Back in 2017, when spirits were astronomically high, it was the age of Bitcoin producing some ATHs, alt-coins were becoming more and more popular and ICOs were the shizzle to get into. This young lad thought to invest in some SUB (Substratum). The idea was wonderful - a decentralised internet. The marketing team went full HAM on us (well, me at least) and many of us invested in the idea. Now, there were some detractors, but we thought, ah they're just haters and jealous they didn't get in when we did. Well, soon, the price started falling...like a lot! There was a "dip" every day! Thankfully I hadn't invested that much (only what I could afford to lose), but the idea I stuck with it despite the numerous red flags, has been a major wake up call for me. I won't go into details because the rumour mill runs wild in times like this; suffice to say, I should not have drunk the Koolaid and despite doing some research, I should have done more and should never have invested on emotions and promises alone. Binance (personal feelings towards a centralised exchange aside), delisted it and the blood bath escalated to a whole other level. People started selling off their coins to try and get back as much of their initial investment as possible. Echo chambers are so easy to get into in this space and you need to fight the urge to just listen to the good about the coin/token you've invested in. Constructively critique the devs when they don't deliver and hold them to account as much as possible. Do not make excuses when you see red flags. Just like a toxic relationship, your gut feeling is normally correct. Listen to it. Eventually, the development team released some news. You can read the whole release here, but what really stood out to me, is their anger at the previous CEO:
"Q: Where did the money collected from the ICO go and why was such a huge amount not enough for the development of the project? "In short: we don't know. There is a statement from Justin Tabb on the Internet about this, but it sounds extremely unconvincing. We think that the money was spent on other needs by the project organizers or simply stolen. We have no direct evidence."
This is but one example of the sort of projects that "went to the moon" back in 2017 and hopefully a lesson for you to learn from this time around. If all your subreddit does it post graphs of green candlesticks and spamming, "we're off to the moon, boys"; or, "when moon?" when that particular week saw red candlesticks, without critically analysing the promises made by the devs, deep-diving into the tech, the team and the current product, you need to be wary. You may just be in a virtual echo chamber of "HODL" memesters. Just my two satoshis.
