Did you read last week's article, Two Truths and a Lie About Altcoins?

Let’s do a little more of that.

Truth #3—Experimental technology, all of it

Did you hear about that awesome altcoin project with its partnerships, great technology, actual usage, and adoption?

I’ve heard about a lot of those altcoins for years. One day, I’ll find one.

Given the pace of innovation, discovery, and development, that moment will come sooner than most people think.

Even Ethereum, arguably the most developed and utilized altcoin, has only niche applications. Its founders, developers, and community think it's so flawed that they’re replacing it with a new version.

That’s the whole point! 

Altcoins are all experimental. Expect smart contract hacks, crummy wallets, protocol failures, bugs, exploits, frauds, delays, and bad code.

Terra Foundation had arguably the best-designed wallet, lots of interesting applications, functional smart contracts that passed their audits, and platforms that actually worked.

The problem?

Everything depended on its stablecoin, UST. Once UST failed, the project was useless.

Such are the risks you take with experimental technology. Success is not just about user fit, good design, solid tokenomics, strong community, and savvy marketing.

So much has to come together in just the right way but nobody yet knows exactly what configuration to put it in so that it all works. Serendipity, risk, luck, effort, creativity, money, vision, and timing play a role.

As a result, it’s ok to grade on a curve.

All these problems will get worked out over time. When you get in before the kinks get worked out and the technology goes mainstream, you benefit from the growth along the way.

Truth #4–Nobody knows what matters yet

Analysts try to apply discounted cash flow metrics to tokens that have no cash flow. EBIDTA models to assets that have no earnings or depreciation. TVL metrics that seem to show no correlation to actual usage or token prices.  

Are you buying into that?

We’re all figuring this stuff out as we go along.

Do protocols capture value from NFTs and businesses their users create? Which governance models deliver the most value to stakeholders? Can you compare transaction volumes across architectures that differ in how they process transactions? When users are pseudonymous and possibly fraudulent, can you depend on user growth as an evaluation metric?

As a feature for Crypto is Easy subscribers, I publish occasional reports on smaller altcoins you probably haven’t heard of yet.

With each report, you get a thorough introduction to the project including its history, goals, and team, my honest and unbiased price potential, the state of adoption of this project, the things that COULD go wrong, where to buy the token, and how to stake it.

All of my altcoins are legit but most are not well-known and it’s hard to predict how the market and technology will evolve. 

For example, will Web3.0 platforms run on their own cryptocurrencies? Might they exist as a collection of protocols and smart contracts on some bigger, underlying platform like Ethereum or Avalanche?

Maybe Web3.0 creators will serve content from global, distributed storage platforms like 0chain and Arweave, where they’ll store their content locally and use apps and NFTs to monetize, share, and license their creations and rights to their assets.

If that happens, tremendous value will flow to self-custodial storage and distribution platforms that manage how you share and monetize your data—perhaps delivered on a routing platform like Syntropy, beyond the reach of internet service providers. This will make “Web 3.0 tokens” obsolete. 

Or not. How can anybody know?

Lie #2: You need to wait for the bull market

Some say friends don’t let friends buy altcoins during bear markets. Others say to save cash for new projects that will come along in the next few years.

Let me get this straight:

Your friends want you to wait for prices to go higher and then put your money into tokens that haven’t accomplished anything? Knowing that altcoin prices drop 50-80% all the time, even during bull markets?

They’re telling you to not buy into projects that have actual users, real development, strong communities, and traction while their tokens trade at historically low prices? 

Bear markets are awesome. You can find lots of interesting projects at low prices. You get to interact with earnest teams and communities that care about the projects. Why else would they stick around?

Some “old” projects still have plenty of room to run, especially if they can survive a bear market. I included them in my Top 100 list.

Bear markets are the only time you can reliably outpace bitcoin’s returns with altcoins. No altcoin has ever outpaced bitcoin from peak to peak, only during arbitrary time periods between the bottom to the top. 

If you wait, you’re gambling on an altseason that may never come or your ability to time the market perfectly and pick only the winning altcoins, not any losers.

Bold assumptions, if we’re honest with each other.

You also give up staking rewards and earnings from delegations and liquidity mining, all for a chance to buy at the same price or higher at some future time.

Also, how do you know we are not already in a bull market? As long as bitcoin's price stays above $15,600, it is by definition a bull market, even if it doesn’t feel like it.

Don’t worry about it. You might be surprised by how well things will turn out, in time.

Mark Helfman publishes the Crypto is Easy newsletter. He is also the author of three books and a top bitcoin writer on Medium and Hacker Noon. Learn more about him in his bio.