INTRO

Earn Steem by commenting (right now about $2)! Steem powered research works by using my own Steam Power to incentivize commenting in a weekly post. I will use 100% up-votes liberally in the comment sections to reward people who share good research and perspectives on different coins.

I will compile the research and new perspective from the comments and every week I will add new coins to the list of ratings and modify existing ratings based on what I learn from you.

UPDATES

Added Factom (weak sell), Added Etheroll (strong sell)

RATINGS

Strong Buys

none this week

Weak Buys

Bancor (updated 8/9)

For small volume tokens Bancor proposes a compelling solution. A bancor contract would be an improvement to sites like ticketmaster where you need to match two parties to exchange something. Issues: (1) The Team has nearly $75 million dollars but have not laid out an explicit plan publicly on how they will spend investor money. (2) Token exchanges are a hot idea right now so Bancor has lots of competition. Valuation: Bancor's tokens are trading below the ICO price of 0.01 ETH, they have the funding required to build an excellent exchange platform and there is little price premium beyond their cash holdings. Their success in large part will be determined by how well their spending activities return value to the token.

Steem (updated 8/9)

There is very little competition in the cryptocurrency/social media space. The success of steem hinges on the users being able to generate great content. Issues: A lot of the trending content is not very appealing and frequently by the same authors so development should focus on getting people articles they find interesting.

Basic Attention (updated 8/9)

Basic attention is an ambitious idea with a high payoff if successful. There is little competition for block-chain advertising right now and there will be a high barrier to supplant them if they are successful. Issues: The market for crypto currency based advertising does not exist so the BAT team needs to create it.

Holds

Bitcoin (updated 8/9)

Bitcoin is the safest and perhaps best "pure currency" crypto play. Every trading pair is denominated in bitcoin and it has the strongest case to be held as a gold alternative. Issues: Tx fees and 10 minute block times are discouraging wider adoption. Lightning Network is a very exciting solution

Weak Sells

Factom (updated 8/10)

Factom wins me on the idea but loses me with the valuation. 73,000 FCT are minted each month which could be converted into 73,000,000 ECs so we woud need to assume that in the future more than 2 billion records per month are stored using factom to justify the current price. There are currently less than 1 million entries per month so a several thousand fold increase seems overly optimistic. I would be more to be excited about FCT if the for profit Factom corp worked for the sole benefit of the FCT token holders.

Alternative Pure Currencies (LTC, XEM, IOTA, Monero, Dash) or Pure Smart Contract Platforms (Stratis, ETC)

Many of these coins have superior technology compared to bitcoin, however they all have a serious adoption issue. These coins most likely will carve out a niche usage and perpetually trade at some small percentage of the BTC price.

Strong Sells

Etheroll (updated 8/10)

The token entitles you to 100% of the etheroll game profits. The team currently holds about $5,000,000 in ETH that can be used to bankroll their game. If it ever becomes apparent that a significant return on that $5MM can be made copycats will simply raise their own funds to make a competing 0.5% edge dice game and this process repeats until the return on capital reaches a sanity point for everyone. I like the concept, however you should consider very carefully whether you think that sustained 100% returns on capital is possible over a ten year period (which is about where the current valuation is). I think a generous valuation is twice their bankroll.

OUTRO

Please suggest new coins that you want added to the list in the comments below. I'm interested in valuation so please include things like how much development funds the project has left, why you think the particular coin is or is not priced well, and what issues the project might have.

Also, please comment on coins that have existing ratings, let me know if you agree or disagree and why.