Binance Community Coin of the Month: Session Six

Binance Community Coin of the Month: Session Six

DISCLAIMER: None of the following is intended to be investment advice. This is only meant to be a description of what has worked well for me so far, and my own opinions. Also, full disclosure, my links to various exchanges are referrals which I profit from. It actually benefits you to use them because we will both get an extra $10 worth of BTC for free if you deposit at least $100 to Coinbase. Thanks in advance if you follow the links when you make your accounts - and even if you don’t, I hope you find this article useful! Remember: Always do your own research. This is not financial advice, so do not make any purchases or sales based on the opinions written on this website.

Yesterday (02/21/2018), my favorite exchange Binance announced the sixth session of their “Community Coin of the Month” program.

This is an event where users of Binance can vote on a new coin to be added to the exchange. These sorts of events are pretty monumental because they give the “power to the people” when it comes to deciding which coins get listed. This can be a make-or-break moment for a smaller-cap token or coin! Imagine if you are enthusiastic about a particular coin, and it gets listed on a major exchange like Binance. This usually means that the trading volume for that coin is about to balloon, since fewer people are willing to use the lesser-known and less trusted exchanges which list tiny market capitalization coins. While it’s not guaranteed, this can also mean that the price could skyrocket; getting listed on Binance sometimes means that a coin starts getting taken more seriously overnight!

The most interesting thing about these events, to me, is the opportunity to research lesser known coins which are on the cusp of mainstream (well, mainstream as far as altcoins go) acceptance. Generally I have only reviewed reasonably mainstream tokens and coins in my writings; I don’t think I’ve ever written about a coin which is below the 500th place in market capitalization. Today we’re taking a detour from that and taking a look at up-and-comers which often have very little capitalization. As you probably know, this means that many of these are the very definition of “ground floor” coins.

First I’ll talk about each of the coins that might be listed on Binance, and then I’ll explain how to vote for your coin(s) of choice. Given the large number of coins to review, I won’t be going in depth; instead, we’ll do a brief overview of each coin on the basis of its current market capitalization, its goals, and whether or not the coin’s plans seem viable. Are these coins matured and ready to be traded on Binance? Let’s find out together!

Without further ado, here are twelve coins on the Binance Community Coin of the Month:

Dent (DENT)

Price: $0.035/coin

Current market capitalization: $374,295,578 (rank 55)

Token/Coin: ERC-20 token

Purpose/goals: “Mobile Data Exchange.” This token is meant to revolutionize the mobile data market. The basic idea is that anyone with a mobile data plan will be able to use Dent’s decentralized exchange to buy and sell (or even donate) unused mobile data. The DENT token will, of course, be the currency which backs this exchange and facilitates these trades.

Community: Subreddit

Analysis: Dent actually reminds me of Power Ledger to some degree - instead of energy, it focuses on mobile data. When I previously wrote about POWR, I was fairly optimistic and excited about the prospect. Likewise, Dent seems very interesting to me. An enormous amount of internet users access the web through their phones; this alone tells me that there is a huge market for this kind of thing and it’s just waiting to be tapped into by enterprising crypto-entrepreneurs.

Elastos (ELA)

Price: $66.56/coin

Current market capitalization: Unknown! (rank 1171)

Token/Coin: Coin with its own blockchain and wallet.

Purpose/goals: “Internet Operating System.” Elastos’s philosophy is that network communication and application computing should be separate. What this means is that Elastos is intended to provide blockchain applications which live inside of a “secure running environment” and, because of the fact that applications cannot directly access the network in this framework, malware, viruses, and attacks (including DDoS attacks) become mostly non-issues.

Community: Subreddit

Analysis: At first glance this seems to be more of a “security coin” than anything. There is a lot going on here beyond the mostly-technical-gobbledygook (sorry!) in the above section. A moderator of the Elastos subreddit summed it up like this:

Elastos = Trustworthy Ledger + Smart Contracts + Monetizable Dapps and Digital Assets

This coin is extraordinarily under the radar at its current market capitalization. I’m unclear on why coinmarketcap doesn’t list its actual market capitalization amount - perhaps there is some confusion about how much ELA is actually in circulation. These sorts of things are pretty common in extremely lesser known coins. If the ranking is accurate, though, this seems like a great coin to get into at the ground floor. Don’t be fooled by the “high” price - again, if the market capitalization ranking is correct, this just means there aren’t many coins circulating. At a glance, Elastos looks like it has a lot going for it and a development team that has lofty goals. I’ll be writing about this one in-depth in the future, for sure.

Medicalchain (MTN)

Price: $0.304/coin

Current market capitalization: $56,291,615 (rank 203)

Token/Coin: ERC-20 token

Purpose/goals: Hard to say! There isn’t a lot of information out there outside of what can be found in the whitepaper and their website. I did take a look at the whitepaper, and the basic idea is that their intent is to use blockchain technology to revolutionize health/medical records.

Community: Does not seem to exist.

Analysis: I’m not going to lie - at a glance this thing seems like vaporware to me. Do they have any actual prototypes or anything beyond their “ideas” to demonstrate? The fact that there doesn’t seem to be a community for this token is concerning. While I can see the potential value for putting medical data on a blockchain (assuming privacy could be protected, which, despite the whitepaper’s protestations, I am dubious about), I’m a little suspicious of this project in general. Without more information, I’m going to have to give this one a pass for now.

Particl (PART)

Price: $21.74/coin

Current market capitalization: $192,960,990 (rank 94)

Token/Coin: Coin with its own blockchain and wallet.

Purpose/goals: “Decentralized Economy.” This is another coin focused on “Dapps” (decentralized applications). It is described on its subreddit as “an open-source and decentralized privacy platform built on the blockchain specifically designed to work with any cryptocurrency.”

Community: Subreddit

Analysis: While it bills itself as a privacy platform, a glance, this seems more like a direct competitor to Elastos (and, by extension, Ethereum). Like Elastos it has its own wallet, and this indicates the development team is active and at least somewhat capable. Seems worth a further look!

Revain (R)

Price: $2.69/coin

Current market capitalization: $495,371,832 (rank 47)

Token/Coin: ERC-20 token

Purpose/goals: “Feedback Platform.” Surely you’ve heard of review websites such as Yelp, InsiderPages, or even the Better Business Bureau (BBB). Revain intends to revolutionize this entire industry with blockchain technology; it will use Artificial Intelligence to filter out certain feedback (presumably, spam and the like), and the content which passes this filter will then be immutably stored forever on the blockchain.

Community: Subreddit

Analysis: This project seems very interesting and, best of all, I don’t think I’ve seen anything like it. Reputation management is an extraordinarily lucrative and massive industry, and rumors abound that it sometimes devolves to the level of a sort of mafia-style racket. I’ve even heard that companies can pay off Yelp (and similar sites) to allow them to remove negative feedback. While there’s a lot more going on to Revain, what I’m mainly interested in is the fact that it seems to be a totally transparent, un-abusable review system. I’m interested to see where it goes!

SelfKey (KEY)

Price: $0.0158/coin

Current market capitalization: $29,738,290 (rank 281)

Token/Coin: ERC-20 token

Purpose/goals: “Digital Identity Wallet.” The basic idea behind SelfKey is hidden in the name; this token is meant to revolutionize “identity documents” such as passports. This software is meant to allow you to securely store, access, and manage identity documents on your personal devices (i.e., not on a centralized database or blockchain). The platform will create value by providing certain tools such as the ability to digitally sign documents, quickly and easily onboard KYC data, and so on. Due to the fact that KYC data is a major focus, the actual KEY token will be used to facilitate this process; the way this is described in the bitcointalk.org announcement is as follows:

A user will pay tokens for the attestation of his identity. In the same way that you go to the notary with your physical document to certify it.

The user will pay tokens to onboard in a product or service. In the same way that you currently pay a registered agent for the incorporation of your company.

The relying parties will allocate a portion of the tokens received to reward certifiers, who have verified the identity of the customer that has been successfully onboarded.

Community: Subreddit

Analysis: I am both apprehensive and excited about this project. While the idea of simplifying identity management sounds great on its face, I am immediately concerned that this system will be difficult to secure and will simply make it easier for your identity to be stolen. I didn’t look too deeply into the whitepaper on this one, but I am sure they have ideas on this front. All in all, this token certainly seems worth keeping an eye on.

Siacoin (SC)

Price: $0.0253/coin

Current market capitalization: $828,545,194 (rank 30)

Token/Coin: Coin with its own blockchain and wallet.

Purpose/goals: “Decentralized Storage.” Siacoin is sort of like an FTP server on steroids. The basic idea is that disk storage is pooled from all users of the system around the world and, through smart contracts, enterprising users of the system may rent storage out to other users. Smart contracts will also keep users honest; the system will only pay out if the host kept the file(s) for the duration of the contract.

Community: Subreddit

Analysis: My first thought about Siacoin was “what if someone tries to snoop around in my files?” Not to worry - apparently, privacy is ensured through client-side encryption and padding. Overall I think there is a lot going on here. Like with Dent, I am again reminded of POWR - I may start calling these coins “marketplace coins.” I was also pleasantly surprised to learn that SC has its own blockchain - I first expected a project like this to be an ERC-20 token. If you think about it, though, this makes sense; an ERC-20 token would likely have too much in the way of transaction fees for the Siacoin data-renting-system to be viable. All-in-all this coin’s goals seem pretty interesting and viable, and the development team seems to have it together. I’d love to see where the platform can go!

SIRIN LABS Token (SRN)

Price: $0.9088/coin

Current market capitalization: $89,916,378 (rank 150)

Token/Coin: ERC-20 token

Purpose/goals: “Blockchain Smartphone.” Sirin Labs is the developer of a mobile phone called “Solarin” which, in addition to being touted as unhackable, will cost you five figures. SRN tokens will be used to purchase various Sirin Labs products and services using these tokens.

Community: Subreddit

Analysis: SRN’s community seems to be kind of dead/lacking in useful information - however, after skimming their whitepaper, I am extremely dubious of this project. I’ve seen people list the price of the Solarin itself at anywhere from $14,000 to $16,000. Regardless of how secure it is, I just don’t think a phone can succeed at that price - and, proving me right, it appears that almost nobody bought it. Given the fact that they’ve resorted to an ICO to raise money, I can’t help but think that this is more of a cash grab than an attempt to create a new, useful technology. I give this one a pass.

SmartCash (SMART)

Price: $0.2758/coin

Current market capitalization: $200,095,085 (rank 91)

Token/Coin: Coin with its own blockchain and wallet.

Purpose/goals: “Privacy Cryptocurrency.” Based on Zerocoin, SmartCash is focused on being a true “cryptocurrency” which strives for merchant adoption. Using the Zerocoin Protocol, you can “burn” coins and get “new” coins in exchange at any time, allowing you to eliminate the history of said coins.

Community: Subreddit

Analysis: There’s no need to go in depth here, because SmartCash’s concept is pretty straightforward. If you, like John Mcafee, believe that privacy coins are going to be big in the future, then it makes sense for you to invest in SmartCash. I like seeing coins that focus on the original mission of Bitcoin - revolutionizing online cash transactions in a private, quick, and low-to-no-fee way. This one gets a thumbs up from me!

WAX (WAX)

Price: $0.3358/coin

Current market capitalization: $165,514,908 (rank 104)

Token/Coin: ERC-20 token

Purpose/goals: “Worldwide Asset Exchange.” WAX is the brainchild of the developers of OPSkins, a leading online marketplace for video game assets such as CSGO “skins” (unique graphical changes to items in the game). The idea is to provide a platform by which anyone can operate a reliable, anonymous, and secure “virtual marketplace” without the tremendous effort of building and running a site replete with payment processing, a backend database, and so on.

Community: Subreddit

Analysis: Even if you’re not a gamer, you have to accept that gaming is an industry worth billions of dollars. It may seem silly, but people really will pay hundreds of dollars so that their basic knife looks more like a Balisong in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. If the WAX platform is widely adopted, the token itself is sure to skyrocket in value as it’s used to facilitate these gaming asset trades.

WePower (WPR)

Price: $0.1497/coin

Current market capitalization: $53,236,984 (rank 209)

Token/Coin: ERC-20 token

Purpose/goals: “Blockchain-Based Green Energy.” At a glance, this appears to be an “energy marketplace” token like POWR. The only difference seems to be that this token is more explicitly focused on “green” energy, and also includes the goal of using smart contracts to facilitate investing and financing of green energy projects.

Community: Subreddit

Analysis: I don’t really see how this token is superior in any way to Power Ledger. I can’t say I’m that interested in this one!

Zilliqa (ZIL)

Price: $0.0575/coin

Current market capitalization: $374,568,168 (rank 56)

Token/Coin: ERC-20 token

Purpose/goals: “High-Throughput Blockchain.” Zilliqa is explicitly focused on solving the ever-present “scaling” problem which pervades cryptocurrency and has caused more than a few knock-down drag-out fights as well as the Bitcoin Cash fork. Zilliqa uses a technique called “sharding” which, in theory, should allow transaction throughput to increase as the token’s mining network expands.

Community: Subreddit

Analysis: With its focus on the scaling issue, this token first reminded me of IOTA, a coin I’ve previously written about. However, it’s actually not really like IOTA at all. Right now Zilliqa is just an ERC-20 token, and while this is intended to change, I am always a little dubious about tokens making it out of the development hell stage. Because it intends to support secure decentralized applications, I’d characterize Zilliqa as a competitor to Ethereum which primarily focuses on solving the scaling question. The real question, as always, is “will it work?” I don’t have an answer, yet, but I do think this is a token worth keeping an eye on.