If you were to ask ten different people what makes a cryptocurrency successful, you would probably get ten different answers. Even though it might little bit be premature to ask such a question considering the nascent state cryptocurrencies and blockchain is, this has become a very relevant question giving today’s wave of cryptomania.
While my general discourse here today will be on what makes a cryptocurrency successful, my focus will be on skycoin in particular.
Providing an answer to the question above says a lot about the individual’s goal, the crypto industry, ecosystem and environment.
I am going to base the summation of my argument on the principle of Satoshi Nakamoto the creator of bitcoin.
Satoshi Nakamoto’s original white paper, “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Cash System” (October 2008), explained, “What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party.” The proper role of a trusted third party is to enable transactions between two participants by authenticating them and providing other services like escrow.
Trusted third parties present problems. One is inherent. The word “trusted” implies that it is not always possible for the participants to verify if the third party operates on behalf of it or on behalf of them. If verification were always possible, then the need for trust would not arise.
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‘’A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.
When Bitcoin started, its value was only cents. But due to all the financial problems (mainly caused by banks), many people started to adopt Bitcoin because they saw it as a reliable solution to the unstable global economy. Hence, people began trading (circulation), using for transactions and as a payment method. This gave Bitcoin power and solidity.
Due to its main benefit of being decentralized where there are no boundaries (no restrictions and interference by governments and banks), it is more transparent than any fiat currency, it brought all the trust we see right now.
Its free-market decentralization depends upon a consensus from which everyone is free to withdraw without punishment.
This inherent values and principles led to bitcoin and other coin gaining popularity, success and increase in value.
The Upsurge in the prices of cryptocurrencies has been a major factor that has attracted people into the crypto space and in the run-up in values of cryptocurrencies between January of 2017 to early this year, it has spooked the minds of many into believing that price is the major determinant of a successful cryptocurrency.
It is first important to make a clear distinction between the price and value of a cryptocurrency. The price of any cryptocurrency is simply the monetary cost of purchasing it, whereas the value of a cryptocurrency is its perceived benefits and usefulness. The price of a cryptocurrency is not tied to its value but instead, it’s perceived value. It is from this perception of value that many of the factors determining the price of a cryptocurrency usually operate.
A lot of people know the price of most things but no nothing about the value of anything.
People tend to judge the success of a cryptocurrency with so many parameters for example when the coin moons, how widely accepted a projected is, if there is a minimum viable product, market cap capitalization on coinmarketcap, the volume and quality of the community, amount of codes and their expected outputs, trading volume and network of the project.
While all these may be valid parameters in determining the success of a cryptocurrency, they may not be the most important as long as it negates satoshi’s original principle.
This is Satoshi Nakamoto’s vision: a peer-to-peer, decentralized and pseudonymous system of commerce and self-banking that enables the individual to avoid the corruption of the current system. It allows individuals to privatize their own lives
In terms of the factors mentioned below, most people will be asking questions like Is the project a unique and valuable implementation of blockchain?
What is the volume and quality of conversation around the coin, from both crypto influencers and the broader community?
Can the code generated actually do what the product promised, and is there a talented and active team making progress on it?
How far along is the platform in development, and is it being used to make transactions or being implemented by companies ?
What is the recent trading activity around the currency, and what is the process for investors to buy into or sell out of it?
Are people talking about and/or purchasing the currency?
This misconception that a successful coin should be amongst the top 20 coins in the coinmarket capitalization is another thought any expert crypto analyst should banish from their minds.
The term the dominance index is the measure of what percentage
of the total market, Bitcoin owns. This is a sometimes a misleading metric to measure the success of a cryptocurrency for the fact that there will be cryptocurrencies that are richer and bigger and more broadly accepted than Bitcoin.
It’s very easy to do that. All have to do is sacrifice the principles of freedom and liberty.
You can make something that is cheap fast centralized controlled censored and then you can pump money into it and make it mainstream for example, it is easy for a giant like Facebook to create a cryptocurrency, that is cheap, fast, centralized, not open, not censorship-resistant, not borderless, mainstream, and only if you have a Facebook account you can participate. But keep in mind that they can shut you down when they want to and they can pump Facebook coin to be number one on the market cap and give it all the computer power it needs and that could be measured as the most successful digital currency. But if it doesn’t have the principles that were defined for block chains like Bitcoin’s, by Satoshi, then that is not success.
That is the same old system we’ve had forever, except now it’s digital and Mark Zuckerberg is now the ruler of the universe.
Also, a lot of cryptocurrency projects in the top 20 are simply feature-projects, not platform-projects. This is a major reason while at the end of the day only about 10 “viable” cryptocurrency projects today will remain, while the others are useless long-term investments and will become obsolete. You can’t afford to be in a cryptocurrency or project based simply on a feature or app, lacking any form of code, wallet or development. The point here is being mainstream does not make a coin successful.
To think that certain projects are in the top 20 and have no single code, project wallet or any viable product shows how much the crypto world has lost focus and reverted to marketing as its main weapon.
The utility of a coin is one of the most important factors to look for when deciding the success of a cryptocurrency. If a cryptocurrency solves an issue i.e. it is extremely useful, but that is not reflected in its price, then that cryptocurrency is undervalued. This is a good indicator that, regardless of its undervalued price now, once the market begins to realize just how important the coin is, then it is likely that the cryptocurrency will see an eventual increase in its price.
Skycoin has answered all the questions asked above favorably.
Original contributors to Bitcoin and Ethereum created it 8 years ago; Skycoin is a 3rd-generation cryptocurrency platform that anchors a revolutionary blockchain ecosystem.
Skycoin is focused on implementing Satoshi's original vision for a cryptocurrency. Satoshi originally intended the Bitcoin network to be decentralized, over hundreds of thousands of computers. Today, the Bitcoin network is completely controlled by three mining pools. Bitcoin is no longer decentralized. Skycoin Project has developed a new consensus algorithm to achieve true decentralization
At the core of the Skycoin ecosystem is a novel consensus mechanism called Obelisk, which moves beyond Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake to allow lighting-fast transaction speeds at the same time as being highly energy efficient, immune to mining centralization and 51% attacks.
Skycoin fuels an entire ecosystem of applications including the new de-centralized internet called Skywire that empowers users to earn coins for providing secure, peer-to-peer bandwidth. Skywire runs on our custom-built Skyminer hardware devices and WiFi antennas to create a free and open mesh network.
Fiber is Skycoin’s horizontally scalable enterprise platform that offers companies the ability to leverage the power of Skycoin while maintaining control of their own highly customizable blockchains.
Skywire is a mesh network, meaning that it is comprised of thousands of nodes in diverse geographic locations, all connected to each other to transmit Internet traffic. It provides the new Internet that is free, decentralized, net neutral and makes individuals their own ISP.
Skycoin to me can be considered the most successful coin at the moment because it has answered favourably all the questions asked above and more.
As stated, it was designed to make up for the flaws of the old generation cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum.
It is a complete ecosystem in which development is continually progressing, it has consistently met their milestones and just last month commenced payment to community users that support the mesh network of the skywire network the new free and decentralized internet. Over $250,000 dollars was doled out by the project and has over 8000 nodes running all over the world.
Upgrades are being made in the development of new miners, hardware and just released a newer version of their wallet.
Another important consideration you must consider when analyzing the success of skycoin is the phenomenon of lindy effect.
The Lindy effect is a theory of the life expectancy of non-perishable things that posits for a certain class of non-perishables, like a technology or an idea, every additional day may imply a longer (remaining) life expectancy: the mortality rate decreases with time
The longer a development team works at a project, the more likely they are to continue doing so, up to a certain point.
Lots of scam-projects and -coins don’t last but a few months, but a few survive longer than this. A coin that has remained around for over 2 years has a high likelihood of remaining at least another 2 years, and probably much more.
Skycoin has been in existence for 8 years and they are going nowhere. Their unreleased software and hardware product will outlast the company in the foreseeable future.
The present Internet is highly centralized with a few very important choke points onto which an entire surveillance infrastructure has been imposed so that all of that information is sucked up and processed in vast amounts, which indicate a kind of internal surveillance.
The important characteristics of open public blockchain of skycoin have nothing to do with money but a lot to do with decentralizing trust, creating open environments that are borderless and global, that operate across the world and that can create opportunities for people to engage in commerce and other trusted transactions in an open way without restrictions.
It’s about changing the architecture of one of the fundamental technologies we have in a society, which is money, and possibly a few more related to that for example with smart contracts law and justice systems.
The technology of skycoin can change the world where world access to this technology changes People’s lives especially in places where there is very little access to financial services, free decentralized internet, where there's very little access to fair systems to open systems, the ability to record the truth, the ability to kick out intermediaries from every commercial transaction, the ability to get rid of organized criminals who happen to have a banking license and are robbing people blind.
What skycoin is doing is getting computers to talk to each other and they could collaborate using open protocols and in that way the new Internet will change our lives and make more meaning .
The Internet of skycoin will break the monopolies of ISP and big government corporation and put a nail to the coffin of fake news and get rid of despotic dictatorial regimes that censor their citizens and residents.
Skycoin does not directly confront governments or corrupt institutions; it sidesteps and obsoletes them.
Remaining open, free, decentralized, borderless, neutral, censorship-resistant, and public, is a great way to measure the success of skycoin. It doesn’t mean that skycoin has to be the richest, most expensive coins or tokens, or the most dominant blockchain or crypto with the largest market capitalization or most mainstreams.
It’s being able to keep the principles and being able to share this technology with everyone who needs it. This is how we should measure success in this environment.
A lot of people think skycoin has not succeeded because they tend to measure the success of the coin by trying to peg it to some other currencies or the dollar.
The key to understanding cryptocurrency pricing is to ignore the froth, hype and FUD and instead focus on true utility. Do you think that someday your phone will pay another phone for, say, an in-game perk? Do you expect the credit card system to fold in the face of an Internet of Value? Do you expect that one day you’ll move through life splashing out small bits of value in order to make yourself more comfortable? Then, by all means, buy and hold or speculate on things that you think will make your life better. If you don’t expect the Internet of Value to improve your life the way the TCP/IP Internet did (or you do not understand enough to hold an opinion), then you probably not understand the technology and vision of this project.
A coin is only as valuable as what the markets deem it to be, and how a project is valued depends on factors that are core to the development of the project. Therefore, projects that consistently achieves their milestones that were set out in their white paper. Additionally, collaborations and partnerships with credible companies or other projects is a good sign of expansion. Other news that can enhance the perceived value in the eyes of the market includes a successful launch of their Minimum Viable Product (MVP) or the beta version of their protocol/software. These are positive indicators of good progress by the project and will enhance the value of their coin.
The greater success of skycoin will happen it happens when we stop using other currencies to evaluate the value of skycoin.
The more people own a coin, the easier it is for the coin to gain legitimacy and widespread adoption, and the more difficult it is to disrupt.
I will leave you with this “You can define a free person precisely as someone whose fate is not centrally or directly dependent on his peer assessment”
If you can decode this, I will once again advice that you be patient and let the world warm up to skycoin. Count yourself lucky as an early adopter.
Find out more at https://www.skycoin.net
Buy skycoin directly from the website @ https://www.skycoin.net/buy/
Buy from the exchanges @ Binance, Cryptopia BitRabbit, C2CX, ChaoEX
sign for skyminer waiting list @ https://www.skycoin.net/skyminer/
Learn to build your own skyminer @ https://skywug.net/forum/Forum-Skywire
https://steemit.com/blockchain/@tetragravity/skycoin-a-d-i-y-miners-guide
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