Or wait 6 months for the price to bottom out and load up a big bag and hope for an upswing.

So if we can't even rely on the project's utility to get us to the promise land, what can we look to?

Future

We have to look beyond White Papers and Roadmaps. The promise land is found in the people and how we adapt to the ever changing market circumstances we find ourselves in.

I waited to write this piece until I felt like I had the legitimacy to do so. With Beacon returning to its Pre-Sale price in under two months from launch, we have done something that I have seen almost no other project do; deliver for our investors. It was not an easy task. I have lost a lot of sleep over the past few months prepping the launch and running the project. But we have done exactly what I set out to do; change the game.

What exactly was that change? I convinced our investors to believe in us, the people.

Is our White Paper well written? Yes. Is our Roadmap long and ambitious? Yes. Is our team transparent and forward facing? Yes. Is our Utility, actually Utilities, unique? Yes. Does any of that matter? Not as much as the people behind it all.

When your investors believe in you, they are more forgiving when you remix the gameplan. This Bear Market has been devastating to dozens of projects. Many of them are shutting down completely and leaving hundreds or thousands of investors out in the cold. Their inability to adapt was born from the buffet of money during the bull run and remaining rigid to their 'promises' to the community during the Bear Market.

I made one promise to the Beacon Community at the beginning of all of this. I posted it on November 12th, four days before the Pre-Sale took place:

I told everyone before we began that this project will be different. That we are going to turn things upside down and do things our way. That includes having the flexibility to adapt to our environment. I don't see our current White Paper and Roadmap as a long list on promises I made you. I see it as our best guess as to what the future would look like when I wrote it back in November.

Now, in January 2019, that best guess of what the future will look like will change a bit when we release our v1.3 White Paper and Roadmap in a couple weeks. Paired with a new website for Beacon, we will again adapt to our current circumstances.

At the end of the day, if you are still here, you did not invest in the project to make fast money. You did not invest in the project because of the specific utilities we planned out in the White Paper. You invested in the project because you have gotten to know us as people, as human beings, and you believe to your core that we are here working everyday to make Beacon into a market leader. And that we won't stop until we make that a reality.

Thank you,
The Beacon Team

Website: https://www.beaconcrypto.org/
Discord: https://discord.gg/uTar2Sd
CoinMarketCap: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/beacon/
Crypto-Bridge: https://wallet.crypto-bridge.org/market/BRIDGE.BECN_BRIDGE.BTC
Crex24: https://crex24.com/exchange/BECN-BTC
Masternodes.Online: https://masternodes.online/currencies/BECN/
Github: https://github.com/beaconcrypto
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BeaconCrypto1
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC15WJiQOcsKv7ictCPb50EQ
BitcoinTalk Ann: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5059521.0