Has anyone else noticed the curious trend in cryptocurrency prices right now where the value of the lowest priced coins is growing by the largest % despite them having a huge coin supply? To me this says that the cryptocurrency space is overflowing with inexperienced traders/investors who have no idea what market cap is or how it's calculated. FOMO fever is the only explanation for this. People just hearing about cryptocurrency feel like they missed the boat on bitcoin and are trying to catch the next big thing. These are the same people who think that they need to be able to afford a whole coin. Take Cardano for example.. at a price of ~$1 it seems like a steal and people like owning a whole coin of something instead of a small fraction of a bitcoin, but then you look closer and see that there is a whopping 25,927,070,538 ADA. That's about 1500x more coins than bitcoin! In a rational market scarcity is what drives up price and many of these coins have billions yet this market seems to be unable to do basic math and rewards it! Crazy.
Why is this relevant to Decred?
Decred ($109, 6,491,330 DCR) has the smallest circulating supply of the top 50 coins with the exception of only Veritaseum ($377, 2,036,645 VERI) and ZCash ($578, 2,948,644). (Bitconnect doesn't count because it is a ponzi scheme) Now cut the circulating Decred coin supply in half due to them being locked up in POS mining. On this simple metric alone the price of Decred in the current market landscape should be so much higher. If and when this irrational market we find ourselves in ever starts to resemble reality then it will put a smile on Decred holders.
Disclaimer: I don't care about technical analysis or swing trading at all. I only hold coins long term for the projects I believe in. In this case it looks like the Decred price is still at least an order of magnitude lower than it should be.
Agree with everything you said + the disclaimer. Although I do trade a little with small % of portfolio when chance occurs
What do you think the long term value should be?
I'd be lying if I claimed to know what the long term price should be. Price discovery should happen naturally as a result of the free markets. With that being said, based on the current total cryptocurrency market cap, the limited circulating coin supply, the talented Devs, and what I believe to be superior tech of Decred, I think the price of Decred should be over $1000 relative to the other coins once the attention shifts from quick buck pump and dump coins to legitimate society altering technologies.
The reason why I think the price of Decred must be stated in terms relative to other coins and the total cryptocurrency market is because to some degree cryptocurrency is still an experiment. A few assumptions are being made in order to get to these growing valuations.
1) That the consensus mechanisms underlying POW and/or POS cannot be undermined. To this date there have been no successful hacks or exploits on bitcoins code but in the unlikely event that one is found there would be a devastating correction on the entire market. 9+ years of the brightest white and black hat hackers attacking bitcoin's network have not found anything so this is a great indicator of confidence in the network but on the other hand look at the latest security vulnerability in intel chips.. anything is possible. The stakes are high but so are the rewards. For the first time in human history people have the option to be in control of their own money (you are not in control of the money you store in banks).
2) Mass adoption and acceptance of cryptocurrency as a store of value is coming and will lead to large institutions and 401k funds to begin allocating a percentage of assets into cryptocurrency as part of a diversified portfolio.
3) They will be able to scale. This is not just Decred's challenge but all cryptocurrency will need to be able to increase the number of transactions per second if they are to cut out the middlemen (visa/banks) and be used for everyday transactions (like daily coffee) as promised in the original bitcoin whitepaper. This is an active area of research and development.
And a couple Decred specific assumptions:
4) Decred's governance and superior tech is finally recognized by the market. The truth is that many people haven't even heard of Decred. If Decred is added to more exchanges such as Coinbase and exchanges in the eastern markets, awareness and acceptability will increase. Yes this is true for all coins but the point here is that if people had more time to understand the technology behind the coins they are buying they would understand that Decred is a better mousetrap. Who wouldn't buy the better mousetrap?
5) Decred is resistant to forking which siphons off value from the main chain and errodes confidence. This is by design because Decred stakeholders have a voice via stake voting unlike bitcoin. People don't want to have to ask themselves if they are holding the right "flavor" of bitcoin every morning due to the endless forks that are a result of their dysfunctional governance.
6) Decred's performance relative to other cryptocurrencies will increase. Decred can totally replace bitcoin, bitcoin does nothing that Decred doesn't do better. It can also siphon value from other coins with weaker governance (DASH) and if the privacy features are good can siphon value from the leading anonymous coins (ZEC, ZEN, ZCL, XMR, etc). This has not happened yet but is likely to happen since Decred in theory is much more agile than other currencies due to it's built in voting. As was seen in the speed in which lightning network integration was proposed, voted on, and nearly integrated Decred can quickly implement new original features as well as assimilate the best features from other cryptocurrencies and pivot the intended use as directed by the stakeholders votes. (Decred Dev's please correct me if I am over promising but this is how I understand it)
7) This is a more minor point. When Decred Asics are introduced it might remove the constant sell pressure caused by Claymore Dual mining. I'm not sure that I buy that Decred asic owners are more likely to hold onto coins. I also haven't decided whether I think that asics are good or bad for the network but I think this is worth noting as removal of significant sell pressure would quicken the price discovery.
If those assumptions are true then the total cryptocurrency marketcap will raise to at least several trillion and therefore in the coming years the price will increase many fold. No one will believe me if I post a long term sustainable price because human minds are trained to think linearly however increases in network usage affect the price of a limited supply of coins exponentially. I think it will go beyond bitcoin's current value.
Right on point.
But ASICs though ... I ask you one thing ... is a China asic farm contributing to decentralization?
I really hope we get to vote on introducing a multi algorithm POW model like verge or joincoin.
List of good algos to chose from:
Blake - ASIC algo soon
dagger hashimoto - GPU algo (memory bandwidth bottlenecked and therefore asic resistant)
scrypt high n-factor - CPU algo (even more memory hard), cryptonight would also work
proof of capacity like Burst - HDD algo (sooo memory hard that the most useful device is a HDD where nonces are precalculated and stored)
This is decentralization if you ask me ... worthy of the name DE cred.
POW is in essence more about distributing (decentralizing the distribution) of coins than it is about securing the network. Doesn't mean the network should be insecure
I agree that ASICs are not an ideal form of decentralization and that is a very good point that distributing the coins is an often overlooked aspect of decentralization in many other projects.
Vitalik Buterin whom I consider one of the greatest system architects of our time, gave a talk back in December regarding decentralization where he broke it into 3 components.
A) Architectural decentralization - is it one physical system or many physical systems? (ASICs are not as good for this compared to GPUs but the concentration of hashpower into only several mining pools might be a bigger problem)
B) Political decentralization - is it controlled by one person or entity or many? (With bitcoin, ASIC miners controlled the power. With Decred this is offset by stake miners but ASICs indirectly allow ASIC miners to accumulate more political power than they otherwise would've had assuming they hold the coins. It also takes away a low barrier entry point opportunity for new people getting into the space such as a gamer who isn't convinced enough to go through the hurdles of signing up for an exchange and buying coins yet, but would pay indirectly for Decred through their electricity bill.)
C) Logical decentralization - is the interface or data structure a singleton, or an amorphous swarm?
I see pros and cons to Decred ASICs. In the short term, allowing Decred ASICs that are being distributed to those that pre-ordered to come online this year reduces the risk of a private entity (government etc) developing them and attacking the network with excessive hashpower or mining for themselves to amass the political voting power over time.
I didn't get in on the pre-order and am not very fond of owning ASIC Miners as they are usually noisy and impractical to run in homes. I like GPUs because they are flexible. They allow the vast majority to contribute to the network and no government entity could step in and stop mining by banning GPUs since they are the exact same hardware used for gaming.
I'm hesitant on switching to multi-algorithms because it could increase the complexity of the code thus making the implementation of future must-have features harder. This is really the talented Devs call though.
I wouldn't be opposed to switching to a GPU algo that is ASIC resistant in the future but think it needs to be done in a way that does not fracture the community. One possibility is to inform the community of the algo switch with enough notice so that the existing ASIC owners have enough mining time to recoup their investments, (and then some) and so that no one gets burned by expanding with ASICs that would soon be useless.
Overall I see this as an item on the agenda in the future but top priority should be completing the core features that differentiate this project from all the rest.
Very interested and long read..., my respect for you guys for having given your time to get so deep into details, which enlightened me more regarding this project,
My intrigue is next, i was about to pre order asic miner for Decred, but at this is the first edition, this could get outdated soon, and im still worring if i might be better just buying the tokens and hold them,
Regarding holding, by holding them i have a vote also? and is there a pos integrated to the system, or only pow?
this haven´t been clear to me
thanks for your time
Decred (DCR)
