Bits Of Good

If you are frequently hanging out in Crypto Twitter, phrases like “XYZ has so many partnerships and a real world use case” or “hodling XYZ is a no-brainer, it's got awesome tech” will quickly resonate to you as these are commonly thrown around by those trying to make the case for the tokens they support.

However, while there is no doubt many of the projects in the crypto space do seem very promising judging by their tech and the problem these aim to solve, this doesn't automatically turn them into a good investment opportunity.

During my time following the crypto space, I have seen how enthusiasts, investors, and some times even those working on the projects themselves seem -intentionally or not- to use the theoretical technological edge of the project they advocate for to paint a pretty picture for prospective investors looking for attractive opportunities to jump in, hiding the line between great tech and a sound investment. But again, great tech (even if it becomes widely adopted), doesn't necessarily translate into good ROI.

If a project has that line between it being good tech and a good investment then probably it is not worthy of your hard earned money as a prospective investor. For this reason, when researching crypto projects, it is part of your due diligence to to ask yourself: Does this project have that line hidden somewhere? And if so, where is it?

We have quite a few examples of this in the crypto space. In fact, until proven otherwise, pretty much every single project that can end up being a bad investment despite giving way to breakthrough technology.

Let's have a look at Nano (www.nano.org) for instance. Sitting at rank 54 at time of writing, Nano is arguably the fastest digital asset in the space, it is not mineable (eco-friendly), the total supply (at 133,248,297 tokens, fairly scarce for its use case) has been already distributed quite fairly via a Captcha faucet (The largest hodler is actually Binance's cold wallet with 10 million at the time of writing and the largest non-exchange wallet only has a balance of 1.6 million, just over 1% of the supply: Source).

At the time of writing the median transaction confirmation time of Nano was 0.674 seconds. Much faster even than XRP. Source

Nano is not only the fastest digital asset, where the reasonable amount of tokens were distributed fairly (and it's unlikely to be deemed a security), it is also the cheapest one to transact in terms of fees, as it is feeless. That's right! Fees are zero. zip. nada!

Ok this seems to much goodness, let's recap. Nano is:

✔️ Fast (subsecond fast).

✔️ Feeless (0)

✔️ Still scalable

✔️ Decentralized

✔️ Just over 133 million total supply (scarce compared to i.e. XRP's 100 billion).

And let's add:

✔️ A vibrant focused community

✔️ Constant improvements

✔️ Awesome apps (See Natrium Wallet or BrainBlocks)

What a dream right? Why is this coin in rank #54 and not directly #1, or even in the Top Ten? It ticks all the boxes! It's great tech!!

Well, judging by its price action, the market doesn't seem to think so...

Do you think XRP has been a wild ride? Nano went from $37.62 USD ATH in Jan 2nd 2018 to only $0.34 in March this year! Source: CMC

The philosophy of Nano involves doing one thing and to do it seamlessly: transfer value. It's use case is digital money, and has all the potential to reach it. So far it seems to be struggling with its adoption.

With all the features listed above, it is hard to understand how Nano went from $37.62 closing in to the Top Ten in market cap to just $0.34 during the mid-March 2020 crash and hasn't gained momentum in between. Although it also proves the point that awesome tech is not one-to-one with a good investment.

Nano's tech is exceptional, but if an inferior technology proves that it is just good enough,it may end up making Nano an overkill, which would be a real shame, as I really like Nano and would like to see it succeed. By the way, this post is not intended to take shots at this project (The same exercise could be done virtually with any other coin in CMC).

So what is playing against Nano? Does its dev team have the right set up to work on the marketing side to raise awareness and boost mainstream adoption? Is it easy to use? How is about fiat on/off ramps and liquidity? Are stablecoins good enough? Is there an invisible line hidden somewhere? If so, where is it?

Header Photo by KAL VISUALS on Unsplash

The above is just personal opinion from a fellow clueless crypto enthusiast and shall not be taken as financial advice. Disclaimer: I do hold some Nano at the time of writing along with other digital assets.

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