How does this latest crash compare to previous ones, or even to regular stock market drops — and what does it mean for investors?
Overall, we’d urge you to do your own research if you were to invest in Safemoon. Common investment advice states that the cryptocurrencies which perform the best over the longer term are those with real-world utility, which Safemoon doesn’t seem to have at present. Although the developers may improve the protocol and create some valuable use cases, there is still the chance that this coin could be a ‘memecoin’.

In 2016, this became apparent with the DAO hack. One way to fix the problem was to implement what’s known as a “hard fork,” which would essentially update the Ethereum-based software to fix the technical gaffe that caused the hack to begin with. But DAO users had to agree to this change, and there were dissenters. Though the hard fork was approved, it created two active blockchains with two different sets of rules. Ultimately, this hack–coupled with the inability to deal with it–caused the DAO to end in 2016.
Cryptocurrency transactions are recorded on a decentralized ledger. This ledger is called a blockchain. Every time crypto is bought or sold, the transaction is added to the blockchain — a public database of the transactions, which is available to other crypto holders. Anyone can join and participate in the blockchain, but data on individual transactions — and the people involved with them — are secured using cryptography (the basis for the term cryptocurrency). For each transaction added to the blockchain, there’s a digital validation process to verify it and prevent fraud.