So as many who know me from twitter, discord, or other online places… I am a big fan of Fantom Opera and the protocols that are being designed on that chain. What people don’t know though is that I was back in 2020 almost only investing my money into Ethereum and ETH related projects (not NFT’s).
Needless to say, many of these projects never recovered and the one thing that I stayed away from during all the hype (NFT’s) is what ended up representing what the Ethereum bros were all about. Number go up, funny picture worth more.
Instead of capitulating to this trend though I decided to look elsewhere. Three of the other L2/L1 currencies that I became interested in were Polygon, Fantom and Solana. Now, as far as experimentation and innovation goes Fantom to me became much more enticing long term. Polygon has low fees just like Fantom but what it is missing is the diverse and competitive landscape of developers who are capitalizing on DEFI. (Side note, completely missed out on AVAX). Solana projects moving at a snails pace, the amount of transactions dwindling and the cash grab for creating a similar style NFT investment scheme to Ethereum all eventually led me to selling all my SOL and SOL related projects. The only thing I held (until the market started downtrending around Jan’ 2022) had been Fantom. Fantom projects move faster, expose themselves quicker (easier to spot rug pulls) and in-general the user base seems to be on average quite crypto literate.
Most of the crypto influencers are pretty doom and gloom surrounding the current state of the market and I think most of them have unfortunately tuned out of DEFI and don’t see it as a viable option anymore. This is fair as most are trying to preserve their capital right now. With all the problems of normal currencies though, the legacy market, government corruption etc. where else is their to turn? Most, if not all, of the alt coins have suffered massive losses due to the fear of the market and not necessarily due to the projects in themselves failing. This fear continues to perpetuate as the world economy is not looking great right now either. It’s a cyclic fear that puts those with large sums of money on edge and paints an overly pessimistic viewpoint of the world. For any regular investor out there I want you to know that there is still hope for the future and many teams are still working on their projects (albeit in the shadows).
There have been many cycles in crypto history and what normally happens is people who have overinvested in quick cash schemes start to pull all their money (for an overwhelming loss) and many larger institutions start to put their investment strategies into action for longer term positions. Derivatives are still lacking in a substantial way for crypto markets so most larger institutions will opt for building up large holdings and this is why there is lots of room for alt coins to grow, and these have been historically more interesting to larger organizations.
Do I think that Ethereum and Fantom will pull back? Absolutely. The scammers and get-rich-quick crowd will always somehow find their way onto the front of the twitter time line. It’s those who can sit back, cover their debt and continue to extract cash out of the market through whatever means necessary who will showcase the best investments in this cycle and those projects will continue to grow over time.
