2018 Stellar roadmap

  The difference is crypto is a chance to get in at the top 
  for once.

Not if you buy other cryptocoins like Bitcoin or Ethereum that someone else created for nothing to sell to bagholders. All you're doing there is becoming a late adopter and you must pray you're not too late in the pyramid that you'll be able to sell to some other speculator at a price higher than you bought meanwhile you're at a 1000x-10,000x disadvantage to anyone who acquired the coin for pennies/fractions of the cost to you. Simple game theory.

Anyone who wants to just needs to create their own crypto-asset and market it like the others to convince "speculators" it's worth purchasing.

Notice how bitcoin/cryptocoin advocates tell others to "HODL" - psychological manipulation is needed to maintain the artificial market scarcity as there's no real demand, use, or acceptance from retailers. [1]

If you're genuinely concerned about control of the money supply, you would voice concern about how cryptocoins are majority owned by only a few hundred people [2] and because of how tether [3] has been marketed and used on exchanges it's essentially like the federal reserve of cryptocurrencies except it's just 2 guys and it's alleged to be backed by nothing which could mean they're stealing large amounts of cryptocoins. Given all the theft in the cryptocoin system, one might wonder if regulations and security standards exist for a reason. What happens if thieves become the majority wealth holders of all the cryptocoins?

[1] https://stripe.com/blog/ending-bitcoin-support

https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail...

[2] http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-inequality-2014-1

[3] https://medium.com/@bitfinexed/

You'd think so, but not really.

Amazon's balance sheet [0] shows assets minus liabilities of $19 billion. So the "assets" that shareholders "own" are less than 3% of the company's $690 billion market cap.

Not to mention that shareholders don't "own" those assets in any real, tangible sense.

If you look around at any form of wealth, from the balance in your checking account to stocks, bonds and even the title on real property, it's all invisible, intangible and socially constructed.

Not as different from cryptocurrency as one would like to think.

[0] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000101872417...