[Premium] Vindication

With cryptocurrencies in a free fall now, its a pretty good time to revisit my views on it, which I published here, here and here.

I’m glad that I stood my ground while the rest of the world seemed to have been taken over by crypto. It was hard to maintain my perspective while everyone else was making easy and fast money. Triple digit returns in a matter of weeks were the norm. I questioned if I was wrong and out-of-touch.

But I have firm views that I must know what are my investments and how they make money. I held an open mind and read up on the latest in crypto, including yield farming, such as in these articles. I don’t hate on an asset class just because its new and people are making bank on it.

However, I do feel a sense of injustice if millions of people are getting scammed. The more I read, the more I thought it was utter gibberish. There was no true understanding of finance, banking and how interest is earned. I knew there was no way to legitimately make these kinds of yields. It seemed more and more like a ponzi scam, especially Tether.

While I softened my views when Tesla bought into Bitcoin, I had never bought in myself and indeed sold my stocks which were linked to crypto (Paypal and Square).

Other financial bloggers and Youtubers were hyping altcoins, often while being sponsored and not telling their followers what their agenda truly was. We are unlikely to ever know how many of those influencers sold out and left their viewers in the ditch. Good luck to those who followed the free advice.

I had mulled whether to be more assertive in telling others that cryptos were a dangerous game. But after seeing others get slammed and cancelled, I thought it was best to stay quiet and keep my views within my own circle of readers. I could be wrong, and I didn’t want to offend anyone either.

Cryptos could well come back. It’s proven to be pretty resilient and I think Bitcoin and Ethereum will be around for a while. Not so sure about the altcoins.

For now, I feel pretty good that I have been giving sound financial advice here, for very little monetary reward. I gave fair warning, wasn’t selling snake oil, and have been transparent in my transactions. It’s rare and its unappreciated, but I think that is just who I am.

And most importantly, I stuck to my guns and walked my own way, while the whole world was telling me that I was wrong.