Beware - don't let cryptocurrency kill your core business

You’re probably wondering how Blockchain and cryptocurrency, probably the biggest tech revolution after the internet, can kill your core business.

Well, here’s how!

Of late, you might have noticed that varying Bitcoin prices and other cryptocurrencies have become a hot topic of discussion. From students to college grads, from team members of tech/non-tech companies to individual small business owners, from founders/core management teams of companies to writers/journalists, every damn body is doing one of three things — worrying about their invested money, regretting not having invested, or investing a great deal of time in determining other potential coins that can make them rich.

There is nothing wrong with finding and researching investment opportunities in cryptocurrencies. But there are two things that need to be taken care of while investing — speculation and fundamental analysis of the particular sector you are investing in.

Now ask yourself, “Am I really interested in the fundamentals of Blockchain or is it just speculation? Do I even know what a specific coin does or am I just investing on the basis of a few blogs and YouTube videos?

Most people are investing on the basis of pricing charts and everybody knows that cryptocurrency is a more speculative investment opportunity as compared to other sectors like the stock market, real estate, silver/gold, etc. With this, keeping track of your earnings becomes a part of your daily routine.

Have you ever noticed how much time you are investing in tracking your profit/loss numbers?

If you are an employee of an IT company, working nine hours a day, how much time have you spent on crypto pricing websites to check the prices of Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies?

For example, if you check the site every hour, for the next 5–10 minutes or sometimes more than that, you will end up discussing it with your colleague. This will pique his interest, and he might interrupt your work to tell you something like, “Hey, the Bitcoin price has surged to almost 30 percent from the time you last eyed it,” and this will tickle your brains to leave the actual work and focus on the ‘surge’. You will then get into a discussion with more people within/outside your company. Now the ones who haven’t invested will regret it, sharing their fear of missing out with others without realising that these speculative talks will affect their productivity. This chain keeps on growing, including more and more people, resulting in a real blockchain of people wasting time.

This actually reminds me of a recent incident. During an India vs Pakistan cricket match, I went to a nearby shop and asked the shopkeeper, a crazy cricket fan, for a few items. He made me wait a really long time for a few common items just because his mind was totally focused on Virat and his sixes! Although he didn’t refuse to give me the items, his face clearly indicated that I was disturbing him. He didn’t care much about the requirement of the customer at that point of time. Cryptocurrencies are doing the same thing to people.

At CodeCrunch Techlabs, we work on the product side as well as providing IT services. A few months ago, I noticed a lack of productivity and focus towards our running projects and also once missed the deadline. So I got into a detailed performance analysis of the team and found cryptotrading to be a major cause. If every other employee at an MNC or even a small business keeps wasting 10 percent of their daily working time, overall it will result in the loss of thousands of dollars in revenues for the company. I even enquired with my friends who are running their companies and got the same report of team members spending more time on crypto-price analysis than actual work.

So, here’s what my team and I did to save ourselves from wasting time and getting into any kind of speculations that affected the overall efficiency:

We got into a collective discussion regarding this and finally, with everyone’s consent, decided to make it a rule of ‘no crypto lookups’ during working hours. Instead, we started discussing the potential of upcoming technologies during lunch and tea breaks and also started working on them. If you’re also running a tech company, ask your team to gain learnings on Blockchain, smart contracts-solidity, etc in their free time, which would be a win-win rather than wasting time looking at fluctuating price tickers.

This works only if every member of the organisation contributes towards it equally. Hence, it becomes a great deal for a business owner to have sturdy control on FOMO and lead the focus in the right direction during working hours, which will give a strong message to your team to follow the same. Don't let your company look like a stock trading firm of Dalal Street and always have the focus set on the actual work.

Regarding the investment thing, if you wish for a long-term plan, that’s well and good but always remember, in any kind of trading like the stock market or crypto, the more the speculation, the more the diversion, which in the long term might prove fatal for your business!

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of YourStory.)