From cross-blockchain transfers to a banking competitor cryptocurrency that targets over 2 billion users
When investing in cryptocurrency, one overlooked but important factor to look out for is utility.
Forget the flashy ICO adverts and look instead at how a cryptocurrency will be used. A high utility provides the following benefits to a cryptocurrency:
Improves liquidity
A cryptocurrency that is constantly being used, transferred and traded allows for investors to easily buy and sell said cryptocurrency. A cryptocurrency with a high marketcap may make you wealthy (on paper) but if it is not being traded enough, who will buy it off you?
Drives demand
A cryptocurrency with a legitimate use is a cryptocurrency that is needed and sought out by users who can benefit from it’s utility. It is also sought out by investors looking to profit from the cryptocurrency’s demand.
Creates scarcity
The more a cryptocurrency is in demand the more it will be acquired by users, leading to less coins in circulation.
Today we will look at three different cryptocurrencies with very ambitious use cases.
Pantos (PAN)
PAN currently sits at a price of around $0.01, very early days for this project.
Pantos (PAN) is a cross-chain cryptocurrency developed by cryptocurrency exchange BitPanda, which is also the only place where investors can currently buy this cryptocurrency.
PAN is being developed to work across all blockchains, being able to transfer from the Ethereum blockchain for example to the Lisk blockchain and vice versa.
This will allow for cross-blockchain transfers of digital assets, a feat that has not yet been tackled by any cryptocurrency.
To achieve this, PAN relies on Token Atomic Swap Technology (TAST), which is essentially Atomic Swap technology for inter-blockchain transfers between cryptocurrency tokens.
To help bring this project to life, PAN is being developed in collaboration with researchers from various institutions which include:
- University of Vienna
- Research Institute for Future Cryptoeconomics (RIAT)
- Austrian Academy of Sciences
If successful, PAN will allow near instant cross-chain transfers, allowing users to transfer assets from one blockchain to another without having to use a third party medium such as an exchange.
PAN is barely on the map, this cryptocurrency is still in the early adopter phase and no other exchange has access to this token yet.
For what they are trying to accomplish, the partners they work with (including Waves, Komodo, Lisk & NEM) and the low access to this token, I believe PAN is very undervalued.
OmiseGo (OMG)
OmiseGo (OMG) is currently sitting at a marketcap of $248 million and a price of $1.75 which is unbelievable considering the huge demand this cryptocurrency had just last year.
OMG is a cryptocurrency created by a real world company, Omise, which provides online payment solutions to thousands of merchants. Omise has been featured in Forbes Thailand in 2016 and was also awarded “Digital Startup of The Year” by Thailands Prime Minister.
OMG is trying to solve 2 problems:
- Hundreds of million people in Asia, and 2 billion people around the world, are unbanked, meaning they don’t have access to a bank account.
- They want to make it easy to transfer value across many different networks and among many different currencies or assets.
OMG wants to provide the unbanked population with an easy to use system to store, send and receive money, in any currency or asset, for a very low cost.
To put it more simply, OmiseGo wants users, vendors and merchants to easily transfer money across the globe, across any network using any kind of currency of asset type.
This could be fiat money (GBP, USD,THB etc.), cryptocurrencies or any digitised asset through a secured blockchain network at a very low cost.
OMG are targeting both individuals and Electronic Payment Providers which gives the cryptocurrency a massive room for adoption.
The scale of the problem that OMG is trying to tackle is a really large one with hundreds of millions of potential users in Asia alone (where OmiseGo is based) and over 2 billion worldwide.
I believe they have a great opportunity to accomplish this, being one of the very few companies taking on this challenge.
Stellar Lumens (XLM)
XLM is currently sitting at a marketcap of $2 billion and a price of $0.10, a steal in my opinion considering it’s potential.
XLM boasts:
- Almost instant transactions (2–3 seconds)
- Almost free transactions (0.00001 XLM per transaction)
- Partnerships with Stripe, IBM and Deloitte
XLM plans to takeover the global money transfer market, possibly replacing SWIFT which currently handles over $5 Trillion in transactions daily.
Comparing SWIFT and XLM:
- SWIFT transaction cost at least $25, XLM cost less than a fraction of a penny
- SWIFT transaction time 3–5 business days, XLM takes 2 -3 seconds
The Stellar Lumens blockchain can also be used to develop decentralised apps (dapps) and deploy smart contracts with lower transaction costs and faster transaction speeds than the current leader Ethereum.
This also allows XLM to serve as backbone towards the creation of new cryptocurrencies, just like Ethereum is the platform behind ERC-20 tokens.
Every time an ERC-20 token is used, transactions fees are paid in Ether (ETH), and now XLM’s blockchain can be home to new digital assets, from cryptocurrencies to even weapons and skins in a video game.
We have not even scratched the surface when it comes to digital assets yet, we are talking about digital goods with real, tangible and real world value.
Finally Stellar have their own decentralised exchange, The Stellar Decentralised Exchange (Stellar DEX). This allows the peer-to-peer exchange of cryptocurrencies without a third party organisation or a need to verify your identity.
Stellar/XLM is really undervalued in my opinion considering the scope and what they are planning to tackle.
The technology is already there, all we need is an on-ramp for the Average Joe to understand before we reach mass adoption.
Conclusion
These cryptocurrencies may seem be ahead of their time with the issues they aim to solve, especially to the average person who may not be aware of these problems.
However this may be the very same reason why they hold a lot of potential. If any of these cryptocurrencies interest you, here is where you can find and invest into them:
- Stellar (XLM) can be bought directly with cash from CEX.
- Pantos (PAN) & OmiseGo (OMG) can be bought directly with cash from BitPanda if you live anywhere in Europe.
- All 3 can be bought using Bitcoin (BTC) or Ethereum (ETH) from Binance.
Times like this, when the market is quiet, is a good time for accumulation in my opinion, I cant wait to see how these projects mature over the years.