Well, it was surreal while it lasted, by which I mean the 2017-18 cryptocurrency bubble. For a while there, Coinbase was #1 in the App Store, Bitcoin was above $10K, and there were more notional crypto zillionaires out there than you could shake a Merkle tree at.<\/p>\n
Those were the crazy days. Now, though, a rude awakening has come. Now Bitcoin is down to $3200 and counting, other cryptocurrencies are down well over 90%, and worst of all, none of the billions of dollars which poured into cryptocurrencies during the bubble have led to anything even remotely like a killer app. Instead the crypto space remains a giant casino of penny stocks, with little to no utility outside of financial speculation. Don\u2019t kid yourself \u2014 this is nothing like the dot-com crash<\/a>.<\/p>\n Yes, this cryptocurrency downturn is totally like the dot-com crash \u2014 if half the dot-com bubble had consisted of shares in companies with no web site; Internet growth had been flat in 2000; and no ordinary people had ever used Amazon, eBay, or Hotmail.<\/p>\n \u2014 Jon Evans (@rezendi) November 21, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n What comes next? Not much, at least not soon. I am sorry to report that we have entered the crypto winter<\/a>, as the estimable Michael Casey puts it, and, like that in Game of Thrones, it\u2019s likely to be a long one. Herein please find your guide to the icy landscape ahead, and some predictions of what we\u2019ll find there:<\/p>\n\n