When Bitcoin peaked at almost $20,000 per coin, the world changed.
What was once a small-time joke with few prospects had ballooned into a technology-defining tool. It allowed cryptocurrency to erupt onto investors’ radars and created a new age of digital currencies.
And now, it can be tough to keep up.
New coins are being created almost every day, and they’re all vying for their spots on exchanges. Meanwhile, cryptocurrency predictions are flooding financial media as people struggle to understand this new market.
There is one common theme among all cryptocurrency predictions: uncertainty. With any market as large and new as the cryptocurrency market, it can be hard to be sure of what you’re doing on it. And that’s actually a good thing — chaos is the cultivator of innovation and change.
Keep reading below to learn how the cryptocurrency market may change in 2019, and what you can expect in the years after it.
1. Coins Will Search For Legitimacy With Businesses
Before cryptocurrencies ever entered mainstream news, small communities would dream of how they would be used. Early Bitcoin adopters imagined a future where a person could pay for their morning coffee by sending some coins to a vendor. They dreamed of a world where people’s digital finances would be secured by communities — not corporations.
Unfortunately, that never panned out. Instead, cryptocurrencies became a tool for the wealthy to try and cultivate more wealth. Now, rather than imagining how a coin may change the world, people imagine how high of a value it may reach. The mystique was lost in lieu of profits.
And that’s exactly why so many coins are failing right now. Cryptocurrency, like any currency, was never meant to be hoarded and collected. Instead, they were developed with the express purposes of any currencies: to represent a good’s value and to be exchanged.
Businesses just aren’t ready to accept cryptocurrencies in exchange for their products. The more the markets roil, the less confidence business owners have that currencies will maintain the value of their products. And the less that investors spend their coins, the less value coins can accrue over time.
Those two factors can only ever lead to a coin’s collapse. And unfortunately, 2019 is looking to be the same. Coins are continually being treated as an investment tool rather than a currency, inhibiting their growth.
2. Blockchain Implementation Increases Overall Value
There is one thing that will help boost coins’ legitimacy and value though, and that’s the technology behind them. Blockchain technology is being implemented in nearly all industries. It’s doing everything from helping manage pharmaceutical supply chains to creating detailed ledgers to help banks verify people’s accounts.
The more people recognize the blockchain’s power, the more they will associate it with cryptocurrencies.
Even if coins are developed with the blockchain, they have yet to truly realize its potential. Rather than gearing a coin to take advantage of the blockchain’s ability to account for a coin’s use, coins are relying on their branding to generate value.
Currencies are only as valuable as much as they are true.
The more fake transactions or counterfeiting associated with a currency, the less it will be worth overall. And although the technology is complicated to understand, people are coming around to realizing Blockchain’s ability to keep people accountable.
It’s only a matter of time before they associate that accountability to Blockchain’s origin: cryptocurrencies. And when that happens, coins will see a boost in value.
3. More Investor Interest And Cryptocurrency Predictions
Although investors may be inhibiting the growth of coins, they will continue to be interested in them. The market is chaotic and wild, where people are still being made into millionaires overnight. That will always attract the attention of the riskiest, more savage hedge bets.
Part of this is due to the media around cryptocurrencies. Coins’ values traditionally skyrocket when it falls into the public eye, but that individual coins are being covered less. Instead, the media is more interested in the market as a whole, and it’s telling the same old stories.
To the media, the market is still unstable and it doubts it will ever change. The media believes that the market will never be able to sustain itself. That means when it does find stability, the media is immediately interested.
And when the media covers cryptocurrencies, investors get involved. That just means that markets only become unstable again as investors buy coins and never exchange them, warding off media coverage.
Yet, that also means that the period of post-market-stability can make people rich.
4. More Average People Will Buy Cryptocurrencies
The more media covers cryptocurrencies, the more average people become interested in them.
These aren’t Silicon Valley investors or tech enthusiasts who turned their basements into data centers. These are people with jobs like nurses or teachers, who decided they may have found something new that they want to be a part of.
This can be a huge boon to the market, or it can devastate people’s wealth. Average people don’t usually understand the technology behind coins, or the market itself. They will just go with whatever they think is best.
If they go in believing cryptocurrency is an investment opportunity, they’ll never spend their coins. That means the coins they buy will lose value as people refuse to exchange them. And over time, they may watch their finances erode away.
On the other hand, average people may cryptocurrencies as they were meant to be: an alternative to regular money. They may purchase coins with the purpose of spending them later and to participate in a new market. And if average people adopt this perspective, the cryptocurrency market will find the stability it needs.
The Cryptocurrency Market Has Changed
The cryptocurrency market has changed from when it first began.
What was once a small, virtual hamlet of tech enthusiasts trying to change the way people interact with the economy has exploded. Now, the market is a chaotic and wild place where people lose everything or become billionaires overnight.
Only time will be able to tell if all that ends up being good for the market. Yet, there is one way you can keep yourself informed and ahead of the market.
Just keep reading here, and you’ll know how to make the most of dealing with cryptocurrencies throughout 2019. We post more than just cryptocurrency predictions — our website is filled with cryptocurrency facts.