Coinbase made headlines recently as the first crypto exchange to go public on the Nasdaq, and established firms like Fidelity are adding crypto to their investment offerings. The adoption of online payments using crypto is growing too, thanks to brands ranging from legacy publisher (and NextAdvisor partner) TIME to digital payment facilitator PayPal and international auction house Sotheby’s.
One example is the negative correlation that occurs between Ethereum and its associated factors around June 2016 (left facing arrows at the top and just left of the horizontal middle of the Ethereum scalograms). During this time interval, one of the most well-known applications at the time, the DAO, built on top of the Ethereum environment, was hacked. It can be seen that all factors are negatively correlated in the short term with the price during this time interval. As a result of the uncertainty generated by the hack, price dropped sharply, but activity on social media and interest increased (causing the negative correlation). The negative relationship can be seen during the 2–4 day band for all factors.

Dow, at the time, simply could not come up with a good reason for the crypto’s insane performance. The only logical explanation: It’s a bubble. His views were especially prescient. He told Bloomberg this month that he made a profit twice due to this canny call.
Altcoins also sometimes differ in the method of verification used to authenticate transactions. While some altcoins use Proof-of-Work systems, others use Proof-of-Stake consensus, which replaces miners with validators. Proof-Of-Stake mining requires a lot less energy and fewer resources than Proof-Of-Work systems since Proof-Of-Work miners have to do much more ‘work’ to mine blocks.