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Monero from Investors Point of View

munny posted this 10 years ago

munny | 10 years ago

There was excellent discussion about Monero development in Reddit this week (http://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/2ki0we/oh_boy_we_need_that_gui_or_xmr_will_go_to_zero/). All valid points and concerns. The bottom line is that it is ‘a race against time’. A typical startup dilemma: take short cuts and finish first or take your time forget finishing first and come out with outstanding product or maybe mix of both?

My post is purely from startup/investors/economics/historical point of view and is based on the following facts:

1) Monero is like early stage startup with working product which is in development phase to scale to larger audience. 2) Looking at today’s stage of Monero the current valuation is correct. 3) Monero is very liquid altcoin compared to most others and this way attractive to investors. 4) Monero valuation is based on natural development not ‘pumping the value artificially/criminally’ (like CANN and others). 5) Most importantly Monero core dev deam is doing stellar job and communicating with public (especially Fluffypony). 6) Monero technology, dev team and price survived the recent hacking attempt.

Classic make it or break it situation

Today the ball is 100% on core dev team and the race is on! Future of Monero lays on dev team’s hands but also competing currencies are doing everything to become No1 coin. Once fundamentals are in place, core updated and GUI is launched Monero will enter into the next level. In the startup world this is one of the most important steps in the company’s existence. These fundamentals and fully working core will provide a platform for third parties to develop and build products into the Monero ecosystem. If this takes too long and other currencies gain significant lead then Monero will face extreme difficulty to gain large audience acceptance.

Looking from investors point of view

First of all Monero value has been developing naturally. It is the most significant sign of community’s values. Monero has been out for six months and price has never been ‘fixed’. It is a true currency. As said before Monero is also liquid currency. Putting these two factors together with updated core and documentation we will see significant increase in the value. It is hard to predict what the multiple will be but we might see minimum x2-3. I believe in dev teams ability to judge when the product is ready to launch but also keeping in mind that the race is on.

Scaling

Once updated core is out there with documentation will see third parties jumping into develop the ecosystem. We can study history of Bitcoin which products have become the most important for the users. This will make developing the right products much easier and will help developers to learn from mistakes. Scaling to larger audience is simply taking the product from ‘nerd level’ (for example command line based wallet) to user friendly products. After larger audience starts adapting and using Monero we will see natural demand for the currency which will increase the value. Again this will be a multiple. When Bitcoin’s ecosystem was maturing with new products it went up 53 times in 2013.

We all are in the same boat and Monero is going to the right direction. Price will go up only through natural development a) updated core and b) larger audience adoption. There are no shortcuts for price to go up. Therefore we all need to understand and appreciate what core dev team is doing. It is a massive task but they will take us there!

Thank you and race is on!

Replies: 1
ladoga edited 9 years ago Weight: -811 | Link [ - ]

Many altcoins have been spawned from the hindsight of bitcoins success. I've got an impression that developers of most of these altcoins have some end result in mind (often financial gain), which they try to achieve and maybe the comparison to startup companies is fair in that regard.

Bitcoin was nothing like that. Most people (developers included) expected nothing from it, but rather worked on its code for sheer interest in the concept. First and foremost it was an experimental project to test out a theory (and still is) and the motivations behind were technical and philosophical rather than financial. Same goes for the vast majority if not all of emerging core technologies. It's the ecosystems that later gather around these technologies (or better said new martkets created by them) where enterpreneurship can flourish.

I seriously doubt if the "altcoin approach" is enough to maintain the motivation when developing new technologies. One must be passionate about the technology itself to make sacrifices worthwhile and then the work itself provides the motivation, not some goal posts set into the future.

It's interesting to follow where Monero stands in this regard. Is the development itself enough to keep (current and future) developers' interest up amidst of falling market prices? In any case it's way too early to speculate about mass adoption. First it has to be interesting enough to attract developers.