If the Trump election didn't raise your antenna to the prospect (or likelihood) of fake news, the Goldman Sachs crypto FUD from a couple weeks ago should have reminded you that the news isn't very news-y any more.
Once upon a time, we lived in a world where the mainstream media was the "fourth estate" and it acted as a check and balance on the other three estates. Incidentally, those are religion, nobility, and the common people. Back in the good old days, we could count on underpaid scribes like Bob Woodward to roost out the nefarious misdeeds of those in power, whether it be clergymen diddling altar boys, presidents directing thieves under cover of night, or the notorious Florida Man who is always out to do some kind of evil along the back roads of that awkward American state.
But in these neoliberal modern times, where "the business of business is business" and society doesn't let us question the motives of businessmen any more than that, the "fourth estate" has been coopted by the nobility. In the twenty-first century, that would be the rich people. Now that Trump is president, we can pretty easily state that the government is also the rich people, which is a happy & convenient state of affairs - if you're rich!
Nowadays, fake news hits the 24-hour news cycle and the market instantly reacts. Even if people recognize the duplicity, it doesn't matter because 80% of the trading volume in capital markets is commanded by bots. Those artificially intelligent software protocols automatically scan the day's headlines and make immediate trading decisions.
So fake news has a tremendous impact, especially in the crypto markets where bots and fake volume make up almost the entire market during bear cycles.
This state of affairs means that the low volume days of a bear lull are especially prone to fake news attacks. As with anything that is so technologically fresh that it outpaces the formulation of the laws necessary to control it, scammers are everywhere. And they take all shapes.
In reaction to the now debunked Goldman news, bitcoin (BTC) fell a maximum of almost 14% as a result. It still has yet to recover. Even with news that's not really fake - like Vitalik Buterin stating the obvious that 1000x returns were a thing of the past - trading bots and capital deployed by those "in the know" can wreak havoc on cryptoasset prices across the board.
But that's how it is in financial markets without regulation.
It just is.
If we want that to change, we need to pressure our rich Congresspeople to do something about it. Otherwise, the 98% of the world that doesn't know about cryptocurrency or blockchain assets will never be properly informed, much less convinced to place their hard-earned money into these types of investments.
Contrary to popular opinion, regulation will not limit the crypto markets. It is the best and only chance we have of making them bloom!
If the G20 governments don't do it soon, the blockchain industry will find ways around it anyway. Decentralized exchanges and crypto havens like Malta and Lichtenstein will provide the answers.
But those solutions will never be as satisfying as China, England, or the United States flat out codifying what everyone on Steemit already knows:
Bitcoin is cool!
And it's a perfectly fine globally decentralized form of money that is ripe to disrupt a centuries-old corrupt-driven financial system coopted by the nobility.
Go figure.
Just like it took a Republican president (Richard Nixon) to open up "Red China" and a Democratic president (Bill Clinton) to deregulate the American financial markets completely (so that the richest among us could make a whole bunch of money before the system's inevitable collapse in 2008)...
Yeah, just like those two milestones required a counterintuitive action by a seeming opponent to the idea to make them happen, that's what will happen with regulation and crypto.
That's just the nature of the dialectic.
So, c'mon guys. Let's face it. Let's stop asking dumb questions.
You know the ones I'm talking about!
In case you forgot, here's a list of silly questions cryptoasset investors ask in public chat rooms:
When tokens?
When exchange?
When update?
When moon?
When Lambo?
I mean, really... is that what this whole "blockchain will revolutionize the international financial system" is all about?
The answer is no. HELL NO. To all of those questions. (I know, I know. That's not even answer to some of those questions, but I think you get my point.)
We need to be paying attention to a much more important question these days:
When regulation?
Whenever we get a firm answer to that burning question is when the whole blockchain industry will know that the bottom is in and the only way forward is up.
Way up.