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Is Delisting of an Altcoin a Kiss of Death?

Altcoins of DoomBreaking news from last night on Poloniex might have some highly negative implications for some altcoins. Specifically, this announcement, which caused more than a shock on the Poloniex exchange:

On May 2, 2017, the following will be delisted: BBR, BITS, C2, CURE, HZ, IOC, MYR, NOBL, NSR, QBK, QORA, QTL, RBY, SDC, UNITY, VOX, XMG.

Whoa! That’s quite the list.

Pretty much all of the coins on that list went down big time; this is to be expected, since Polo is the largest exchange and traders could very easily assume that these delistings were a vote of “no confidence.”

QED: QORA

This chart will show you how one particular altcoin, the thinly traded QORA, was impacted.

QORA DropDisclosure: we owned small amounts of QORA and – crazy enough – we were able to liquidate quickly and still have a (TINY) profit on the overall trade. (Because we accumulated QORA during drops over the past couple months.)

But, TBH, this news does not bode well AT ALL for QORA, and here’s why: it’s only listed on one other exchange. CCEDK is a Danish exchange that we have just learned about…this morning, when researching where else QORA can be traded. (We checked yesterday on Bittrex and Bitfinex and, well, nada.)

If you use Twitter as a judge, the lack of tweets from QORA also doesn’t do them any favors. And a whopping 10 BILLION coins outstanding means that the coin, which trades as of this writing (08:00 in the US Midwest) at 3 Satoshi, has a market cap of ~$378,000 US.

Will other coins fare any better?

Oddly enough, we were working on a different blog post yesterday afternoon, using VOX as an example. Here’s a screenshot that we took in the middle of the day, before everything went south.

Fibonacci In Action

At the time of this screener, we held VOX and it was trading at around 3100 Satoshi. It has now dropped to 960 or so. It likely won’t come back; though the Voxelus platform looks interesting, it’s tough to find anywhere else you can trade the coin.

As Always: Buyer Beware

The reason for the delisting is likely that these aren’t very liquid coins. Hint: if you’re rarely cracking the top 20 or so coins, you’re not on anyone’s radar, and you’re not part of even an occasional pump-and-dump, well, that doesn’t bode well for your long-term trading prognosis.

And if you’re not widely used, either, that’s a pretty bad sign. QORA’s market cap puts it barely in the top 200, but not significant enough to register with the masses.

If you were buying these coins hoping for a pop, that’s okay. But, if the long-term fundamentals weren’t there in the first place, delisting amounts to ripping off the band-aid on a gigantic flesh wound.

Weekend Ripple Developments

Hey! We drafted this on Sunday morning, then went about our business, then…well there was even MORE growth in the Ripple price. See below for our take on what this means, and check out Coinmarketcap.com for the latest price news.

While you may have been otherwise occupied this weekend, the altcoin markets were hard at work driving the price of Ripple (XRP) to heights that they haven’t seen in quite some time. First, some tweets to summarize the weekend Ripple developments.

But wait, there’s more…

(Thanks to Smith and Crown for the chart.)

Now there are 3

Only three cryptocurrencies now own a market cap of $1B (USD) or higher: Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ripple.

Why now – especially when Ripple not once but TWICE had a market cap of more than $1B?

(See below chart from CoinMarketCap.com.)

We’ll make a couple bets as to why that happened now, and what that means for your wallet.

Number 1: It’s becoming the back office that makes transactions possible. A good chunk of the Ripple community sees this as a missed opportunity for Ripple.

Number 2: The big banks are getting involved – and the news is somewhat buried. See this writeup from Cryptocoinsnews.com about MUFG (they’re huge) getting on board.

Next step? Who knows…

We’re pretty certain that what Ripple has earned over the past few days could be summed up in one word: legitimacy.

Since the beginning of time, money has needed to have perceived value in order to be legitimate. You could trade rocks for food back in the middle ages, but, at some point, the provider of food is going to want to see a rock that looks like it has some value. Shiny rock, or well-polished rock, or rock that sparkles like diamond or is made of something like silver or gold.

The fact that Ripple has (1) crossed into the 10-digit territory and (2) is being used by big banks adds a shiny, well-polished sparkle to its value proposition. And that means good things.

FOMO, FUD, Pump and Dump, and Other Trading Caveats

FUDLook at that list…so many coins! So many wild mood swings! So much volatility!

Seriously – if you’re new to trading altcoins and crypto and you want to move beyond the mainstream coins with the high market caps and the household names, you might see some of these and think: PROFIT! I can get in and out, make a quick buck, double my money, and keep doing that til I retire as a Bitcoin Millionaire!

Wait. Hold on. Just a second. You’re likely to get taken for a ride – and you might not like the ending of this roller coaster. Here’s what we mean.

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FOMO

Of course, “Fear Of Missing Out” is a widely used term these days. If you don’t go out to the bar, you might miss big fun. If you don’t watch the show, you might miss a cultural experience. And, if you don’t invest in the next big altcoin, you’re going to miss out on big profits.

Careful of that last one.

If we’re using the example from this screengrab, Einsteinium, we see a 64% bump in the price – which, crazy enough, is sorta kinda the norm for some of these altcoins. You don’t want to miss out on THAT ACTION, do ya?

But the FOMO danger here is that old saw about trying to time the market. Take a look at this chart, from the past couple days of EMC2.

EMC2 chart

Oh. Remember to time the market at your own peril.

FUD?

Yes, Elmer. FUD. “Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.”

In the top screengrab, look immediately above and immediately below the Einsteinium price: STEEM is down almost 12%, Shadow is down more than 7%. You could guess that what drove EMC2 up might be the same thing that drove STEEM and Shadow down. Fear (maybe of missing out, maybe that it’s not the greatest coin on the planet), Uncertainty – because, really, what do we know about ANY of these coins and their long-term prospects? – and Doubt because there’s likely somebody on Reddit who has you convinced that Shadow is toast.

Pump and Dump

This is a classic tactic employed by small-cap stocks; depending upon how it’s done, it’s possibly unethical, possibly illegal in the stock market. Simply put, first a group hypes a stock, creating perceived value, and, they hope, driving up the price. That’s the “Pump.” Once the group gets the stock where they want it to go, they cash out, take their profits, and leave those who bought in high holding the bag.

But this is the wild west, so anything goes in these markets, right?

Here’s where, IMHO, Poloniex does a great job with their “Trollbox,” or the chatroom that’s attached to their trading platform. Start saying things like “wow, XYZ coin is going to the moon!” or “XYZ will hit 10,000 tomorrow, better get yours now!” and you get banned for an hour or a day, depending upon how egregious your sins are.

They’re trying to keep folks from pumping and dumping – especially with thinly traded coins whose prices might be the most volatile.

Trading caveats like these might make you ask: what should I do?

Research. Investigate. Ask Questions.

We don’t give investment advice here, and past performance of any coin is not indicative of future results. But, really, are you going to base your investment on what some rando says on the chatbox?

We’d encourage you to look around, visit other sites, check out the underlying fundamentals of any of these coins. Smith and Crown is a great place to start – look at the market cap, the age of the coin, how many will be released. Visit the individual sites of these coins, too. And don’t forget chatrooms, Reddit, Slack, and the like; you’re often a quick Google search away from the answers to the questions you didn’t even know you had.

FOMO FUD