This appraisal appears draw its principal conclusions from only 2 aspects of each asset:

• what technology does the most obfuscation (maximise privacy)
• what has the lowest marketcap (maximise upside)

The problem I have with it is that neither of these are optimally responsible for supporting value in an unbacked asset. In such a context, blockchain transparency supports value far more reliably than blockchain obfuscation and a low marketcap is only significant if the asset is undervalued.

That would suggest that the ideal monetary asset is one which can decouple the conflict between supporting maximum anonymity and maximum transparency.

That is Dash. It’s the only one who’s archetypal monetary model is based on a real asset rather than an encrypted payment system and it’s also the reason that it has specifically avoided implementing an encryption based privacy solution.

Remember, encryption is generally a property of the trading environment, not the asset itself. You find it - ten a penny - all over the place outside of the blockchain world. In banks, on eCommerce systems, in messaging systems and in cash tills. It supports privacy by hiding the trade, not by radically altering the actual traded asset itself. That’s because encryption is basically a destructive transformation that mitigates value by creating ambiguity. (Witness the recent worldwide malware attack).

So I’d say the flaw in this appraisal is that it’s valuing a digital asset using criteria that are more appropriate to a trading platform. That doesn’t mean encrypted blockchains are’nt useful, but if we remind ourselves of the three fundamental tenets of money, they’re useful in the least investible way (i.e. the last one) since hiding value is far easier & cheaper than creating it and making it transparently fungible ;)

• store of value
• unit of measure
• means of exchange