My concern with the current Altcoin market (be careful)

What's up you guys? It's Graham here. So, I felt like this is a topic worth addressing, and we gotta have to sit down and talk about altcoins and my concern with the market as a whole. But before we get into it, gotta pay compliments to the shirt. I hope you guys can appreciate this; it's a Lamborghini, it's on the moon, and it has a license plate: Ethereum. [Applause] Anyway, I thought it was funny, but let's talk about altcoins. You know, those coins that can go up a thousand percent in a week when somebody just tweets about it, or those coins that you could buy for a few hundred dollars to turn into tens of thousands of dollars in a few weeks. Yeah, those ones.

So, I want to talk about that and share my perspective on things. For my diehard subscribers out there that don't like my crypto videos and want me to stick primarily with real estate, I totally get it. The good news is that I don't make very many crypto videos. But when I do, I want it to be as unbiased and as informative as possible, and I do my best to keep it on the subject of investing and building wealth, rather than about showing a particular coin or talking about anything too specific.

So, let's go ahead and get this out of the way really quick. I am invested right now in several altcoins, and there are a few I think have a ton of potential. Now, I'm not going to mention any of them. I'm not gonna shill anything; I'm not gonna fund anything. I have nothing against altcoins. I'm not gonna talk about anything specific, but I wanted to focus on the market in general, the current state of popularity, and my concerns with this going forward.

So with that said, here's a quick background of me. Like many people, I started out on the very conservative side of the spectrum where I wasn't really for cryptocurrency, I wasn't really against it. I had fun watching it, and really, that was about it. I was pretty neutral; I didn't care either way. Now, one of the reasons I didn't really understand cryptocurrency was because I couldn't figure out how to put a value on something. It was so unlike real estate, which is what I was used to, where you have a property, you have build costs, you have income potential, you have a lot of things that go into that, versus a cryptocurrency that's just trading at whatever price it's trading at only because people give it that value, because they think someone's either gonna pay more or because other people are buying it at that same price.

So after literally years of sitting on the sidelines, watching my friends invest, having everyone tell me I should do it, and me thinking, "You know what? No, that's too speculative. I can't put a value on that. I'm not going to invest in that; it's too risky." I started to think to myself, "Graham, you're going to Vegas like once to twice a month and gambling at craps and blackjack and baccarat. How on earth can you go to Vegas and literally gamble but think cryptocurrency is too risky?"

And I thought, "You know what? May as well put some money in cryptocurrency, learn about it, and see what it's all about." Once I did that, I got it. I totally understood it. I get the philosophy behind it, I get the appeal of it, I see the potential in it, and I get the community behind it. Speaking about the community, I met some really cool friends just from crypto. It seems like one of those things, it's like, "Yo, bro, you in crypto?" "Yeah, man!" And then instantly, you become like best friends.

So I started my crypto experience by buying in Bitcoin, and then I started doing more research on it. I figured, you know what? After a few days, I thought Ethereum had a little bit more potential, so I sold all my Bitcoin for Ethereum. Then I kept doing research, kept doing research, but like many people, the appeal of the big three— which I would call Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum— just started to wear off after a little while. Then you start going for the harder stuff, like altcoins.

When it comes to Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum, it's not uncommon for there to be 10% swings in a day, up or down. And after a while, this tends to be the norm, and you just get used to it. If it's up 10%, no big deal. If it's down 10%, no big deal. But you start watching other people make a hundred percent, make a thousand percent in altcoins, even though they might go down 50% in a day. You see them shoot back up 300% a few days later, and then after a while, you start thinking to yourself, "Hmm, why buy Bitcoin when I can invest that money in this coin over here and maybe make a thousand percent in a week instead of ten percent over here?"

Then, you slowly start going down the rabbit hole. So here is where I am today. I ended up selling all of my Ethereum for an altcoin that ended up going up in value ten times in two weeks, and I'm still holding it. Then I figured I'd just put a little bit more money into a few other altcoins to try to diversify, mainly just for fun. Believe me, this has turned into quite the fun hobby. I've spent way too much time on Reddit, I'm up way too late at night, and I've been watching way too many YouTube videos on cryptocurrency.

But by doing all of this, this is what I've noticed, and these are a few of my concerns moving forward. Now, I just want to make this very clear: I do not know it all when it comes to cryptocurrency. I've said it before, and I've said it again: there are other channels that are way more technically knowledgeable about the subject than I am. However, my strengths and interest are in growing wealth and investing. Now, while I know some markets, like real estate, better than others, I feel like I know enough about this to see that the current state of this market is just unsustainable.

Now, don't get me wrong. I think we're gonna see some promising growth over the long term, and I'm sure we can see some really great altcoins truly be contenders of Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum. I actually think altcoins in general have a lot of potential, and I think we're just in the infancy stage of all of this. But it's just the current state of this that I can't see being sustainable in the long term. I don't consider this like spreading fear or anything like that; I figure this is just common sense.

There's no way many of these coins can sustain that type of just moan-like growth over and over and over again, where you can profit consistently from it unless you're lucky, unless your technical skills are just through the roof, to the moon, pun intended, you plan your entry and exit points perfectly, or you're in the know with some of these groups that tend to pump and dump them. And if you're so many people complaining about how the US dollar is manipulated, but wow, if we want to talk about manipulation, let's talk about altcoins because that is through the roof. Like literally, the amount of shilling, scam coins, and pump and dumps I'm seeing is just atrocious. Right now, it's literally the wild, wild west where anyone can do anything. It's totally unregulated, and the price jumps of some of these altcoins just depend on who tweets it out and their marketing strategies behind the coin. And some of these coins don't even have a working product. Think about that one for a second.

Hmm, interesting. So this is my concern, and I'm not talking about any particular coin in general. There are some of them that I see that I'm like, "Dude, I can't believe that exists. What are they doing?" And I see other coins where I'm like, "Yo, the white papers on this are incredible, the potential is incredible, the product is incredible, the team behind this is incredible, I love this."

But the sad truth is that that coin, where you're just like, "What the heck is this? This is the stupidest thing I've ever seen," can go up in value 2,000 percent in a week if they get the right marketing, the right Twitter shoutouts, the right rumors, and especially if a pump-and-dump group gets in on that, the price could skyrocket. Meanwhile, the coin with a lot of promise and potential might be sitting at next to nothing because they don't have that hype and excitement around it.

Now, this makes zero sense, but because of the excitement and the unregulated nature behind it, it's a total free-for-all. Now, what I've started to see is that everybody wants to jump on the train of, "Yo man, let's get an ICO—let's make our own cryptocurrency; let's do this, let's go to the moon." And everyone's trying to hop on the train because they know if they do that, it's amazing publicity for them. Everyone will run into it, and that equals more profit.

The reality of this is that that is just unsustainable long-term. At some point in the future, things will have to change. This cannot just go on indefinitely, nor do I think this is an indication of a healthy market. This isn't anything specific to altcoins or cryptocurrency; it's just about something having real use and longevity.

When a single tweet has the impact to send one of these altcoins up 500% in a few days or down 80% within a few hours, it really says something about the speculative nature of this market and just how delicate it is. And because this is such a new market, and we're really just in the very beginning stages and the infancy of seeing how this is going to develop, it's very difficult to value something because you have very little to compare it to. I still think we have a long way to go before we can really understand how useful a lot of these coins are and how we can really value them.

The way I see it, we don't need over a thousand altcoins out there, many of which don't even have a working product or don't really serve any useful purpose. And again, like I'm saying, everyone right now is trying to come out with their own ICO and their own cryptocurrency because they know right now it's a great way to make money. Trust me, you guys, I get hit up probably once a week from people willing to pay me thousands of dollars just for a 15-second mention of their ICO.

Now, while this is ethically questionable but legally acceptable, it makes me think: do you realize the trouble that I would get into if I'm promoting a super sketchy penny stock or something that was regulated? That could be jail time for me, like, and that would ruin my career. But when it comes to crypto, it seems like there's pretty much zero responsibility for anyone pumping up a coin where they have a financial interest invested in that. And again, I don't see that being sustainable long-term.

The biggest problem I see here is that out of the thousand-plus altcoins out there, very few have the potential and have what it takes to develop into something greater, sustained longevity, and to be implemented in day-to-day use. Now, don't get me wrong here. I'm sure there are mad profits to be made in altcoins. I just don't know how long that's sustainable for. If it's sustainable for another six months, a year, three years, two years, I have no idea.

But I just know that that cannot continue indefinitely, and it's still just way too early to tell which coins might end up being a contender of Bitcoin one day or which might actually be implemented in day-to-day use. As this market develops, I think we're gonna see a lot of very big companies start to get in the crypto wave. Who knows? Maybe one day we'll see a YouTube cryptocurrency. But like I said before, my only concern here is how sustainable is this current market right now?

The other difficult thing I see here is that it's extremely difficult, if not impossible, to give anything a realistic valuation because it's so new. We have very little right now to compare each coin with. Every coin that comes out promises to be new and revolutionary and change the world, and with these amazing promises and tweets and rumors and all this great stuff, but how exactly is it valued? It's really easy just to give something a wild valuation right off the bat because right now there's really no indication for where exactly the ceiling is and how high something could be valued without a product.

With a product, it's so quickly done. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not against altcoins at all. In fact, I like many of them. Some of them I think, "That is crazy; why would anyone ever do that?" Others I really see a lot of potential in. Some I think, "That's just a flat-out scam." Okay. And in terms of money to be made, yes, there is potential there to make a lot of money if you get in right, you don't get too greedy, you exit at the right time, and you really do your research about what you're buying into.

Even though I made a decent amount in altcoins, I'm not naive to think that that is sustainable or that I couldn't just lose like 80% of it in the next day. So what I raise my concerns on altcoins is coming from a place of just being totally neutral and completely unbiased on how this plays out. I'm not saying it's a good idea just to sit out on the sidelines and watch how this plays out, but just be realistic with your expectations and expect that many of these will end up failing. Some of them may end up doing really, really well, but I would hate to see someone lose their hard-earned money just because they put it in something they didn't fully understand the risks of.

And that is the entire point of this video. So let me know your thoughts down below. Like I said, I read every single comment. So if you agree with me, disagree with me, or want to add on to what I'm saying, comment down below. Because, like I said, many of you guys actually know way more than I do about this, so I'd be certainly interested in hearing your perspectives on this. Regardless, I think we're in a very exciting time right now. I think there's a lot of potential; I think there's a lot of opportunity. But just please be careful, make sure to take profits when you can, play it safe, and just put in what you're comfortable with. Don't go off and mortgage your house, sell your car, and sell your wife and kids just to invest in my GrabStefan ICO coming out January 31st—just kidding on that one, I don't have an ICO, I'm not going to have an ICO—but you get the idea.

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