After a fair number of years of being involved in the crypto game, one of the pervasive "elephants in the room" seems to be the fact that lots of crypto and blockchain related projects actually fail.

I often get the impression that it is almost sacrilegious to say such a thing... unless, maybe, it refers to the latest memecoin that "everyone knew was a scam, anyway."

In the end, though, we end up with the reality that "business is business" and most businesses actually fail, or they fail to go anywhere. The reason I call it an elephant in the room has to do with the subtle subtext I often pick up on that we are somehow "exempt" from the way the world works... for no other reason than "we're on the blockchain."

Maybe someone can make a legitimate argument that blockchain technology "can't fail," but that doesn't mean that you can't end up with something completely worthless.

Plan? What Plan?

Regardless of what field or industry you may be in, you have to have a plan and a purpose or you'll find yourself ending up with nothing at all in a hurry.

The Son-Hooman in this household — who now lives on his own — has been a bit of a crypto enthusiast, but he has learned the hard way that chasing after every promising game coin on the planet was not a path to riches. In fact, he has put $100 in loads of things and ended up with $0.25 or less as "thanks" for the investment!

You still have to be smart about what you're doing: blockchain and crypto is not some kind of "magic formula" for anything... it's as much a "business model" as anything else.

The Sad Business of Going Sideways

The vast majority of businesses that fail just tend to fizzle out into indifferent nothingness. They end up occupying that weird "null space" where they are neither complete disasters, nor particularly successful... ultimately — to borrow a term from horse racing — they become the "also ran's" of the world. You buy in at a dollar, and you end up bailing out at $0.87 after four years of promises and innovation that never quite manages to hit the mark.

Let's be real here: there are over 20,000 cryptos in the world, and they are not all going to be grand successes that go to the Moon!

Likely, most will follow a similar trajectory: An initial spike of unbounded enthusiasm, followed by a long gradual decline, perhaps punctuated by occasional small upticks when some new development is announced. It's a sad reality that even plagues quite active and "useful" projects.

Just consider Hive's own LeoFinance initiative which is run by some extremely dedicated and hard-working people, and yet the LEO token continues to struggle to hold a stable value, recently dropping through $0.04 for the first time in several years.

Consider that, and then consider how many crypto/blockchain projects are little more than "vaporware" with zero new developments since they first launched... with lots of fanfare and fireworks.

In the last episode, I posed the question of why we are here; why we are involved in crypto... at the individual level.

Same thing applies here, at the project level: Projects have to be here for reasons other than "making lots of money." Whereas that notion might be noble enough, it has to be built on a foundation more substantial than AIR. Because if it isn't, we all pretty much know what's likely to happen to a balloon!

Lest I might have give the wrong impression earlier, I have a lot of faith in the LeoFinance crew... and their ability to grind it out over time, and be left as one of the few viable projects still standing... in a few years from now.

But it's important to be picky, and even very picky, in terms of where you put your lunch money! Just because it says "blockchain" on the package doesn't mean there's something amazing inside.

=^..^=

Curator Cat Contemplates Crypto is periodic series of articles and editorial commentaries on Hive, it's Communities and the Cryptosphere in general, as seen through the eyes of someone NOT deeply immersed in the technological and financial end of the industry. Equal Opportunity Offender! We've likely got something to piss off everyone, here!

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