Sunday Talks | Investing Hypes of 2021

Authorede by: @hetty-rowan

Sunday talks

Hello LBI'ers… It's already Sunday, we are approaching the last quarter of 2021 and I thought it would be an excellent Sunday post to take a look at what the biggest investment hypes have been last year.

By the way, I do not only limit myself to cryptocurrencies, but also another possibility that might have you running headlong to your attic to see if you still have those old collectibles from the early 2000s.

Here we go

So let's dive in. 2020 and 2021 have been dominated by Covid-19 for all of us. Many have therefore started looking for other ways to entertain themselves. Instead of spending our money at the pub, a great movie at the cinema or a seat in the stadium of our favorite football team, a lot of that money now went to other things.

Covid-19

We have become limited in our social lives and especially the age group 20 to 40, who are often the most active in the social field, felt the already great impact of these limitations. This does not mean that everyone who does not fall into that group was not affected by it, but the figures show that this age group in particular had, and is still having a hard time with it.

Let this now be exactly that group that grew up with Pokémon. Every day in front of the TV to watch their favorite series and when they went to school they took all their Pokémon cards with them to trade with their friends. Unfortunately, that exchange usually led to crying ...

Unless they happened to be able to score some nice base set first edition Charizards with friends! They may not have realized it then, but it will probably be the best deal ever made in life.

This piece of cardboard nowadays sells for $50,000 to $300,000. Time to go check your forgotten collection guys!

Why is all the Pokemon hype?

Pokémon cards were all the rage in the early 2000s among the youth, but also the elderly. A lot of new sets have been released since then and the series hasn't stopped either, but the early 2000s were especially a golden age for Pokémon.

Now that Corona has gripped us, people have started looking for alternative entertainment and it turns out: Pokémon cards provide exactly that nostalgic feeling we are looking for, because hey, everything used to be better, right?

A few years ago we already had the short-lived but intense hype called Pokémon Go, an app where you could catch and train Pokémons in the world around you. Then we saw that it had the whole world in its grip. Everywhere you went you saw people in groups looking at their phones and swiping to catch their beloved Pokémons. Mass events were even held across the world.

Even then we saw that the demand for Pokémon cards from the past increased strongly and that demand has only increased in recent years, as is often the case with collector's items. But over the past year, card prices have really skyrocketed. Why?

The age group 20-40, who were already Pokémon fans anyway, now have very little to do and relatively much more money to spend. For many of them there is nothing more fun than getting that old magical feeling of collecting a complete set of cards and so everyone has been digging through the attic to get those cards out. One disappointed because it turns out that mother has thrown them all away, the other disappointed because the cards have been found in worthless condition and the other realizes that money does grow on trees.

Yet it is difficult for most to part with their cards and prefer to see a complete collection of their own, so a market has arisen for these cards. The supply is low (especially of the cards in good condition), the demand is huge and what do you get? A hype that you say to yourself. Good luck digging through the attic!

crypto

This may be a case of kicking in open doors, but as a visitor to our site you will probably have already realized that crypto is also a huge trend in 2021. This is also not without reason.

In its simplest form, crypto is a digital currency. For example, we know the traditional currencies such as the euro (€), the US dollar ($) and the Japanese yen (¥), also known as fiat money, but cryptocurrencies are forms of money that are only available online, based on blockchain technology. The most well-known cryptocurrency is of course Bitcoin (BTC), but in the meantime we also know crypto coins such as Ethereum (ETH), Binance Coin (BNB) and Ripple (XRP) that have become very large.

The idea of ​​crypto has been around since 2008 with Bitcoin as a Proof-of-Concept, but along the way the crypto market has evolved and a lot of new coins have been added, each with its own use case. Ten years ago, no one ever expected the total crypto market to be worth about $2 trillion, but since 2017, the snowball has really start rolling.

In 2017, crypto was really the undisputed winner when it comes to best investments, even then we saw what we see today, a pure hype. Yet there are also a lot of people who lost money during that time, because people firstly didn't believe, didn't want or dared to invest. When Bitcoin and all the altcoins got the real bull run they fomo'ed causing them to invest at the top of the bull run, and saw their investment disappear. Unfortunately!

After the market crash, there was a lot of talk that the "bubble" had burst and that everyone would have lost their money for good. Crypto was said to be made for hackers and provide no added value for our society as we know it.

But here we are, the year 2021 and prices are higher than ever, Tesla wants to accept Bitcoin as a payment method again if Bitcoin continues to get greener, Visa works with the Ethereum platform and Paypal also makes crypto payments possible. This year, crypto is also the undisputed winner when it comes to best investments to date. But why? And will this remain so?

Why is crypto a hype?

It has become clear to many people that our outdated traditional financial system has its flaws. For example, today we are very dependent on intermediaries with a lot of power, such as banks, insurers, but also companies such as Airbnb and Uber. These agencies often require a lot of personal information in a society where our privacy is already at stake, but procedures are also often slow and cost a lot of money.

What if all these processes could be arranged without an intermediary? Would our society improve on that? In any case, crypto makes it all possible.

If you delve into the history books, you will see that over the years people have started to live more and more individualistic. We want to be free and independent. That is why more and more countries are adopting a democratic constitutional state. Yet we are not completely free and independent. Our financial system is still heavily outdated and crypto is the much-needed emancipation for a new economy.

That realization has descended on many people in recent years and large organizations are also starting to embrace this idea. In the meantime that our current economy has only deteriorated, there has been hard work and innovation in the crypto industry. Very valuable projects have been added and the existing projects have only become better and more efficient.

The crypto hype of 2021 is therefore a logical consequence. The only question is how long the hype will last, because just like after 2017 there will come a day when prices will fall again. And the question is when the next hype will take place again. It is now clear to everyone that crypto is here to stay, but crypto also has market cycles.

NFTs

Anyone who has delved into crypto this year has probably also heard of NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, the craze in crypto this year.

I'll leave the explanation about what an NFT exactly is for now, There are enough blogs about that. What I can say is that NFTs offer a whole new dimension of possibilities within the crypto world. From useful use cases, such as verifying the authenticity of a product, to collecting Polkamons. No, no Pokémons, Polkamons yes.

Such a Polkamon is then recorded in an NFT and that NFT is transferable, which means that you can buy and sell an NFT on a marketplace such as OpenSea. You can't think of it that crazy and you can turn it into an NFT and sell it. Music, art, tweets, in-game items, a photo of your big message, you name it...

The NFT hype has now progressed to the point where one of the most expensive pieces of art today is a digital image, captured in an NFT.

Why are NFTs a hype?

NFTs are inherent to crypto. Crypto is a hype and NFTs are again the hype within crypto at the moment. For example, ICOs and DeFi have also been hypes within crypto in the past. A hype within a hype? Yes!

Crypto is the revolution of our current economy, but also within crypto there are revolutions taking place. As mentioned before, NFTs offer us a lot of new possibilities, some more interesting than others, but it is undeniable that it is a technology that can come in handy for our society.

Last summer, for example, decentralized finance (DeFi) was the trendsetter of crypto, as people began to see that it is a concept that delivers added value. The moment the prices go through the roof, everyone wants to take advantage of it and this creates a hype.

As the general public begins to become aware of the concept of NFT, the prices of NFTs and NFT projects such as Chiliz (CHZ) and Enjin (ENJ) are also rising through the roof. Everyone wants to benefit from this and so a small bubble is created.

It is therefore advisable to be careful when investing in NFTs. There is money to be made. YES, but the question remains what is the real value behind an NFT or NFT project. One thing is certain: The technology is here to stay.

Conclusion

We have seen hypes in the past, today we see hypes emerging and we will continue to see hypes in the future. Hypes are part of human beings. Everyone has had the feeling of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) and that feeling is the founder of hypes, such as crypto, Pokémon, NFTs.

Hypes are time-bound and often have to do with market cycles, but that doesn't mean the underlying product is necessarily a good investment. For example, we have seen that the tulip mania in the 17th century did not work out well for many, not even in the long term, because who would offer an Amsterdam canal house for a black tulip?

But if we look at the Dot-com bubble of the early 2000s, we see that companies such as Google, Amazon and Apple have also grown during that period. After this hype, those companies have remained under the radar for a long time, but they have now become the largest companies in the world.

I firmly believe that crypto is here to stay. But which cryptocurrencies will continue to exist, how prices will develop in the future and whether another new technology will take over crypto? I really don't dare to say a sensible word about that. And however you look at it, investing is always a gamble! What you can do is try to limit your risks by doing good research and never investing more than you can afford.

Be kind to yourself, and stick to this!

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