Most people, especially new crypto "experts" focus mainly on market capitalization and some other "superficial "indicators of value. Like team, development, website, roadmap, cash-flow and whitepaper (for the more "experienced" traders).
They fail to recognize that Market Capitalization = Price X Circulating Supply. And that's just an illusion, a simple number that isn't a precise indication of value but rather, an approximation and a superficial representation the current value.
True indicators of value for a blockchain that is it's use-case and community
- What is it used for?
- What problem does it solve and does it really need a blockchain or is it just a way to raise money for a project?
- How many people use it and how many do you think will use it in the future?
- Will it go mainstream?
- Can it handle mass adoption?
- How well does it handle heavy traffic?
- What is the transaction cost and speed?
If you ask me these are the main factors in evaluating the value and future of a blockchain. With that taken in consideration and adding the "superficial" factors mentioned above, combined make a great assessment and can give you a closer, more accurate indicator of value and perspective.
STOP focusing on market capitalization and cash- low because it will get you nowhere
Mindlessly looking at the graphs will get you nowhere and will give you no clue of what to expect in the future.They will just make you base your opinion on price movements, making you miss the big picture and more susceptible to emotional trading, FUD, FOMO, HYPE and scare- selling. Don't get caught up in the graphs and search deeper to find the TRUE value.
Think of the future and see coins as companies in some manner, and ask yourself is this company going to solve a million dollar problem or a trillion tollar problem.
Focus on the technology behind a blockchain and solutions it has to offer, usability, community and goals to get a better picture of what to expect in the future.
Great indicator of value is Block'tivity
An amazing tool that takes in consideration some of the above-mentioned factors and nicely displays it in easy to understand fashion. Upon opening the site you will be greeted by a well-written message that everyone should read and take in consideration before ever checking into a new coin that is:
One way to consider a blockchain project is through its market cap. Another way, closer to the real value, is observing the activity on the blockchain. Lots of FUD and HYPE are responsible for "misplaced" capital in the cryptocurrency space. Here, we are observing which project is actually being used by people, which is in our opinion, the best predictive indicator of value you can have.
Going further down you will see a table of the top 13 best performing blockchains, a table I proudly say is owned by the Steem blockchain for the past couple of months. Today is no different as we witness a site we are so very used to seeing. That is Steem blockchain in the first place with 1.5M transactions in the last 24h and a 0,13% blockchain usage, barely even scratching the surface of what it's capable of handling.
Ethereum is in second place with 888k transactions with 50% usage (much better than when it had 95% and more for a couple of days causing insanely slow and expensive transactions). Ethereum is as most probably already know, having a hard time with scaling, mainly caused by CryptoKitties and other projects building on top of the Ethereum blockchain.
Third place is yet another
project, Bitshares 650k transactions with 0.05% usage. Bitshares is a decentralized exchange, that is slowly but surely gaining popularity in the crypto space as more people are waking up and realizing the ever-present dangers of centralized exchanges (the most worrying of which is that they can straight up steal your coins and state they were hacked like Mt. Gox did back in 2014.
- Suprizingly BTC is in 4th (I bet most would have thought BTC is amongst the highest ranking blockchains) place with a meager 250k transactions but all-most falling apart using 100% of it's capacity causing a lot of unconfirmed and slow transactions and stupidly high transaction fees (10-50$). Who is going to pay for that? And how did BTC go so far away from it's original purpose?
The banksters took control over BTC and are making it a Store of Value, something like digital gold. BTC mining is centralized and the miners are getting the insanely high transaction fees. It has become so absurd that are actually getting more profits from the transaction fees than what they get for block rewards.
- Fifth place is Golos (Russian version of Steemit) with 164k transactions and 0.001% usage. No surprize there, I can only see Golos goin higher up the table in the future, as more people in Russia come to accept it.
What do all the indicators mean?
- Activity shows the number of transactions Tx in the last 24 hours.
- Average shows the average number of Tx in the last 7 days
- Record is the highest number of Tx in 24h a blockchain ever made
- Market Cap = Price X Circulating Supply
- AVI or Activity Valuation Index takes the Bitcoin value (market cap) and the number of transactions (Tx) per day and makes it an index set to "1". Every other blockchain is then compared to Bitcoin for reference and is given an index. The index grows when the blockchain is very active and its market cap is low suggesting that a blockchain is undervalued.
- Capacity Utilizatioin Index (CUI) is representing blockchain usage and the amount of remaining available capacity
All above-mentioned points except Market Cap are a great indicator of value and give a great insight and help in evaluating the REAL value of a blockchain. Taking that in consideration you can make better decisions in the future and make educated decisions on where to put your money in, instead of blindly throwing your money at a coin like a gambler, expecting to 100x in a year. That probably won't happen, unless you are damn lucky but don't depend on luck and inform yourself before making any investments.
Having said that I would just like to mention something I said many times before but still want to remind you about it in case you missed out.
- Steemit is a revolution like no other and will be the future of content creation/consumption
- Best performing blockchain
- Best community
- Best use-case
- Bright future
- Fastest transactions
- No fees
- Mass adoption
- SMT's are a revolution that will launch Steem to the moon
- 100$ soon
- Stack Steem while you still can, earn by blogging or invest but never sell, just HODL!!!
Stop slacking and start writing quality content, investing and HODLing SP.
Have a great day all, I wish you much success on Steemit and hapy trading/investing :)