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Why Did I Leave Digital Currency After Two Years Of Full-Time Work?

The field of digital currencies, like any other field, has its pros and cons. However, we subconsciously want to envision a bright future for China’s blockchain technology and digital currencies; A future in which there are no flaws. 

Digital Currency, Vanalli account in Medium, one of the leading authors in the field of digital currencies, has tried to publishan articleShow us the negative aspects of this area. 

You can read the translation of this article below.

Discussion with digital readers: All content is under the personal supervision of the author and digital does not reject or endorse the content of this article.

When I first started working in the digital currency industry all the time, I thought there was nothing better and more extraordinary than that. I had a good feeling that I was part of a plan that would eventually lead to the collapse of the traditional financial world. Long live Bitcoin! Bankers are dead!

But after working in this space for a few years, I just wanted to get out of it, and of course I did.

The field of digital currencies is chaotic and its reality must be examined. What gives me the right to challenge and criticize this whole space? I do not know, I only know that the truth must be told. At the time, I was working for a company called Liquid, which was active in the field of digital currencies. At that moment, my personal beliefs were formed; Of course, in this article, I do not want to talk much about this company, I would like to discuss the whole crypto field, and if you like, you can express your views on this issue.

Almost all digital currency projects are nonsense and will fail

Earlier, I did not believe if anyone said that most digital currency projects would fail. But I was wrong.

Honestly, I have lost the number of projects I have seen failed. Some of them finished their work completely quietly, while their teams hoped no one would notice. One of the projects I was working on closely was Blockex. Blockchain was a digital asset exchange based on initial coin offerings (ICO) Focused. A DAXT token enabled access to these early offerings, while on the platform itself, normal currency trading took place.

Once upon a time in 2018, the blockchain was a great product and the market was hot. Crypto-active influencers heated up the market for the project. Blockchain raised $ 24 million in its initial public offering; In the end, however, they only received around ۵ 5.5 million ($ 7 million) after an investor failed to pay. The project was hard to beat, and the last thing we heard was that it ended quietly. The value of their tokens, which were sold for one euro in the initial public offering, was almost zero. The last price recorded for this token at QuinmarketCup was $ 0.00069.

Another project that caught my attention at the beginning was Authorship. A seemingly useful project that they created to support the authors. The project eventually raised $ 4 million to build a decentralized digital publishing platform, which was later completed. Its founders, Nolan Warfield and Petre Coman, soon realized they had made a terrible mistake and abandoned the project. What they set up was nothing more than a regular e-book store. It was then sold to a Chinese investor, who could not do anything about it, and the value of the token naturally dropped to zero.

Why I worked on digital currency full time for two years and why I gave it up altogetherAuthorship price chart for the last two years

Let me introduce another example; There was a project called IP Chain that I did marketing. The project later continued under the brand name Vaultitude. This time it was run by an Austrian businessman named Dominik Thor, who, of course, is also the CEO of a cosmetics company called Tomorrowlabs. When I met Dominic online, he was trying to build a team for his project before the initial release. At that time in 2017, all you had to do was register a potato in the Chinese block, launch an initial public offering, and raise millions of dollars. Of course, I received a currency token for my salary, which was not considered illegitimate money.

The project team was supposed to create a platform that would use Blockchain, Help people protect their intellectual property. Of course, this was a very good use (or I thought so at the time), and Dominic had relationships with important individuals and companies, including Dennemeyer and even the World Intellectual Property Organization.

First we did a pre-sale and raised a relatively small amount. Dominic then traveled to various parts of the world and spoke at various events and conferences. Eventually it turned out that Dominic had run out of money, and since no one was very interested in his initial public offering, we could not afford the project. I myself did not receive any money for the hours I worked, and eventually Dominic gave up everything, deleted the project website, and removed any traces from his social channels, Twitter account, and LinkedIn profile. The field of digital currencies is full of such examples.

Expectations versus facts

There are many projects that White Paper(Introductory article) They are good (at least not meaningless) and have even had a successful initial launch, but their ideas do not appeal to them at all. The teams on these projects work really hard, but they often hit the water with mortars.

Expectations and facts

Take Leadcoin, for example. The project raised $ 50 million to create a platform where marketers could buy leads. At that time, no one asked why this team really wanted all this money. Two years later, almost all members of the team left the project (although its staff is still on LinkedIn). There is only one employee left who is its Chief Marketing Officer and his name is Eyal Rosel. Rosell Telegram Group runs the project and provides trivial updates every three months to keep the illusion alive.

The project lost 99% of its value after the project token was removed from the list of all exchanges except Bunker. Bunker has only a handful of useless projects on its list, including a workshop.

Many projects that were much more attractive than Lead Quinn ended in failure. Maybe because they were scams altogether, or maybe because they were run by incompetent teams. It is also possible that they brought bad luck. I do not know; A combination of all these factors may have caused them to fail. People always get excited when the name of an unreasonable project comes up, and that makes the project more attractive.BitConnectDo you remember? When it turned out to be a huge Panzi scheme, many people lost millions of dollars and a new generation of Internet memes was born. These are just some of the terrible consequences of trusting in such projects.

Why I worked on digital currency full time for two years and why I gave it up altogetherBitConnect Internet Memories

Shopin was another of these projects. Its founder, Eran Eyal, was arrested on fraud charges after collecting $ 40 million before the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged him with new charges. Make more people miserable with his tragic project and his work is over.

You can see that most of these projects fail in the field of cryptography. Of course, this is not limited to the field of digital currencies. This is generally true of most startups. However, I think this domain has the highest number of failed startups compared to the average number of startups in other domains. Most digital currency projects are really nonsense and worthless.

The hell that startups started

Digital currency projects fail for a variety of reasons; But the most important reason is that most of them do not exist at first and are just ideas and often meaningless. Even if we can not directly call them scams, they still usually seek to snatch cash. They are on almost every nook and cranny, and whenever they see an application, they create a project for it; From tokens for cosplayers (people who pretend to be movie or animated characters) and fans of two fires to collectibles to collectible cats, endless dice games, ridiculous porcelain block games, and more.

Why I worked on digital currency full time for two years and why I gave it up altogetherExpand Chinese block games without solving any particular problem.

Any area whose projects have been created on the Chinese block has found it difficult to continue. Human resources, marketing, food production, content sharing, gambling and betting, blogging, ranking, journalism, publishing, lending, social media, pet care, shopping and trading are just some of these areas.

It can almost always be said that trying to pull millions of dollars out of investors’ pockets and sell them a usable token is a desperate attempt. Many of these usable tokens are by no means suitable for the myriad uses listed in their white paper. In addition, these tokens are highly volatile assets. Most of them will lose a lot of their value. There are now thousands of projects with thousands of different tokens, and the interesting thing is that only a few of them are working on creating exactly the products that people really need and use.

We do not need all these projects. The applications we have seen are very poor at best. Once the funds are collected, several things happen to the teams:

  • Or they run out of liquidity.
  • Or they make a profit.
  • Even if they waste money and finish the project with the wrong management.

I do not think you can find more than half a dozen useful and real uses for the Chinese blockchain among the top 1,000 digital currencies. This is deception. Early coin offerings were and still are scams.

We now have a large number of different Chinese blockchain platforms and diverse ecosystems, and a large number of tokens that fuel those ecosystems. In reality, however, there was no need for so many tokens, and all of these platforms could work well without a new token.

Pain is just money

Initial coin offerings are held to make money, and the user experience ultimately does not matter. How many video and content platforms do we really need with tokens for “access to specific content”? How many crypto platforms do we need?

To block (BlockTVNote that a successful online TV channel. Its founder had previously tried to raise capital by initially offering tokens from a Chinese blockchain platform called Stox and a startup called Sirin Labs, but failed, and his tokens lost 99% of their value. They gave. Still, they were doing really well before they announced that they had raised about $ 2 million in an initial public offering.

Most of these projects do not notice that such tokens and blockchain applications spoil the user experience. Projects expect users to log in any way they can just to access and use their platform.

Exactly what projects expect from a new user is:

  • Research how to buy bitcoins.
  • Find an application to access Bitcoin.
  • Transfer newly purchased bitcoins to a digital currency exchange.
  • Exchange bitcoins with a usable token.
  • Register a usable token on that platform.
  • Transfer that usable token to the platform or learn how to work with Metamsk wallet or other services.
  • Learn how to work with the platform itself.

For a novice user, doing all this is hard. For this reason, sometimes when the project team realizes this problem, it allows users to use the project token directly to pay for the services and capabilities of the project without going through these steps. Do you think it is meaningless?

Do these projects really expect their users to go through such a tortuous path to get their tokens and, once they get the tokens, learn how to use them on the platform? No, they do not expect that; Because they themselves know that this is useless. They just want money, and not only do they keep doing it, they create the illusion that they are providing valuable service.

Some of the teams in these projects may have good goals, I do not deny that. They may really believe that they have found a unique Chinese blockchain application that is going to work well in their field, but the reality is that these teams do not have the authority to create effective products. As a result, they offer solutions to problems that do not exist at all, and because these solutions are useless, they end their work. In the end, only users remain, and problems that may not have existed at all from the beginning.

If we accept digital currencies as digital money, we can say that this is a real and valuable application. But do we really need hundreds of different forms of digital money? Do we expect sellers to accept all these different currencies? Do you think this will not cause more confusion?

Crypto communities are sewage wells

Most digital currency projects are nothing more than nonsense projects; Even if they have raised billions of dollars in their initial public offerings. However, we cannot talk about projects but ignore their backbone, which is their “community”. The relationship between projects in this field and their community is a completely artificial one. People form their beliefs about digital currencies, but only in terms of the tokens they have invested in. Because of this, these beliefs quickly become a form of prejudice. It may not seem like a bad thing at all, but these people invest in these tokens almost entirely with the expectation of profit (regardless of their beliefs). but why?

This is because they think the value of these tokens will increase exponentially and so on Bitcoin، AtriumAnd a few other successful digital currencies are becoming valuable. Given that digital currency markets are immature and manipulated, it is clear that price movements do not follow any logic. Sometimes a project with a re-branding can make the transaction price increase dramatically. So people invest in projects in the hope of making big profits. Most of the time, the value of their investment goes down, but they continue to hold that token. This is when people join the “community”, the lowest part of the chain.

Who is at the top of this chain? Shells (co-founders or marketers of heaters), influencers, early investors and venture capitalists. These people benefit from creating and influencing price movements. They work hard to mislead small investors and convince them that their token is great for investing. But at the top of the chain, it is the founders and team members who are happy to ride the waves and make money. These create a completely toxic atmosphere.

Project teams and their spokespersons do their best to encourage others to “invest” in project tokens. Why did I invest in Guillaume? Because you are not really buying something like a company stock. What you get for your money is a token that you will never use for that purpose.

Projects use a variety of tactics to build a community, even without products. Some people join the community because they are interested in the project itself; But the other members of that community, who make up the largest percentage, are attracted to influencers, YouTubers, the press, YouTube videos, and other deceptive methods used by that project.

Teams spend as much money as they can to lure users to their telegram groups and entice them with prizes, questions and answers, and fashionable contests. Users are excited and eagerly waiting for the tokens to be sold and then listed as a digital currency exchange. Their idea is that soon everyone will be rich.

But sometimes the relationship between the project and its community breaks down. This may happen before the initial release, maybe a month, a year or two after that. However, there is no escape from it. This bad thing will happen sooner or later for any digital currency project and its community. Why? Because there is no real connection between the community and the project.

Problems such as gender discrimination, racism, xenophobia and bigotry are also common in some digital currency and online forums. Interestingly, in the crypto area, the number of men is more than women. For this reason, women have sometimes been harassed online. In general, the number of female pioneers in this field is small. Most digital currency conferences are held with a male board. One of the most obvious examples of this is the picture you see: all men are sitting together on the stage and have no place to breathe; It was as if everyone had to go and sit together up there!

Why I worked on digital currency full time for two years and why I gave it up altogether
Summary of the status of cryptocurrencies!

Despite all this, there are a number of really admirable women in the field of digital currencies.

Communities always get to the bottom of the line

Most crypto projects offer their tokens to private investors at great discounts before they go public. Members of the community then buy tokens at a higher price and lose immediately. The truth is that the project team wants the community only to raise capital. Once they get the money they want, they present their worthless project and are eventually forced to maintain the appearance of the issue by providing trivial updates.

The goal of the team is to keep people in high spirits so that no one notices that they have stopped providing the major updates to the roadmap.

This is always the case. Gradually, the dissatisfaction and dissatisfaction of the society with the progress of the project appears, it gradually turns into anger, and there are disturbances in the telegram or Reddit. At this point, a series of people prevent further losses and leave, and another group decides to keep their tokens until the value of them reaches zero.

The only thing the community is interested in is the price of the token. Carefree technology! They just want to sell their tokens and make a profit. But the team has no responsibility to this community. So it does not provide them with a roadmap or keep the project active. Usually no one can complain.

The total number of class and class action lawsuits filed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission is very small.

Sometimes teams do their best to be on the list of big (expensive) exchanges, to work with marketers, to make a fuss, and even to ensure that the value of the token increases so that early buyers can get out on time and not lose. But with the volatile nature of digital currencies, there are always people who do not sell, there are people who buy at the peak price, and there are those who wait when they have to sell.

The trend of society’s hope is as follows: first they hope to one day be able to sell their tokens and make a lot of money, then they get to a place where only a small profit is enough for them, then they say at least we can reach a tipping point, and finally somewhere They find that they are satisfied as soon as they do not suffer huge losses. At this stage, people are emotionally attached to the communities of which they have been a member for a long time. This cycle of frustration can take years.

However, some members of the community will eventually realize that this attachment is fundamentally wrong, and that the realm of digital currencies is often a place for traders to make money.

what does it mean? That means you have to put aside biases towards the project and just trade. It does not matter which token you buy, it is enough that this token has a short uptrend. Once you have received your profit, move on to another token.

The worst thing you can do in this space is to hold a token for months for no apparent reason, simply because you feel it might eventually increase in value.

In 2017 and 2018, many projects were created and many communities formed around them. During my two years in the field, I joined hundreds of telegram groups, mostly for work and only occasionally making personal investments. Now when I go back and look at the status of those projects, I see that the unfounded optimism of the members has disappeared and they keep asking why the updates are not done. Members do not know that the team is stuck and do not know how to announce that they have run out of money. How do you really manage a company that has no revenue?

Six coin investors who do not want to accept the failure of the project.

Electrify Asia, Apex, Auctus, Zap, Soma, OCN, CNN, Gems, Internxt, Hero And many others were just a few hundred of the projects that made a lot of noise over the years. People invested millions of dollars in these projects, but eventually the value of all these tokens dropped to almost zero.

Join our cult

Digital currency communities (especially larger communities) are irrational and sectarian. They all create territory for themselves and defend their tokens against criticism and slander. If you warn them, they will ignore and repeat the same nonsense that their leaders have given them.

There are only a handful of people who come to their senses and think about whether it is worth staying with these seemingly rival communities.

It is not just investors who are attached to their tokens and are aggressive towards their opponents. The founders, CEOs, and leaders of these communities will soon feel God-like. Justin Sun (founder of Theron), Chang Peng Zhao (founder of the big Bainance exchange), Charlie Lee (creator of LightQueen) and their counterparts are now as famous as celebrities.

These rich and famous people in this field know very well how to engrave their name as “useful and good people” in the minds of the people of the world. Their motto is that they are serving the people and contributing to a better tomorrow; Most of them, on the other hand, sell only snake oil or something worse. The larger the community, the more generous it is. Where it is in the public interest, no scandal is so great that it can not be ignored.

The art of wasting time

I have no problem with the first category. Some content creators have real knowledge and offer something valuable to their own audience. But the number of these people is really small. My problem is with those who are making a living by wasting other people’s time, and there are many of them.

Consider influencers in this area. They want to make money in every way. Some of them will give you a token in which they have invested and with the links they provide, they will encourage you to register in the “leverage trading” platforms. Others encourage their followers to buy the token offered in the latest initial offering.

Those who are really scammers make interesting videos in which they rank and provide you with initial offers and potential investments. There is also a disclaimer that “this is not financial advice.” They are just trying to persuade you to buy something. The most influential of these people are those who have access to pre-sales and private sales, so they are always one step ahead of the audience.

In bearish periods, influencers, who can no longer persuade anyone to buy, have to find other ways to make a profit, recall previous achievements, and engage with them to begin the bullish period. Some of them are startups that seem to be marketing services, but the reality is that they are still selling you something. But what?

For example, you can buy one of tens of thousands of digital currency podcasts or pay an influencer to advertise on Twitter or YouTube.

If you have good money, influencer will come to you with a proper YouTube channel. If not, you choose one of the failing digital currency projects by paying a low level influencer.

The most skilled influencers even arrange events and receive funding from larger companies to cover their holiday expenses. These people are targeting naive digital currency startups that need support.

They constantly remind you on Twitter that they are still focused on their passion for your startup. A passion that has changed its meaning these days and is nothing more than a bored glance at the conference age, launching lifestyle brands or designing personal travel blogs. However, they also play a role in introducing your startup by launching the latest newsletters, training portals, podcasts, investment firms, news sites or research media.

But with all the efforts that influencers make, the widespread acceptance of digital currencies will never be achieved by teaching people how to manage private keys and things like that.

We will only reach this wide acceptance if we have products and services that all people can use and make their daily lives easier, without the need for in-depth knowledge of digital currencies or at all.BlockchainWhat is. Just like using banking services, you do not need to have special knowledge about banking or finance to use it.

We are not close to that stage yet and there are many obstacles to achieve this goal. So having a YouTube channel or podcast to teach people the basics of digital currencies is just a privilege for an influencer to feel involved in the field. Likewise, most media outlets are just looking to fill radio and television in the hope of making money; This.

Immature atmosphere, immature people

The digital currency industry is full of adults behaving like lousy kids. The leaders of this space do not know at all how to interact with each other without behaving inappropriately. From CEOs and founders to missionaries and developers, the world of digital currencies has no law. Most people in this space spend a lot of time arguing, arguing and insulting each other. The slightest simple disagreement that arises, they trumpet it so that everyone is aware of it.

Why I worked on digital currency full time for two years and why I gave it up altogetherEndless arguments; The steady footing of digital currency communities

From occasional Roger controversy to rage Craig WrightWith anyone on the road, wherever there are scathing remarks or derogatory behaviors, do not doubt that one of the familiar figures in the field of digital currencies is in the middle. Worse, most of them have an insatiable appetite for it.

The organizers of the conferences in this field do their best to bring the most outspoken speakers to the age. If “China Block Week” takes place anywhere in the world, surely Craig Wright, Roger Ware, Ton Wise, Nouriel Roubini (who hates digital currencies), Brooke Pierce, Samson Mu and other well-known public figures are arguing. They will.

The plight of digital currency media

Crypto is one of the areas with the weakest media coverage. The standard of journalism in the field of digital currencies is so terrible that it can not even be called journalism. Public media coverage of bitcoin and digital currency either focuses entirely on the downsides of the industry or tells unspeakable stories about people who have become rich. Of course, the field of digital currencies is a new topic and has not yet attracted widespread interest. For this reason, perhaps their sins can be forgiven.

However, the real corruption lies within it. There are many sites and blogs related to this field that are full of articles with poor content.

Of course, we also have good news sites that can be said to really follow the principles of journalism; However, they should focus more on the quality of their work. There are also media outlets such as The Block, Script and Brickermag that provide valuable content to your audience. But the same reputable sites also have employees who have repeatedly posted inaccurate content or deleted tweets, or have been involved with others just like children.

Journalism has many drawbacks in the field of digital currencies. Often, content needs to be corrected or edited. The statements and claims of individuals are quoted in this space without any supervision. Of course, we have healthy arguments, but in general, the standards that we must follow in journalism do not apply in this area. Reporters can write almost anything they want, and no one cares about conflict of interest.

TV show Run Noonar Cyanobi (Ran Neuners CNBC), Is one of the most popular and most watched programs about digital currencies.

Although Noner is a consultant and investor in several startups and projects, it can host this program. He makes significant profits in the field of digital currency and even in digital currency exchanges, but this does not prevent him from devoting a program to the projects in which he has invested.

It is true that the standard of journalism in the field of digital currencies is not desirable, but if it wants to get better, the pressure of rich and powerful figures in this space will not allow it. Examples include the billionaire founder of Bainance, Changpeng Zhao, and the founder of Theron, Justin Sun. Twitter thugs spent a lot of time harassing journalists and analysts.

The story was that De Block reported that police raided and closed the Bainance office in Shanghai; While apparently there was no attack and this report onlyIt had to be corrected. But does the army of trolls who seek bullying and attack anyone who does not agree with them care about reform?

Conferences and events that go on for days

There is not even a week that there is no event, meeting or meeting with the theme of digital currency. Endless periods that do not provide any particular services and are simply intended to perpetuate these debates. The rich in the field of digital currencies spend their time traveling around the world, meeting in different cities and taking selfies. only this.

How long do we have to put up with these conferences [most of which are co-sponsored by influencers] so that people really understand that they are wasting their time? From poor interviews with the founders of Shet Quins to countless personal blogs that only show people walking through the doors of the conference room, it’s all a waste of time.

New people do not attend these conferences. It’s a bit like networking, but we better not fool ourselves: it’s just like these people are on vacation. Inherently, there is no problem, but we should not wear the mask of financial inclusion. The job of these people does not make sense, it is just organizing and participating in events.

The problem we have with Justin Sun.

Let me tell you a little bit about Justin Sun, the founder of Theron. If we want to be fair, we can not say that Justin Sun is to blame for all the bad things that exist in the digital currency space.

Honestly, I do not think he is a bad person at all, but he can be considered the representative of many of the worst in the digital currency space. The story ofIncomprehensible white paper It started with Justin Sun in 2017 and to some extent Scientific theft from other white paperWas. Since then, Theron has become very popular due to the low price of the token and its volatility. So that with a big leap he was able to make many people rich.

Why I worked on digital currency full time for two years and why I gave it up altogether
Justin Sun and Schwaf with everything!

Justin Sun occasionally spied on new startups by announcing new partnerships with Gifto, Game.com (Game.com) and Ocean (OCN). But all these startups were run by his own friends! Sometimes he even mentions strange companies such as toilet manufacturers or space companies (what he said is China’s SpaceX) and says he has worked with them.

He once tried to convince everyone that he was working with the large multinational company Baofeng, which is actually China’s Netflix.

It was later revealed that he had only signed an agreement with Baofeng Biafosi, who is part of the large company. Under the agreement, they wanted to execute full nodes (which they did not) to support whenever the China blockchain was launched. In short, this was nothing special or important.

He once even said that he was partnering with the Liverpool club, while all he had was a letter from the Liverpool marketing department about financial support.

There is no special event that Justin Sun does not use to draw attention to himself and Theron. He once paid $ 1 million to Greta Tunberg (a 17-year-old Swedish environmental activist) and vowed to do it on an ongoing basis, although it is not clear if she did. Even once theron mission with «Civil rights movement” compared. In short, wherever there is something to attract attention, Justin is there.

Justin has been able to survive all this nonsense, something that would certainly have stuck in any other industry. Worse, it has gained that power with the help of scammers, journalists, bloggers, CEOs of digital currency exchanges and many more.

Justin Sun has made everything reminiscent of himself.

He has posted his picture on all posters, billboards, advertisements and other marketing tools. It has named the smallest currency, Theron. Theron network, also called Sun Network, is named after Sun.

Why I worked on digital currency full time for two years and why I gave it up altogetherA tweet in which the Theron Foundation compares itself to the black civic movement. This tweet was later deleted.

Sun believes in his income and the vast resources he has access to that he can do anything without any consequences. He knows that even if he makes a mistake, he will be defended by Theron’s greedy community and the best shales, those who do not even notice that Theron is not decentralized at all, and that most of the network is Justin himself (at least 6 of Theron’s 27 ninety seniors belong to him).

Or his friend Changping Zhao and Bainens (with 54.30% of the vote) in control, which is completely contrary to the purpose on which the digital currency industry was originally founded. Justin is completely hostile,Steam Took over and caused a number of high-ranking people to leave Steam.

Justin Sun represents the worst we can see in the digital currency space.

I had to get out of this space

The field of digital currency taught me its lessons and I learned some of them at great cost. I do not regret it, but I’m glad I came out. I just hope this space matures and can really make the world a better place.

There are people who have big ideas in this space and want to solve some of the most important problems of our time such as privacy, access to financial services and financial inclusion. But a number of parasites are infecting this environment.

These were just my experiences and thoughts. I’m sure many of you will disagree with me, but the truth is that I should have said that. These are experiences I had even before I got hired at Liquid. Maybe one day I can even write a book about them.