### I've watched and been involved in cryptocurrency for a long time. Most situations are NOT LOGICAL...

![cryptocurrency-illogical.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmaREm3ywY7M494PH9qbyAzGhAdk6xTC4qHMzihgSSwvVR/cryptocurrency-illogical.jpg)

Now I do realize most people on steemit have their first introduction to cryptocurrency this way... there is only one way to learn. Selling STEEM, by first getting validated as a user on Bittrex or Poloniex, or any other exchange.

## If you go to coinmarketcap.com - are you confused? What is good? What is bad? It is hard to tell..

In the early days (say 3-4 years ago), scammers would launch a new competing coin to Bitcoin, they'd fork and dump the code, get everyone excited by mining the new coin.. everyone would start mining and selling it... and then the new coin would die.

What did those dev / developers do?  They kept doing it again and again.

...and then...

ICO became a new term.  "Initial Coin Offering", where you only had to do this:

* Write a whitepaper for design
* Get up a website, flashy logos, a written promise, and a count down timer
* People would utterly throw money at you.

Follow most of these _fantastic_ ICO coins, and a year later they are dead.

The chains get stuck. The marketing budget faltered.  The hype died down. Now you own a large potion of "_useless coin_"

## What what has changed?

Nothing.  Except the users have.  They buy and sell, depending on what coinmarketcap.com says...

#### TEST YOURSELF
* Ever heard of bittrex, poloniex, btc-e or Mt. Gox?
* What is currently worth more to you: Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ripple, Ethereum or ?

Of course many  people have heard of bittrex, poloniex, btc-e and even Mt. Gox..


#### TEST #2:

* Ever heard of feathercoin? AuroraCoin? Noirshares? Cryptsy?

Of course only old time users heard of these coins and exchanges.  But most new users will just buy/sell whatever is trending today.

feathercoin, Auroracoin, and Noirshares are basically dead.  When they first launched, they had a lot of hype.

People seem to buy the "popular coin of the hour" even if that coin has no chance of being designed properly for scalability or long term growth.

### Where did the initial coin devs/scammers go?

* They are  now into more elaborate snake oil scams and ICO's...

* Scammers knew they could release a new blockchain and continue to do it again and with different logos and graphics, people would fall for it a 3rd, 4th, or 10th time. (and they did).

BE CAREFUL.

Research everything.

Trust your instincts.

Don't buy hype.

This is only way for you to be safe. :)