Large price drops in the crypto and stock markets have left investors reeling through the start of 2022. Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market cap, fell more than 50% to less than $34K, where RSI reached its most ‘oversold’ since the brief crash in March 2020 (Suberg). Traditional equity investments are also in the red, with tech stocks and bond markets hit hardest. The plunge occurred amid threatened interest rate hikes from the U.S. Federal Reserve, decades-high inflation, and supply chain disruption due to the pandemic (Sommer).

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A typical investor response — liquidating for cash — is far from a guaranteed safe play in such an inflationary environment. Many still choose to hold onto their assets and hedge against devaluation of the U.S. Dollar. Crypto investors are HODLing before watching the red move to the upside again, and are quietly keeping tabs on tech progress of different blockchain projects through AMAs, community forums, and news reports. Meanwhile, eCash development continues to accelerate through the downturn. Every eCash engineer has worked through at least 1 bear market, and its experienced dev team are on track to complete more ambitious roadmap updates this year, which includes the introduction of bulletproof security and guaranteed transactions.

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“Crypto prices are down, but that’s nothing new,” said eCash founder Amaury Sechet. He continues,  “Crypto is a competitive place. You have some of the most talented engineers in the world working on incredibly sophisticated products. And you’re not just working to outperform Ethereum or Bitcoin — you are also competing with nation states and central banks.” Indeed, 2021 saw a number of upstart cryptocurrencies outperforming the old guard in both price appreciation and technical performance. Solana (SOL) and Avalanche (AVAX) enjoyed significant gains amid hype for their novel consensus algorithms. These two were voted the best crypto of 2021 by growth rate, but even so, prices came plummeting down  — AVAX price dropped by 50%, and SOL by 60% from its highest price point since last November until now. Yes they’ve suffered painful losses, and so have many others. Users are still holding onto their bets, eyeing their favorite cryptocurrencies’ tech and ecosystem potential as key indicators for leading the rebound.

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eCash (XEC) — is the only cryptocurrency that will use both proof of work as its foundation and Avalanche proof of stake for consensus and security. This will offer some of the same technical advantages of new cryptos like SOL and AVAX, such as staking rewards and near-instant confirmations. Unlike SOL and AVAX, the hybrid proof of work eCash consensus will continue some of the old-school security features that made Bitcoin so successful, like its strong subjectivity, transparency, and reliability.

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“Investing in crypto is like investing in tech with visibility of what's happening as they develop the software, so we all see the fumbles in real time. It produces volatility, but it also brings transparency,” said crypto investment fund CEO Greg King in a recent Coindesk interview. When asked about the bear market, he believes: “End of year crypto values will be much higher than they are now, as inflation is affecting both the blockchain industry as well as traditional tech equities in a macro sense.”

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eCash, which escaped the technical disruptions of Solana despite being a younger project, is well positioned to catch the next wave of crypto investment. “We are still a new crypto,” continued senior developer Joey King. “We didn’t know there would be a bull market when we started building. Other successful projects — like Avalanche, Solana, and Polkadot — were more mature entering the last bull market, and their price performance reflected that.” For every crypto winter there was an even bigger bull run that followed.

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And what about the next bull market?

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“We’re ready.”

Sources:

1) Coindesk. “Are We In A Crypto Winter?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtM4T5Dh9Yw&t=318s.

2) Suberg, William. “BTC Price Falls to $34K as Bitcoin RSI Reaches Most ‘Oversold” Since March 2020 Crash”. https://cointelegraph.com/news/btc-price-falls-to-34k-as-bitcoin-rsi-reaches-most-oversold-since-march-2020-crash. Jan 22nd, 2022.

3) Sommer, Jeff. “The Markets Tremble As The Fed Lifeline Fades”. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/21/business/economy/stock-markets-down-inflation.html Jan 21st, 2022.

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