What Is a White Swan Event?
A White Swan event is an unpredictable, rare occurrence that has a major impact on the world. It can be either positive or negative in nature and often involves some kind of disruption to existing systems or processes. Examples of White Swan events include natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, and hurricanes; technological breakthroughs like the invention of the internet; political upheavals such as revolutions and coups d’état; economic collapses like stock market crashes; pandemics like COVID-19; and even social movements like #MeToo. These events are usually unexpected and have far-reaching consequences for individuals, businesses, governments, societies, economies—and sometimes entire civilizations.
White Swan events differ from Black Swans in that they are not necessarily bad occurrences but rather ones with significant impacts regardless of whether those effects are good or bad. They also tend to occur more frequently than Black Swans do because their causes may be easier to identify ahead of time due to certain patterns or trends in society at large. For example, while it was impossible to predict when exactly a pandemic would strike our planet this year (2020), there were signs that something similar could happen given how viruses had been spreading around the globe over recent years prior to its arrival.
White Swans in the Crypto Market
White swans in the crypto market refer to events that are unexpected and have a large impact on the price of cryptocurrencies. These events can be either positive or negative, but they usually cause significant volatility in prices. For example, when Bitcoin surged past $20,000 for the first time ever in December 2017, it was considered a white swan event as no one had expected such an increase so quickly. Similarly, when China announced its ban on cryptocurrency trading and initial coin offerings (ICOs) in September 2017, this too was seen as a white swan event due to its suddenness and magnitude of effect on the markets.
The term “white swan” is derived from Nassim Taleb’s book The Black Swan: The Impact of Highly Improbable which discusses how rare occurrences can have huge impacts on our lives and economies. In terms of crypto markets specifically, these events often lead to extreme price movements both up and down depending upon their nature. As such investors should always remain vigilant about potential news stories or announcements that could affect their investments significantly – whether positively or negatively – since these types of events tend to happen without warning.