I was thinking quite a long time about this blog post and somehow, I delayed writing it, for quite a long time. It is true that I had also been pretty busy all the time, but that can be no excuse, because come on, it does not take the whole day just to write the blog post. Well now I’m finally writing it and I hope that at least some people will read it to the end.
About three months ago I decided to expand my LinkedIn network https://www.linkedin.com/in/primoz-obolnar/. I must say that I have been quite successful and that now I’m already over 6.300 connections. Which is a lot, since a few months ago I had about 300 of them. Why I decided to do that? Well let’s say that I realized that I’m too old to just have Facebook profile and share funny videos there. Somehow there is no real benefit in that, I hope that we agree on that.
So, I decided to expand my professional network, mainly because…well you never know when having a lot of connections will benefit you and also because I think, or at least hope, that from time to time I have something at least somewhat helpful or interesting to share there.
Since my two main points of interest are health and safety at work (might have to do something with that I’m health and safety engineer) and cryptocurrencies, I have been mostly (but not only) connecting with people from that area of expertise. And while I had absolutely no weird offers, suggestions or whatsoever from people dealing with health and safety, I had quite a few from various people dealing with cryptocurrency. So further down, I will say a few more words about that.
If any of you who are reading this is active in crypto trading or part of the crypto world in any other way, you probably know that at the end of the last year, we had seen a pretty big increase in value and popularity of crypto. Everybody wanted to get rich and they wanted to do it fast. Even mainstream media had been writing about cryptocurrencies a lot. And then suddenly, at the beginning of this year prices started to crash. Little before that, I remember reading articles in various media, about people who even sold their homes to buy Bitcoin. Well for their sake, I hope that they did sell it, before dramatic price fall, otherwise…well let’s just say that I would not want to be in their skin.
Just for comparison, price of Bitcoin on 18th of December 2017 was about 19.000 USD and the price started to drop then. It had another peak at around 17.000 USD in the beginning of January 2019 and then fall rapidly to just around 7.000 USD on February 5th. Now it is stable at around 6.500 USD.
But that is just Bitcoin, altcoin suffered even worse, many of them now being worth ten or twenty times less that at the end of last year.
Why I’m telling you this and what it has to do with my LinkedIn? Well before we get to that, I must clarify, that I do NOT think that crypto is crap and that it will just disappear. Let’s be clear that I still think that the cryptocurrencies are the future, but it is still young technology and clearly needs to mature.
And now to the point of the story. As you can probably guess from that big price fall, a lot of people who wanted to get rich overnight lost quite a nice amount of money. Some less and some more. Of course, the consequence of that was that word spread fast and trust in crypto in general fall off the cliff. It did not help that some teams just pumped their coins with misleading public posts and they sold their coins at the top, made quite a lot of money and then dumped the coin. Now imagine what holding a few coins like that would do to your trust to crypto in general.
So, while I was (and I still am) building my professional network quite a few people sent me messages requesting that I either promote their coin, open an account on Malta, sell them Bitcoin, send them ETH in exchange for even more ETH, to join the paid group which will then in return give me signals when some coin will pump etc. And there were also tons of weird profiles where one could clearly see that profile pictures were fake, some even “borrowed” pictures of the movie stars. Very original, I must say.
What I’m trying to say is that there is still a lot of people out there who see crypto as an opportunity to scam other people. And that does crypto in general no favor. Considering that trust in crypto is now let’s say…not so high, people like that do it even further harm.
So, each time you get an offer like that think about it, if it is too good it is usually a bad sign. If it is sent to you from profile of some amazingly beautiful lady it is also big chance that behind profile of that lady is some not-so beautiful guy. Guys with profile picture with some sports car and sunglasses? Also, a bad sign.
Considering all that, one must still be very cautious who to trust, and as I have been saying for a long time now, ALWAYS do your own research before investing or trusting some strangers with pretty promises. Do not hurry, you will not miss out anything, when one door closes, another one opens. Actually, emotions like FOMO (fear of missing out) can be really dangerous in crypto, as some of you probably already experienced.
As I said earlier, even with some scams which did happen I still believe that crypto in general is here to stay and will see further growth in the future. It may undergo some regulations, which many are fearing, because they might hinder development and adoption, but if will be done in a proper way, to protect investors then it can only be beneficial for all. The technology is still young and has to mature, but I see great perspective in it.
Also it does not mean that I would definitely not help with promoting with the coin or any other product, but I firmly believe that personal integrity is worth more than a few dollars which would I gain by that. In my LinkedIn network I have a lot of friends and business partners, now imagine how it would look if I would publicly promote scam coins or offers. For me to promote anything I have to first thoroughly research the product and the team and see if they are really trustworthy. And only after I decide that I can trust them, I would dare to promote their coin or product and place my name behind it. As I said earlier, reputation cannot be bought, it has to be earned, and it is more easy to destroy it than to build it. I wish that more people would realize that and stop promoting the crappy stuff. But, I guess in the reality a lot of people are still looking just in short term benefits, rather working on the long run and building their personality as a trusted brand.
Often it is also hard to decide in which coins to invest, since there is currently, according to Coinmarketcap, 2075 of them. But with some persistence, learning and trying I believe that you will be able to find some good ones. But just in case never put all the eggs in one basket and do not put all the money in just one coin. Just in case.
And by any means, do research before investing and learn as much as you can about crypto, before you buy your first coins. Read the forum topic for beginners on Bitcointalk forum: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=39.0, and also check the DNotesEDU https://www.dnotesedu.com/ , web page dedicated to crypto education. I cannot emphasize how important is to get as much knowledge as possible, before starting with trading. And even then you will still learn on the way, when you will begin trading.
I personally hold a few coins, but if someone would ask me in which one of them I put the most faith then I would say at Bitcoin, Ripple and DNotes.
Bitcoin is somehow synonym for cryptocurrency and is most well-known and I believe that it is here to stay.
Ripple is the different type, there are some people out there who somehow hate it and say that it is too centralized and institutional. But I personally do not care about it, as long it brings me profit it can be centralized and institutional as much as it wants. But I believe that it has the future, especially in financial institutions.
What about DNotes coin? I have been writing about them a lot and I have been also sharing a lot of their content on LinkedIn and Twitter. Well there is a good reason behind it…and is not only that I hold them in my portfolio. The main reason is that I have seen how insincere crypto world and some people behind it can be. But DNotes stood out as a one of the rare positive examples!
At some point I have started to more actively follow the teams behind the coins in my portfolio and I found out that DNotes coin team is by far one of the most honest out there. But just that would not be enough, I have also found out that they have great vision and working product. They are also not doing ICO to attract investors, but are currently under first investment phase, just for accredited investors. On top of that The Silicon Review just recently named DNotes Global Inc. one of the 50 most trustworthy companies of the 2018! Link: https://thesiliconreview.com/magazines/50-most-trustworthy-companies-of-the-year-2018/ and another one: https://dnotesglobal.com/2018/10/25/dnotes-global-inc-recognized-as-one-of-silicon-reviews-50-most-trustworthy-companies-of-the-year/ . Well if that is not a good sign for crypto company in these times I do not know what is.
I believe that many, if not all of you know Bitcoin and Ripple, but DNotes is not so well known. So if you would like to do some more research on them you can go to their homepage: https://dnotescoin.com/ and to their Bitcointalk forum page: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1924858.0 and of course they also have their own telegram channel: https://t.me/joinchat/FB-UaUjrQiji-EBatHLsuA
Those are just my personal favorites, if you have your own and if it is not some shady pump and dump coin, please post it in the comment below and let others know about it. Among so many coins and teams out there, it is really important to identify those who deserves not just mine or yours trust, but trust of all of us, as the community.