In recent times, we have seen an increasing number of publicly traded companies openly admit that they have been investing in Bitcoin. Among these companies is MicroStrategy Inc. which holds close to BTC 40,000 – a whopping 0.2% of the cryptocurrency’s total supply. Twitter and other social media platforms went on a similar scramble after hedge fund manager Paul Tudor and renowned investor Stanley Druckenmiller publicly disclosed their investments.
This entails that the prevalent attitudes within the crypto community have hardly shifted since the ICO boom of 2017. For the vast majority in the industry, it is a matter of “fill your bags, we’re going to the moon!” Though the crypto community is synonymous with risk-taking investment decisions, proponents maintain a fine line between recklessness and taking calculated risks: if it’s too good to be true, then it *must* be a scam.
Yet ironically, Bitcoin faced the exact same suspicion when it achieved 10 to 50x returns during its early days, with many calling it ‘drug money’, a vehicle for money laundering, and a speculative financial tool that was used by disestablishment platforms such as WikiLeaks to offset sanctions imposed by mainstream commercial banks.
Bitcoin only started to garner interest among the masses after realizing that the cryptocurrency underwent a dramatic appreciation in price over a 10-year period. Now, the genie is out of the bottle and people are looking to make big bucks off of crypto whether through legitimate means or otherwise. Understandably, because of the prevalence of unscrupulous elements in the crypto space, investors and traders have learned to view projects that overtly emphasize price appreciation with suspicion as Ponzi schemes or scams.
While it is wise to be cautious, the crypto community’s level of cynicism, and to a certain extent, hypocrisy is alarming given that the vast majority are solely driven by speculative profit-making. For the vast majority of participants in the space, the procedure follows three simple steps: buy, pump, and dump. In fact, most ICOs that sprung around during the ICO boom did not have economically viable products and the vast majority of the ones that made it out three years later have not been able to produce anything worthwhile in spite of raising millions of dollars in Ethereum.
As the community enters a new era of ‘Finance 3.0’, or decentralized finance (DeFi) as it is popularly called, we have witnessed the proliferation of digital gold, peer-to-peer lending platforms, and programs that offer the possibility of earning interest and providing liquidity to exchanges for market-making activities. None of these are by any means “new” ideas; all of them exist throughout the centralized financial sector, particularly among banks, credit unions, and brokers. What has changed is that these products have evolved in a decentralized fashion to ensure they are more affordable, accessible, and trustless.
One such project involved in DeFi is HEX which took the simple idea of bringing certificates of deposit (CDs), which are ubiquitous in banking, onto the blockchain. A CD works in a very simple manner: an individual who holds a certain amount of funds can enter an agreement with a bank where they deposit the funds in exchange for a CD for a chosen period from which they earn interest.
This is often a much better way for people to offset the effects of inflation, while banks happily provide them as they are a good way of obtaining additional liquidity that does not necessarily need to be withdrawn immediately. This is precisely what HEX does: an individual is able to purchase HEX which they can then use to stake on go.hex.com for a period of time that they choose. Some users have even opted to stake their HEX tokens for around 10 years.
Why would anyone opt to go through with this? Simple! HEX incentivizes users to stake their funds for a longer period of time by being rewarded greater interest. HEX further incentivizes users to leave their funds by penalizing early withdrawals, much in the same way that banks do. However, where banks keep the vast majority of the profits made by these deposits, HEX allows loyal stakers to earn their profit, making it a truly decentralized financial product.
Whereas gold has seen a 58x increase in value over the last century, Ethereum has been able to achieve 10,000x in returns in only 2.5 years. HEX has been on a sharp 115x upward trajectory in price in only 129 days, making it one of the most profitable investments in the crypto community. Proponents of HEX are gearing up for the BigPayDay on 19 November 2020 where 200 billion HEX tokens will be distributed to all who opt to stake in HEX.
You’ve heard that right: that is the equivalent of an astonishing USD 1.6 billion as of the time
of writing. Looking to get a piece of the pie? Don’t miss the opportunity to get your free HEX!
Disclaimer: This article must not be considered as news/advice.
