article originally from fmz.com
In the blockchain circle, I’ve known a lot of friends, and I have been asked this question many times: "the bubble in blockchain is big or not?” I always answer:” It is not bubble, not even a small bubble.”
The friends who got such answer don't seem very happy, because they didn't get the ones they expected. In fact, they have already determined that the blockchain industry has a huge bubble.
Why do they think that there is a huge bubble in this industry? Because everyone can easily cite a lot of severely broken “air coins” and tell stories of ordinary investors being “harvested” by project parties or institutions; even the model of the public chain like Bitcoin and Ethereum have been reduced from 60% or even over 90%. So, is there a bubble in the blockchain, how can we better understand whether there is a bubble in the blockchain?
First, the blockchain bubble is different from other industries.
When we are talking about a bubble in an industry, what we mean is that the money entering the industry is higher than the value that the industry can produce or carry, so there may be a bubble in this industry.
For example, there is a bubble in real estate, a bubble in the stock market, and a bubble in the Internet. This is because a large amount of money has entered these industries, which may lead to excessive valuations, prices and P/E ratio in these industries. FMZ
But what is the difference of the blockchain industry? We thought that the funds that entered the industry did not actually enter the industry. In other words, the money that most of the “blockchain projects” have accumulated does not have any value to the blockchain industry.
Most of the ordinary blockchain investors and most of the blockchain project teams are just "pretending to play blockchain." Just as we don't say that there is a bubble in MLM, there is a bubble in funds, and there is a bubble in health products, we also don't say that there is a bubble in something that has no value.
Therefore, "air coins", "MLM coins" and so on are not part of the blockchain industry. They are scams draped in blockchain outerwear. The relevant project parties and investment institutions only swindle according to their routines, but this time the gimmick is the blockchain. The money they cheated will hardly be injected into the blockchain industry, and the so-called "market value" will be meaningless.
Maybe you think that you are investing in a blockchain project. In fact, it is only helping those scammers who have mixed into the blockchain industry to buy fancy cars, houses or yachts.
The "investment in blockchain" is just a common fantasy of most ordinary investors. Therefore, as I mentioned later, the analysis of whether there is a bubble in the blockchain industry has filtered out the scam blockchain projects that swindle money, referring only to the “real blockchain industry.” Because such a discussion makes sense. FMZ
Second, the blockchain industry does not have the bubble you imagine
So is there any bubble in the blockchain industry? Presumably, many people who are concerned about the development of the blockchain industry have discovered that blockchain and bitcoin have begun to have a different direction. Bitcoin is regarded as a better stored value tool than gold; and the blockchain public chain project represented by Ethereum wants to take the blockchain technology and services to a higher level.
Is there a bubble in Bitcoin? I don’t think so. In fact, for an asset (currency) with very strong liquidity, it is meaningless to discuss whether there is a bubble. Just as we will not discuss whether there is a bubble in the hard currency such as the US dollar, gold, oil, etc., and few people will care about their cost, most people only care about their current price.
Back to the public chain project, let’s take Ethereum for example. The basis for many people to judge whether there is a bubble is that Ethereum has dropped from the highest price of 10,000RMB at the beginning of the year to about 1300RMB now, so it is determined that the Ethereum at that time must have a bubble.
I think that there are two reasons for the skyrocketing of Ethereum at that time:
First, the market is driven. There is always a bull market in the market for financial attributes. When the bull market is coming, all blockchain assets will rise. It is hard to say that there is a bubble.
Second, short-term short supply. A large number of project parties needed to raise ETH. A large number of people who invested in the project needed to use ETH, which led to the ETH in the market being speculated.
Now, in the blockchain project, the tokens are not hot like before, and fewer people are staying. ETH has turned from shot supply to oversupply, and the project parties that have raised a large number of ETHs have gradually realized the change of supply and demand, which is bound to trigger throwing pressure. Such a selling of panic sentiment has intensified the plunging of ETH prices, so the price of ETH has returned to the starting point. Therefore, I believe that the collapse of Ethereum is caused by the change of supply and demand and panic, and cannot be attributed to the bubble.
If the price is high, there is a bubble, is there a bubble in the 40 US dollar ETH at the beginning of 2017? It has risen 50 times compared to the issue price. In many cases, this is only human nature. We cannot simply judge whether there is a bubble based on the skyrocketing price and the plunge.
Therefore, I don’t think that there are bubbles in the real blockchain projects that are dedicated to the development, exploration and breakthrough of blockchain technology, because their value is currently difficult to measure. FMZ
Third. Is there a bubble in project financing?
So is there a bubble in each segment of the blockchain? Let's compare these parts: head media, mining machine manufacturers, wallet teams.
Blockchain head media: 8BTCnews, so far financing 100 million RMB. As a comparison, the technology-based head media is 36Kr, and so far it has raised 300 million RMB.
Mining machine manufacturer: BITMAIN, $1 billion, F-round.
Wallet team: imToken, this should be no doubt the head wallet app. So far, the financing of 10 million US dollars, A round.
Note: The above data are all from ITJUZI.
The financing data of these head projects is obviously not a "bubble" in terms of their industry status.
Fourth, comparison with other Internet forefront at the same level
As the hottest thing of Internet in 2017-2018, the financing scale of blockchain is very small compared with other industries, such as artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, virtual reality, sharing economy, intelligent hardware, etc. In other words, if we force the blockchain to be classified in the Internet bubble, the scale of blockchain industry is very small.
See the green arrow pointing to the blockchain asset size.
Obviously, putting the market value of blockchain assets into the financial market, its scale is not worth mentioning..
Summary
"There will be an interesting phenomenon in the early days of the technological revolution, that is, backward technology will ridicule new technologies. Abacus ridiculed calculator, keyboard ridiculed mouse, mouse ridiculed touch function, touch function ridiculed voice function, naturally breathing ridiculed turbocharger, film ridiculed digital cameras, carriages ridiculed cars, Nokia and Dell ridiculed Apple, paper media ridiculed websites... but new technology will not do this. The mission of new technology is to win the market and eliminate backwards by the way." When new technology comes, there are always people who are afraid of missing opportunities, blindly chasing the wind, and eventually leading to a bubble. However, there is currently no bubble for blockchain -- the most recent innovation in the history of “currency” and “finance”. Even some quality projects are significantly underestimated because of people's panic.
All of the above opinions are not used as investment references and are analyzed by China data. Although there is no bubble in the blockchain industry, it does not mean that there is no risk.
Finally, I share a law for everyone.
Amara’s Law: We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.
article originally from fmz.com