20% inflation in the first year? Now I see why the price is tanking.
It's not that much. If you compare it with Bitcoin:
Since hours I'm trying to figure out if the price is high at the moment or very cheap. That's hard because the whole economic-system of the project is very dynamic. But if we see this like an Altcoin, it's cheap in my eyes.
Reasons:
- There is a non-anonymous and obviously very professional (and big) team behind it.
- Total supply now: 8,756,684
- Price in $: 0.155913
- Marketcap: $ 1,365,281
As far as I understand the idea... it's really great and with huge potential - real use. In best case the better Ethereum. ETH seems to me unpredictable, could be the future of Crypto or could turn out as failed experiment. Factom seems pretty stable because of it's simplicity. It uses a stable base: The Bitcoin-Blockchain and at the same time it's independent from BTC as a currency. The "business-model" is kind of independent from Crypto itself. Who wants to use it doesn't need to touch Crypto, which is important for companies.
It's speculative but I think there are some reasons to expect progress and several good news in future, maybe/hopefully in short-term.
So, there are two potential dynamics for the price:
1. Like we know it from every Cryptocurrency: Good news, progress in Development and so on ---> price rises
2. The inherent economy. I'm not sure how predictable that is, but there is really huge potential. It involves a very smart psychological aspect. Participants are motivated to hold the value of the Factoids, because that's the Key-Payment-System between "real world" and "use". It's like it's own economy between "real world" and what the real worlds (hopefully) wants to do with Factom.
At the same time it's a open system which can grow out of itself...
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Something about the Economy, but... please don't quote me on that. It's just my own understanding so far and could be wrong in some aspects. If it should be wrong, please correct me. But it's very interesting if I should be right or at least right regarding the major aspects.
There are three markets:
1. "real world", financial system, potential demand to use the Factom-System
2. Factoids
3. Entry-Credits ---> entrys to use the system
Great is: Somebody who would like to use it, doesn't need to touch Cryptocurrencies. He could buy it with Dollar and something like a transfer-system would conduct the purchase from Factoids into Entry-Credits.
The most interesting part is the price of the entry-credits and I'm not sure about that. But there is an very interesting explanation... don't know if it will be that way or if it was just one possibility/theory:
What is Factom? Paul Snow Interview (it's a transcript of a video that also can be found here):
https://www.chrisderose.com/video/what-is-factom-paul-snow-interview (...)
What is the value of a factoid? And how do you envision people receiving their investment money back? How does it work? Well, the design of the factoids... The federated servers set the exchange rate of factoids to entry credits. And they're motivated. They get a fixed number of factoids every day for being the federated servers.
And there's some interesting distributed things we're working on, but that's immaterial at the bigger picture's level. So they get a fixed amount of factoids. So their interest is to ensure that the factoids they get are of the highest value they can manage. The only thing they can do to increase the value of their payment is to ensure that the protocol is used as widely as possible. They're basically maximizing the price of the factoid times the volume. If they set the price too high, the volume goes way down, the number of factoids that are being converted into entry credits and into Factom goes down, and you get inflation and so .
.. So hold on one second. A factoid, does that represent a token for persistence? Yes. Is it consumed then? And therein is the value? Yes. We say it, well, it gets converted.
The factoid becomes entry credits, the entry credits become entries. And then it's out of the economy. So yes. And do they expand at a rate? You have a fixed flow going into the servers. That's the only source. Is that fixed flow is set up by you guys then? We're going to set it up with a Crowdsale as a percentage of how many factoids are in the system.
They're going to start with 20% of the initial volume of factoids, and you'll have the first year 20% inflation minus any that leave. So you set up a document where this is available for the public to look at and see how the economy is expected to grow, where the distribution is, is there any progress right now? It's very, very difficult to make any kind of projections. Yes, it is. And so the value of the factoid could go up or could go down. Well, the money supplies itself, it should be. I would like to think it'll work.
It will find the equilibrium. And the equilibrium that it will find should amount to the value of the factoids going into the servers will balance with the amount of value that people using the protocol are getting. What they're paying in will eventually balance with the value that's going to the servers. Right. So what you'd want essentially to increase the value is to have more partners, I guess? Yeah? Okay. So let's talk about that.
If I understand it right, it could be a system like "gold-fixing" or something like that... The federated servers would have to find a price for the entry credits, cheap enough to make (hopefully) sure that it's widely used, at the same time not too cheap... because they're paid with FCT's as well, so they will do their best for the price. If they would set the price (for entry credits) too high, the Volume would go down - it wouldn't be used, therefore the demand for FCT's would decrease and the price would fall. If they would set it too low, the Volume would go up but it wouldn't need much FCT's...
That is, if it should work that way, a great economical design. Because: Higher demand of the system would lead to an increasing price and the other way around. If there wouldn't be speculation it could be that the price would be pretty stable after some time. Factoids would be just a tool between Dollar and entry. But the most interesting part is: Speculation won't damage the business-model. If speculators would pump the price up to 10 Dollar, those who wants to use the system can buy more entry-credits with one FCT and the other way around.
At the same time a higher demand would be real demand for FCT's, so the price would go up even without any speculation.
That means: Higher demand would increase the price for the FCT's very naturally and without speculation. But the market will react on every good news and anticipate that... if there should be signs that there will be demand and in best case increasing demand. So, the price could really explode at some time.
The most interesting part about this, like I said: The price could explode without damaging the project, the demand of entry-credits wouldn't decrease because of a higher FCT-price. For User the only relevant price is the entry-credit-price.
So, with that being said: There are "just" two relevant questions out of the perspective of an Investor:
1. Will Factom being used?
2. How will they find the price for the entry-credits... will it depend on Volume? Will it be fixed for a time of one day or one week (...) ?
Point 1: At the moment I really see no reason why this not should have high potential for widely usage. The idea is really good and they've made a pretty good job to make it easy, even without touching Crypto as a Currency.
Under the line, my personal opinion right now: It's underpriced in comparison to some other projects with a much higher marketcap. If we look at ETH with a marketcap of $ 47,179,518 and Factom with $ 1,272,013... there is some potential. ETH is great as an idea but I believe it involves much higher risk at the moment and most probably it will take some more time for real usage. Factom builds just on top of the BTC-Blockchain, but exactly that brings a stable base... And a hyping BTC-price would be good marketing for Factom. A price-drop wouldn't damage it because it's independent from BTC.
But again... this post is highly speculative, more my own point of view after about 12 hours reading about this project.
