I remember when there was btc and a couple hundred altcoins.. btc would pump and literally ALL altcoins would go crazy..
Back then ppl believed in the tech and use case.. alts like factom and stratis and steem..
I remember when there were no stable coins and all pairs were against btc.. then usdt launched on btc omnia and ppl hated it..
There were no futures markets, no defi, no nfts no nothing...
Then ppl found out about bitmex and Arthur took all their money lmao (mine too).. more degen option was Bitmax where you could do alts on leverage!
I remember when Coinbase had 3 coins listed (btc, eth, ltc) and ppl were betting on litecoin cause it was the cheapest!
Poloniex was the exchange with the most alts and that's where you would find all spot apes having fun in the trollbox (a build in chat where your nickname would get more pink the more tips you got or smth lmao)
Then ppl migrated to Bittrex for a while and Cryptopia (nice rug) and then Binance happened!
I remember localbitcoins.. a service where you could find ppl in your city that sell btc and you could arrange to meet and buy btc for cash!
I remember paperwallets and having to go through hell to make a wallet safe.. like having to use a safe clean computer and generate a paperwallet and write down the private key... or maybe print it with a safe clean printer and so on..
Seeds were not an option.. only priv keys and jason files (but the .jason was digital so ppl avoided them)..
I remember the ico mania when ethereum was the only smart contract platform and it started launching coins (icos) on it.. sooo many new promising projects (the first erc20s) that ppl would ape and make money on..
Golem! Where ppl would rent out their cpu and gpu.. Augur! A prediction market.. Fistblood! A gaming e sports platform..
Then at the end of the ico mania, Maker happened! This was the start of the DeFi.. Ppl were like wooow.. this thing can do whatever banks do but it's decentralized!
Then the privacy wars as well... monero, zcash and all the z projects.. pivx.. dash.. decred..
I remember when doge was the only memecoin and ppl would make fun of it's existance..
Damn the market has evolved so much...
Almost all of these projects are now dead.. There are hundreds of smart contracts platforms now and millions of altcoins... Utility is considered a joke.. millions on memecoins in the market and millions of ppl considering them good investments..
Hundreds of wallets.. Hundreds of exchanges.. Mainstream is here.. Scamming is at all time highs.. Greed is what moves this market not excitement for a better worldwide financial system..
All cyberpank mentality is gone.. Now it's all about grifting, larping and using this market to make more fiat money..
I used to be excited about the future of crypto.. I'm not anymore... there's still hope tho.. but if we gonna get there.. bad things need to happen first and kinda start over..
Maybe we're close to the peak considering world leaders launching coins and all sorts of crime happening and add to that the inevitable regulations now that crypto is mainstream..
Really interested to see what the crypto market will look like 10years from now...