What I don’t understand is what gives these coins their price other than basic supply and demand?. I just don’t get the fundamentals of this market. For example, what makes an Ethereum worth $1000?. How do you know that’s what it should be worth and not $500 for example?. Again, other than supply and demand.
Honestly, nobody knows what a coin is truly worth, but some things to consider are the potential use-case, the viability of such a product, who's involved in not only the tech side of a coin, but also the marketing, and whether or not they have any serious competition. In those regards, it's not much different from evaluating anything on the traditional stock market. Aside from the obvious uncertainty of not having a tangible product or company backing these coins, there's also the uncertainty of almost non-existent regulation, huge accumulations of coins under a small number of largely anonymous people, and terrible exchange platforms that seem suspiciously prone to "hacking" and "DDoSes" and may or may not even be there tomorrow. Then there are things like PnD groups, insider trading, and other forms of blatant collusion that would be illegal with traditional investments. It all adds up to exactly who-the-hell-knows-what-any-of-this-is-worth. Right now, and for the foreseeable future, it's not so much an avenue of investment but a huge gamble. There's a very good reason why Warren Buffet wants nothing to do with cryptos--it's not something that can be analyzed and accurately charted. You can take all of your traditional TA and FA and throw it out of the window because for us mere mortals in the crypto-realm, market movements might as well be acts of god.
I have about $10,000 invested so far and want to invest more but I’m always scared that I will wake up in the morning and find that the US has banned or is working on banning them and that will make the crypto market crash beyond repair. Even with the latest crash, I haven’t lost money yet but the market is too volatile. Too many inexperienced traders in the game trying to get rich. Although, I don’t mind taking risks, I don’t want to throw money either. To the people who have substantial amounts invested, how do you deal with the fear that this market is so volatile like and any major bad news could lead to you losing all your money. Definitely a very risky market compared to the regular stock market. Do you see this market lasting a few years without government interference?
You're obviously intelligent enough to already know this, but it still bears repeating:
Don't
invest gamble what you're not willing to flush down the toilet and also assume that any money that you put into this is already going to be lost. There is potentially a lot of money to be made in this market but right now it looks almost as likely that you will walk away with an empty wallet.
I forgot to mention what might actually be the most important part... a shitcoin is just as likely to make you money as a fundamentally good one