With Ether (ETH) hitting 380 USD as of August 2nd and surging past the 30% price mark for 2020, many are claiming that the highly anticipated blockchain boom is finally on the horizon. This is not because of the price of the token per se, but it is rather due to the implications of this surge in price mark percentage. While stock prices within the centralized financial world serve to quantifiably reflect a company’s performance, crypto prices are still heavily influenced by unpredictable qualitative factors, especially the “trendiness” and “hype” of a certain coin.
Although all new technologies do require initial momentum, a product’s hype is normally amassed either by surpassing competition or the lack thereof: both conditions, however, yield “deserved” hype. Due to the sheer number of applications that blockchain encompasses, and the current lack of technical understanding, the hype surrounding the crypto domain is scattered, unreliable, and often short-lived.
Emerging blockchain projects tend to either build over and improve an already existing platform, venture into a new and unexplored territory, or both. In either scenario, each firm is offering a unique service/product with the main goal being the monopolizing of a specific branch of blockchain before the technology’s imminent boom. Firm-specific services, combined with the current high barrier to entry (operational costs, lack of technical information, required capital reserves, etc.), effectively narrow the competitive scope for blockchain startups.
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