2018 was the millennials’ year for the cryptomarket. Sadly, it may also have been the last millennials’ year. Young people who dreamt of entrepreneurial opportunities have finally discovered the niche which allowed them to bring to reality their visions of vast, fast money. But almost as quickly as things got underway, they stopped. Experts at ICOBox’s International Blockchain Research Center (IBRC) reached a sad conclusion: the tough business environment was no place for pipedreams, and enterprising youngsters are now being steadily replaced by seasoned crypto business sharks.
Looking back at the wild ride that took place on the cryptomarket in 2018, many will say that millennials didn’t stand a chance. But that’s not true at all! A chance they did have, but only select few were able to take advantage of it, and those few were the most sensible and prudent.
The problem with millennials is that they are brilliant at brainstorming and coming up with fantastic ideas, but they tend to lose steam under the daily grind of trying to bring their grand plans to fruition. Rather than building their own businesses from scratch, they have an easier time climbing up the corporate ladders – this is more convenient, less risky, and calls for a lot less responsibility.
Crypto industry presented an amazing opportunity even to those that had nothing more valuable to their name than a 50-page White Paper and a grasp of the basics of economy, marketing, and IT that they likely gained in college. Having been given green light to express their creativity in the crypto space without putting in too much effort, they jumped in feet first. Sadly, some seemed to have left their thinking caps behind. Some took promises of $50K bitcoin at face value, dived into day trading and lost their shirts. Others got together with childhood friends to launch their startup, made their first million via an ICO, and then got completely lost when it came to actually developing their business. These also lost much. The shrewdest, it appears, were those who just grabbed their ICO haul and vanished into thin air.
“The problem with all of these examples is that none of them have anything to do with real business. Because when we hear ‘Give us money, and we will think of something’ instead of ‘We have thought everything through, we just need the funding,’ it is usually bad news,” explains Dima Zaitsev, Head of International PR and Business Analytics at ICOBox. “It rarely translates into anything of value – and this is why we are seeing these kinds of depressing stats for the number of failed or downright fraudulent ICOs in 2018.”
The crisis in the crypto market has already pushed out whole crowds of newbies and adventurers, and in the long run, only the strongest will remain standing. Small-time, individual investors will be replaced by large players who will not be interested in the slim pickings left over by millennials but will create a new market that will successfully operate on their own terms. The crypto market capitalization will start going up when these companies launch their products and they will be fairly appreciated and valued by the market. Along the way, a new market will likely emerge and evolve – that of security tokens and security token offerings (STOs). This mechanism will help projects that never before had access to funding find and connect with their investors. A convergence of blockchain technology and legal regulation will give way to new business models, and because this new approach will help give value to vast amounts of previously unmarketable assets, the market will see a great influx of new capital.
The Wild West era is over: the market is shifting and growing up.
“We saw something quite similar in 1998-2000, and we remember how it ended. The giant and empty dot-com bubble burst and those who overestimated their abilities or chose their development strategy unwisely were tossed aside by the powerful market forces,” reminds Dima Zaitsev. “On the other hand, that crisis also brought us such giants as Google, Amazon, Apple, and many, many others. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they now ventured into the crypto market to bring new revolutionary solutions to the world.”
And somewhere in the bowels of these new crypto projects, there will be millennials who will be working on building their bright corporate future – the very same millennials that were so close to becoming the embodiment of the new, 21st-century business models. But it’s time to accept the truth: this test they flunked.
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