WHAT TO BUY?
With so many different developments in blockchain technology, how do we
choose what to invest in? Bitcoin is not the only cryptocurrency: to date
over 500 so-called altcoins have been developed, some of which have market caps of over $100 million, thousands of users, and promises of better
functionality. And there are hundreds of Bitcoin startups, many purporting to
become cornerstones of a world in which cryptocurrencies are mainstream.
We suggest that a well-rounded cryptocurrency portfolio follows three
points:
1. invest in currencies first, and companies later,
2. of the currencies available, focus on Bitcoin,
3. and round off your investments with a small basket of altcoins.
1. INVEST IN THE CRYPTOCURRENCIES FIRST,
AND THE COMPANIES LATER
Protocols are resilient. Just as SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is a
ruleset describing how to send and receive emails from one computer to
another, Bitcoin is a financial protocol, a specific set of rules that describes
how to send and receive payments online. What can we learn from Bitcoin,
knowing that it is a network protocol such as SMTP and TCP/IP?
Think of a network protocol as a piece of land on top of which developers
can build. Maybe the land is first irrigated, and then a few roads are laid
out, and then buildings are constructed. What started off as a little village,
becomes a city, and potentially even a metropole.
If we find ourselves in a landscape before the village stage, the initial conditions of the land are crucial factors in deciding whether or not to start
building somewhere. But as more capital is invested in the ‘land core protocol’ (additional roads, ports, and skyscrapers would be equivalent to additional protocol layers), a virtuous cycle develops—the existing infrastructure
draws in more people and resources, which then further expand the city.
The city of Paris is a great example: whereas the original settlers were drawn to
the easily defensible islands in the Seine river (the security protocol), people
today are drawn to the city for its architecture, cuisine, business district, and
universities (application protocols layered on top of the original protocol).
Compared to the staying power we observe in the world of protocols, the
world of Internet businesses built on top of these protocols looks like a warzone. By contrast, with cryptocurrencies we have the luxury of being able to
invest in the actual protocols, not just the businesses built on top of them. I
believe that buying into the protocols themselves, especially during this infrastructure phase, should be the main focus of a blockchain technology investor.
Unless you have special skills that set you apart, our general recommendation is to first focus on investing in the cryptocurrencies themselves and
only later to focus on the ecosystem companies.
2. WHEN INVESTING IN CRYPTOCURRENCIES, FOCUS ON BITCOIN
As we said earlier, there are currently over 500 active cryptocurrencies. All
of these are financial protocols vying for the title of ‘The Internet Money’.
But which one will win? We believe it is Bitcoin for two main reasons: the
network effect and Bitcoin’s contenders don’t live up to their promises.
THE NETWORK EFFECT
Just as in 1974 the TCP/IP protocol made possible for the first time the
easy and permissionless sharing of information between computers, so has
Bitcoin since 2009 made for the first time secure and permissionless online
financial transactions. The Bitcoin network now has a market cap of over $4
billion, which encompasses 86% of the total market for cryptocurrencies; all
other cryptocurrencies together have a value of about $650 million.2
To date, more than $800 million in venture capital has been invested in the
cryptocurrency space ($400 million of which was invested during the first
half of 2015 alone), the vast majority of which was in Bitcoin companies.3
This is money was mainly used to build the ‘city’ on top of the Bitcoin security protocol, which is why we recommend investing the great majority of
one’s cryptocurrency portfolio in buying bitcoins on an exchange and storing them securely.
In a write-up titled “Bitcoin Rising,” Gyft CEO Vinny Lingham makes the case
for the fundamental value of the Bitcoin network.4 He addresses Metcalfe’s
Law which, in Lingham’s words, “states that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected
users of the system.” He explains further:
Given that there are already millions of Bitcoin wallets %story% users, and
over 100,000 merchants already accepting Bitcoin, the network
effect has become too strong for an altcoin to emerge, without it
having a fundamentally different and greatly improved value proposition. Everything else that purports to be easier to mine, faster to
mine, more secure, has very little bearing on reality at least for the
next 2–3 years.
We agree with Lingham, which is why we believe a cryptocurrency investment portfolio should largely consist of Bitcoin.
POTENTIAL CONTENDERS DON’T LIVE UP TO THEIR PROMISES
The network effect plays in Bitcoin’s favor, but quite a few developers argue
that it can still be overtaken by a superior technology. Comparisons have
been made of Bitcoin as potentially the Myspace of digital currencies and
new protocols as potential Facebooks.
Indeed, the cryptocurrency space is bustling with innovation. Since 2011, a
flurry of new, experimental currencies have been launched. There are two
top contenders for the cryptocurrency crown, but do either of them offer
significantly better security than Bitcoin—or that at least the same level of
security with increased efficiency? Let’s take a look.
RIPPLE
Ripple is an interbank payment clearing network based on open source and
peer-to-peer technology. It has a market cap of over $250 million. Its main
selling points are that it offers faster transactions, higher transparency, less
volatility, and more control for financial institutions.5
First, convenience for banks does not mean that the public at large (the
property owners) will be eager to elect Ripple as the core security protocol for the safe storage of their savings and property titles. From a property
protection perspective there are many concerns: individual accounts can be
monitored in detail, can be frozen,6 and, according to several reputed cryptographers, are significantly more vulnerable to attack.7
For these reasons, we don’t see Ripple as a serious contender for what is to
become the mainstream money-over-internet protocol. In other words, we
don’t see it as a threat for Bitcoin.
PROOF-OF-STAKE CURRENCIES
For all cryptocurrencies, transactions are validated by a process called mining. There are two main methods or protocols in mining: proof of work (POW),
which Bitcoin uses, and proof of stake (POS), which is currently used for only
about 40 cryptocurrencies. Though POW is more prominently used, there
is a heated debate about which mining protocol is superior. Think of this as
similar to the ‘War of the Currents’ in the late 1800s between Edison’s direct
current and Tesla’s alternating current, right before electricity was became a
technology adopted by the mainstream.
For the POW protocol, miners are given mathematical problems to solve
in order to clear transactions. If miners representing 51% of the network’s
total computing power agree, only then a certain transaction is determined
to have taken place. Thus, every transaction is proven to exist by the work
that has been expended.
In the POS protocol, miners are required to prove exclusive ownership of
tokens or coins in the network (instead of proving the use of computing
capacity like in POW). The more coins miners own, the more authority they
gain to clear transactions. Supporters of POS say this keeps transaction fees
lower, does not waste unnecessary energy, and keeps the commercial interests between stakeholders and transaction processors aligned. Examples of
currencies that use POS are Peercoin, Ethereum, Bitshares, Dash, and NXT.
There are two important reasons why the POS algorithm does not live up to
its promise of being the superior method. First, it doesn’t assure decentralized consensus. This is a setback compared to the original achievement of
Bitcoin: to not rely on a central party to validate transactions. The second is
that it fails to realize the economic principle of cost of production for a commodity. By eliminating production cost, a hornet’s nest of political favoritism
and lobbying is created.
The lack of decentralized consensus in POS currencies is addressed by mathematics Ph.D. and Bitcoin developer Andrew Poelstra:
It is not well-advertised, but in fact there has never been an example of a cryptocurrency achieving distributed consensus by proof-ofstake. The prototypical proof-of-stake currency, Peercoin, depends on
developer signatures to determine block validity: that is, its consensus is not distributed. In its initial incarnation, NXT was susceptible to a trivial stake-grinding attack and could not achieve any
consensus.
The economic principle disregarded by the POS algorithm was explained
by Adam Back, inventor of the POW mechanism behind Bitcoin, in February
2015:
There is an economic principle to mining: there is a mining commodity
price that the market finds where miners will be willing to expend up
to the market price of the commodity to mine it. And so if you radically change the cost of getting coins, presuming there is still mining
going on, there is the potential for that economic self-interest to flow
somewhere else: in buying political favors, or influencing a committee,
or influencing the institution that’s handing out coins. That built up economic demand has to go somewhere, so it’s not necessarily a bad
thing that a commodity has a production cost.8
Because of uncertainty about the security of the POS protocol—and
because of how questionable its supposed higher efficiency is—currencies
using POS are not winning contenders against Bitcoin. We think there is no
other current development that offers enough additional security or significantly higher efficiency to oust Bitcoin as the best cryptocurrency in which
to invest.
3. ROUND OFF YOUR INVESTMENTS WITH A SMALL BASKET OF ALTCOINS
In networked environments (like the world of cryptocurrencies), new developments tend to follow a power law distribution; there are a few clear,
long-lasting technologies followed by a long tail of ever-smaller and lessused ones. This long tail pattern can be found in areas such as languages,
e-commerce stores, blogs, and social networks.
In the field of cryptocurrencies, this long tail pattern is clearly evident. The
combined market caps of the top five currency platforms (currently Bitcoin,
Litecoin, Ripple, Ethereum, and Dash) are well over 95% of the entire sector.
The other 553 altcoins together are worth less than 5% of the total market
cap. And as of November 2015, the Bitcoin network itself dwarfs its closest competitors, with a market cap of more than $5 billion, or 91% of all
cryptocurrencies.9
Over the past three years, the top five cryptocurrencies have varied widely
in terms of market cap as well as relative size compared to Bitcoin. Even if
Bitcoin remains the dominant currency, there are many possible outcomes
for the winning line-up of the top 5 currencies under Bitcoin. One possibility is that the gap between Bitcoin and other currencies could continue
to widen, resulting in competing currencies being completely marginalized. Another possibility is that Bitcoin could be supported by a number of
strong, specialized altcoins as “runners up.”
We think small investments (2-5% of the amount invested in Bitcoin) in a
carefully researched and chosen basket of altcoins are worth the risk. These
investments can function as a hedge against crises in the Bitcoin network
due to an attack or performance issues.
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