Cointelegraph's year-end look at 2018 crypto: a brutal bear market filled with scams, hacks, and SEC scrutiny, but also the rise of stablecoins and institutional players like Bakkt. The team shares encounters with figures like Joseph Lubin and Jimmy Wales.
According to the Chinese calendar, this was the year of the dog. But in the crypto market, it was definitely the year of the bear. And a ferocious one at that.
2018 was anything but boring. In blockchain and crypto, space scams, hacks, scandals, lawsuits, government regulations, and so on and so forth. And of course, Twitter drama. We had it all. We're lucky to witness one of the most promising and dynamically evolving industries in the world is maturing at a frightening pace. Prices are jumping up and down, companies going out of business and events that used to attract thousands of visitors are now deserted. But to be honest, I think this is perfectly natural and these are growth pains. And it's actually a good thing because a whole bunch of non existent projects and products that tainted the industry are now gone forever. The strongest survived and only things that matter are still here. And despite all the predictions from the mainstream media, guess what? Bitcoin and crypto are not dead. And to those of you who purchased bitcoin last December, well, it could have been worse. Happy New Year.
I think the 2018 was definitely a good year. But despite the popular opinion, we've visited so many countries and attended so many events and met so many people. We've met Joseph Lubin, Jimmy Wales cz.
The President of Malta, the Prime Minister of Malta.
At this point, I feel like we've met all the government in Malta. I'm looking forward to the next year.
Because I, along with Joseph Lubin, believe.
That the future looks very bright.
The SEC started getting serious about upholding their laws in the face of lawless ICOs. Bakkt was announced along with rumors and plans from other major institutional players. But I think the most important thing that happened this year was the proliferation of all different kinds of stablecoins. The appearance of all different kinds of stablecoins on the market this year tells me that the market is looking for something else from cryptocurrency. It's looking for something that's more like money, something that's still decentralized, that's not controlled by a government or a corporation, but something that they can spend and that they can save without it losing 80% of its value over the course of a year.
My first ever cryptocurrency conference last January was also my first ever week of work at Cointelegraph, where they sent me to San Francisco with what seemed like a lot of trust in an incredibly rookie reporter. In my first interview, Litecoin founder Charlie Lee, one of the magical crypto friends himself, and he was a totally normal guy. This was the same time as the Coincheck hack, and we spent a while talking about the consequences for the crypto space, explaining things to him that I hadn't fully understood as a complete newcomer, like the legacy of the Mt. Gox hack. Then, as time went by, I was asked to do a series of video interviews at another conference and my very first video interviewee Bobby Lee, Charlie Lee's brother, who made the interview light and easy by chatting about his participation in World Poker Tournaments and his writing a book about crypto. My initial starstruck behavior by meeting these big crypto figures has faded as the year went on, and I no longer bat an eye when Mat McAfee slides into my DMs to offer me 0.3 Bitcoin for 5 Bitcoin now or something. But whenever Charlie Lee likes a family vacation photo on my instafeed, I still feel a tiny bit of that excitement I felt one year ago in my very first week at Cointelegraph. And all of us at Cointelegraph wish all of you hodlers out there a very Sincere and Bullish 2019. And as always, remember to like subscribe and toddle. Happy New Year. How hoddle Cointelegraph like subscribe and hodl.
