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My question now is, since this bull run has been tagged with major speculations, how can a potential investor navigate his or her way through a long-term, meaningful and financially impactful projects as against those riding on just the hypes?
Although your question seems to be very reasonable, I think that it is not well posed.
I've very recently bought Nassim Nicholas Taleb's book
Fooled by Randomness and, although I haven't started it yet, I think that the conclusion I will reach after reading it will be that although you try to make reasonable investments, chance always plays a major role.
It seems evident that going all-in long-term in hyped shitcoins is not a good strategy, but what I mean is that even investing in strong projects long-term projected, even in Bitcoin itself, could go wrong. So be careful, never go all-in or, although it sounds lick a cliché, invest what you can't afford to lose.