Why should one buy PIVX instead of other privacy coin? I can't decide whether I should buy this coin or not.
Two years ago this coin cost less than one cent and past bull run up to 13 dollar. The current price is around 2 dollar and seems still a little bit high.
1. As you likely know, the price of almost all cryptos remains speculative. Most projects are still months or years away from delivering on whatever it is they are promising to do. So, it's probably better to think in terms of potential growth and adoption of a project, rather than in terms of USD pricing. A project might, hypothetically, grow well relative to other cryptos and achieve significant adoption, yet find a valuation below where it is today. We just don't know. (Also, short term, there's going to be a bumpy ride until there's concrete news about the BTC ETF approval: if it's approved, BTC may spike at the expense of all alts for a while; if it's not approved, BTC may falter, also at the expense of alts.)
1a. PIVX's run from ~0 to ~$2 or $3 was largely driven by discovery. PIVX was known as DarkNet Coin initially and, while signs of its potential were there from the start, there were a lot of shitcoins around so market skepticism was high. The rebrand to PIVX, plus an initial marketing push, made a lot of investors go 'Whoa, this project is actually really good'. So you might say this initial rise was driven mostly by PIVX's own merits. On the other hand, the rise from $2 or $3 to > $13.50 was purely driven by overall market speculation and FOMO in late 2017/early2018.
2. This is the master sheet comparing privacy coins:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-weHt0PiIZWyXs1Uzp7QIUKk9TX7aa15RtFc8JJpn7g/edit#gid=237137882 It was developed collaboratively and is as close to impartial information as you're going to find in the crypto space. Perhaps it will help you in your analysis.
3. There are other good privacy coin projects out there. Most represent some kind of tradeoff between security and convenience as a currency; others focus on serving as a secure platform. I am certainly not going to suggest that other projects are crap or that PIVX is clearly the best. But, factoring everything in, I think a reasonably objective case can be made that PIVX is in the top 3 - 5 'best' privacy coins, insofar as it has strong features, fast transfer speeds, reasonable ease of use, a full-time, professional team, and a great community (again, review the spreadsheet for specifics). And it is arguably the 'best'
Proof-of-Stake privacy coin. The question then becomes, relative to the 2 - 4 OTHER coins that might be in the 'best' conversation, how does PIVX's future growth potential stack up? Aside from continuing to rank among the most secure privacy coins, PIVX has some other important features ahead (
https://pivx.org/what-is-pivx/roadmap/ )--for example, the zDEX decentralized exchange. How do you feel about those planned features?
4. Ultimately, the answer to your question depends on a) how you feel about PIVX's upcoming features vs. the 'competition'; b) how you feel about PIVX's marketing of those features vs. the marketing of other projects (e.g., a 'worse' project could still beat a 'better' one if it succeeds in capturing users' attention better; conversely, a project that has not yet begun to strongly market itself might have more room for growth than one that is already well-known); and c) how you feel about the privacy coin space as a whole (will it grow? become marginalized due to regulations? something else?).
5. Finally, my personal opinion, with the caveats that it is not advice, I am not an expert, and you should DYOR and reach your own conclusions. You mentioned that the current price seems a bit high. Again, I would argue that we can't say much about 'high' or 'low' in a fundamentally speculative market, but whatever PIVX is, I don't think it is out of line vs. other privacy coins--i.e., I don't think it's MORE overvalued; if anything, I'd say its relatively low profile makes it somewhat undervalued vs. other options (at least the well-known ones). Its privacy features are right up there with the best. In terms of growth potential, I think there is more
room for growth with PIVX than for, say, Monero, but whether it actually achieves that growth is another matter. I absolutely think the PIVX team will deliver on its promises; they've always done that and I see no reason for them to stop (and I've been here pretty much since the beginning). But delivering on promises doesn't necessarily translate to mainstream adoption, and PIVX doesn't have first-mover advantage. So, while I think PIVX will do well in the future, it may not do
very well unless a) one of its new features (e.g., zDEX) turns out to be unexpectedly super-awesome, or b) the privacy coin space does especially well vs. other projects. Personally, I think that both the
privacy coin space and the
currency space will be somewhat niche markets in future, and that blockchain's primary use-cases will fall in the utilities. That puts me in the awkward position of, on the one hand, thinking that PIVX is a great project with a great community and devs and strong roadmap for the future and, on the other hand, thinking that despite all of this, there are some red flags regarding the sector of the market that it is courting. So the most honest answer I can give is that I think PIVX is definitely worth investing in IF you believe in the future of private currencies. All crypto investments are risky bets; all we can do is assess the risks as best we can, and make the choices we consider least risky relative to the potential reward. (Disclosure: I continue to hold PIVX. Not as much as I once did, but still. It will always have a special place in my heart, whatever happens.)
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