To start, a story:
In 2010 I entered a hackathon. The task was simple; find a technology you think will be influential, convince some judges, win some headphones.
My choice of topic was Bitcoin. I lost the competition but ended up winning something better a few years later. I sold out at an average price of ~4,000 USD and used most of the money to pay for my education at the Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science.
Over the years I also put a significant amount of money in other crypto-assets, most notably Ethereum and Ripple.
I'm excited to have finally joined the Steemit platform. I've been hearing about it for a while now and believe that it has great potential! I believe the system of incentivizing creators and contributors in a democratized manner (in the way Steem does) is a fantastic development that's been inevitable for years but is in this case far ahead of its time.
Thank you to those who get this far, but my hunch is that you're not here for an introduction to me. In a sector full of false prophets and John McAfees, it's hard to cut through the bull. If it is any reassurance, I'm not in this for the pennies that will probably be generated by this post's existence--I'm far more interested in watching and ameliorating the prosperity experienced by the blockchain community and its members.
The token associated with the logo above is High Performance Blockchain (HPB). High performance blockchain is a relatively new technology, having been developed only last year. In summary, its niche is that it works on integrating hardware and software solutions to the all-too-common scalability problem. Their white-paper is dynamic in nature but currently shows the TPS at around 1,000,000--142,857 times that of Bitcoin. If this holds true, it would be a major asset for cryptocurrencies in the case for their use in everyday transactions. Their team is also pretty strong--Notable players include a well-known crypto-blogger, a physics professor who worked on a Nobel prize-winning research project, and a former CMU software engineer. Also worth noting is the fact that one of their angel investors is NEO.
In the eyes of many, High Performance Blockchain is the next EOS. But there are also some valid concerns associated with the token which I will address here.
Currently, the token takes on the ERC-20 format, which is a major point of criticism for the token's enemies. HPB's promotional materials also look really sketchy-- a stock-image, google doodle level of sketchy. The quality of the photos on their website and a lack of hard proof of their partnerships is enough to drive most people away. This last point is perhaps the most concerning, because it signals a lack of transparency between the HPB team and their customers/community.
In my eyes, all of these disadvantages are outweighed by the potential of HPB's system to grow. While a lack of transparency is an especially dangerous thing in the world of crypto, I believe in HPB's case it is at least partially attributable to two primary factors; first off, the company behind it is still in its relative infancy and is growing at an incredible rate due to the recent crypto-hypecycle. Second, the company has a notable lack of English in its promotional materials. My hunch is that this is at least partially because the high level members of the organization are not native English speakers, and are not prioritizing their marketing efforts yet, possibly until they finish the development of their hardware systems.
In summary, while HBP surely has some problems, I believe there is a high probability of it being subject to immense growth in the coming months. As it gets added to more notable exchanges (it is currently listed on Bibox, Allcoin, and is being added to Kucoin on February 5th) and becomes a more common name, the interest in this coin is sure to increase substantially. Investors got a taste of this in early January, when HPB shot up to a max value equivalent of around 14 USD, and again when Coin Market Cap added accurate data a few days later when its value rose 20%. This action made it the 111th most valuable token by market capitalization, a substantial increase from its ranking of 1000+ just days before.
Lately, the price of HPB has been decreasing as a result of market movements and macroeconomic concerns, but overall my research has led me to the conclusion that if their hardware solutions are fully functional, High Performance Blockchain has the potential to become a driving force in the future development of applied blockchain technologies. While I can't guarantee that this token will be your ticket to the millionaire's club, I can say that the opportunity cost of missing out on this token is substantial. While they could certainly fail to deliver, the potential of what HPB is offering is groundbreaking, and has the ability to upend multiple industries.
Thank's for finishing my post, if you made it this far. HPB is a substantial part of my current long-term hold profile, and I'm interested to hear others' thoughts on it. Depending on the success of this article, I may do a more low-level explanation of my hope in HPB/other assets in my long-term holdings in and outside of crypto.
Best,
A.E.L.