In this post, I'll discuss Tron's Exodus Test Net Launch - 1 of 3 major events that will occur on March 31st along with the Transactional "Coinburn", & Livestream, all of which will have a significant impact on price in the next 2 weeks.
I'll discuss how Tron's valuation is relative to the J-Curve and how the launch of the Exodus Test Net will exponentially increase TRX's utility and therefore its value.
At the time of writing on March 28th at 17:22 UTC (1:22pm EST), Tron stands at $0.045 (or 567 satoshi)
Note that in comparison to some of the longer standing alt coins, Tron's growth over the past week is promising in an otherwise bloody market, marking it as the 12th largest crypto according to CoinMarketCap and Apogee Crypto.
screenshot from https://www.apogeecrypto.com/watchlist 17:44 UTC on March 28th, 2018
Note that both the 4hr chart and 1Day chart on Binance affirm that Tron is indeed in the beginning of Stage 3 of The Crypto J-Curve, which I'll dive into in a little bit.
Each candlestick represents 4 hours of trading activity. The entire view of the chart represents activity over the past 6 days (from 3/22/18 - 3/28/18 ). Snapshot taken from Binance
Each candlestick represents 1 day of trading activity since January 2018. Snapshot taken from Binance
We can deduce from this chart that Tron is recovering from the bear market experienced by even some of the largest cryptos and beginning it's climb back towards its previous all time high of $0.3 (or 2047 satoshi)
What to Look Forward To on Saturday March 31st:
Part 1: Launch of Exodus Beta Test Net
- Exodus is the name of the transitionary phase of the coin onto the network by which it will be transferred for almost free.
- Tron will detach from the Ethereum ERC20 platform and operate on its own decentralized TRX Blockchain.
The Independant Republic did a great write-up of the Exodus Test Net Launch. I've quoted the main features below:
- Cheap, all but free, transactions With the Exodus update, the transaction cost for sending TRX drops all the way to 0.00001 TRX. TRON becomes a currency that is essentially free to buy and sell with.
- Network Scalability If you are looking for a singular cause to stagnation in the cryptomarkets and a possible industry killer, the most obvious culprit is a lack of scalability....TRON is getting ahead of the problem, with a network capable of handling 1000 transactions per second on Main Net’s launch. That number should continue to grow as TRON developers add to the platform, thereby allowing for implementations as large as social media and gaming to thrive on the network.
The scalability and close-to-nothing transaction fees are similar to Ripple XRP
Remember that Justin Sun served as Ripple Labs' Chief Representative in Greater China, Special Representative and Advisor since 2014
Thus, Ripple serves as a good indicator for the trajectory of Tron's price, but in a much shorter timespan due to the mainstream adoption and sheer popularity of the coin.
Unlike Ripple in early 2017, Justin Sun has generated exponentially more hype and attention in an already crowded crypto-space, making Tron THE top trending coin on Twitter over the past couple months. Expect an exponential increase in price with each step taken in development. The launch of Exodus will be big.
The Exodus Test Net is the first official development of the Tron Network, as noted in the original Road Map
They're Chinese developers, not English linguists, hence the misspelling of the word "Exodus" on their own roadmap. Welcome to crypto.
Check your expectations of perfection at the door and embrace the mathematical eloquence of their GitHub Repository.
If you're interested in understanding the nuts, bolts, and technologcal factors behind what make's Tron's devlepment team on of the strongest in cryptospace, check out Ivan on Tech's explanation. As a programmer, he breaks down complex technological topics for mainstream consumers.
Back to Exodus: How will the launch of test net affect $TRX Price?
Remember that the $ valuation of a cryptocurrency behaves in accordance to Metcalfe's Law which states that the value of a network is proportionate to the number of the network's users, squared.
Think about is this way, connections grow faster than devices as the network expands.
###On the Test Net, Tron is detaching from the Ethereum network and relocating to its own blockchain which will allow its network to expand exponentially, increasing the amount of transactions that can be made and overall increasing the utility of the coin as a means of exchange.
Metcalfe's Law of expanding networks, visualized.
In Clearblocks' article on Medium titled Valuing Bitcoin and Ethereum with Metcalfe's Law, he/she goes as far to propose:
- We report that Metcalfe’s Law, and similar laws, nearly perfectly correlate with ETH and BTC’s USD price
- This suggests that cryptoassets that have reached critical mass behave like online social networks such as Facebook with their value defined by their usage (as measured by daily transactions or active addresses)
If value is defined by usage than we can assume that by launching Exodus, Tron will have exponentially expanded its usage, thus approaching a point of utility and placing us at the base of Stage 3 on the Crypto J-Curve as pictured below.
Fellow steemit user 
does a phenomenal job at explaining how hype (typically via social media) and development play a crucial role in understanding how and when a coin can be valued.
In his article What really pushes the price of Cryptocoins - The Crypto J-Curve he makes the following observations, which we can apply to our price prediction of TRX once the Test Net is launched.
The basic idea of a crypto J-curve stems from how the market values a cryptocoin over time.
- Re: Enthusiasm: When a specific coin starts trading, enthusiasm for it is usually high, and typically continues to increase for a while. In this period, the CUV (current utility value) of the asset is minimal, or non-existent if there’s no protocol ore alike
- As the cryptocoin progresses through time, the developer team and crypto network inevitably encounters unforeseen roadblocks
- With such roadblocks market enthusiasm declines, weighing on the DEUV (discounted expected utility value)
- All these factors lead to tough market conditions and hence, speculators start selling off. Eventually, the DEUV gets squeezed, and with little current utility value, the price of the coin gets crushed.
These above numbered steps represents the massive sell-off that we experienced in the price of Tron in late January and throughout February, when the price dropped from $0.3 to $0.02.
But do not fear, the worst of Tron's sell-off is behind us, and the Tron's utility is on the horizon
As a general law of crypto, price increases exponentially as utility increases
This is another chart I've borrowed from
You'll notice that crypto valuation rises and falls following J-Curve cycles, just on different scales according to volume.
Volume is based on pure exposure and adoption. We can assume, based on Bitcoin's previous increase in utility and corresponding increase in $ valuation, that as Tron is recognized as a functional utility token decentralizing the $1 trillion entertainment industry, we'll experience a sharp increase in price immediately following the release of the Exodus Test Net. Ontop of that, consider the worldwide adoption it's already amassed, and we can assume that Tron may very well have the sharpest increase in valuation over the course of 2018.
Stay tuned for part 2 and 3 of this post in which I'll write more about how Justin Sun's Livestream and the Transactional "Coinburn" will impact the price. In the meantime, HODL tight and mark March 31st on your calendar. It'll most certainly be a momentous day for not only Tron holders, but for crypto enthusiasts alike.