How does one judge the "performance" of a cryptocurrency? In the abstract, I'd say what marks a currency's "performance" is its ability to be exchanged for goods and services; in that sense there really aren't any performing cryptocurrencies.
They seem to mean "which has the biggest increase in spot price this year?", which is a kind of weird thing to judge a currency on.
Liquidity by itself has an objective and quantifiable value. Bitcoin, and possibly a few other cryptocurrencies, have some unique properties that have intrinsic value, like algorithmic fairness, low transaction costs, logistical simplicity, and lack of centralized control over money supply. BTC has a distinct possibility of becoming the future default Exchange Currency in international currency markets, which basically means that the transaction costs of trading A -> BTC -> B are cheaper than trading A -> B directly.
I'd argue that if it were possible to isolate effects from hoarding and speculation, that the spot price would represent the intrinsic value of its liquidity and other intrinsic benefits. And thus, to the degree that prices are not influenced by speculation, the price reflects performance.
But since we know that prices are heavily influenced by speculation, I'd argue that the better metric for performance should be daily trading volume. Because that is a more direct measure of liquidity. It might be meaningless by itself (the trading volume doesn't "represent" anything more than the total value that exchanges hands everyday), but contextually it is important. The 24 hour bitcoin trading volume is currently $1.6B. The currency trading volume across all worldwide currencies is $5T [1]. So BTC can roughly be considered to have 3-ish orders of magnitude of difference in liquidity over the worldwide currency market. As someone who has no involvement in BTC whatsoever, I find that pretty impressive.
"Performance" in the sense of the "performance" of a stock is pretty well established terminology, but yeah, that just highlights how these currencies are highly speculative assets.
It's definitely possible to exchange cryptocurrencies for goods and services. I paid for a plane ticket with BTC just the other day (AirBaltic) and it was more convenient than using my debit card (because my bank requires a particular proprietary 2FA scheme that I don't always carry).
There are many people who charge for their programming services in cryptocurrency... there are huge dark markets... several cafés accept cryptocurrency (Paralelni Polis in Prague just switched to Litecoin from Bitcoin)... etc etc.
The top cryptocurrencies are valuable, liquid, and offer many benefits over other payment methods, so it's obvious that you can use them for exchange.
I've been judging cryptocurrencies based on what you can DO with them, which is why I think Ethereum is going places: Bitcoin with smart contracts. Monero is Bitcoin with better privacy. That sort of thing.
Not really. It's still too hard to do from both a regulatory and technical standpoint. There is enough liquidity and infrastructure around BTC to be feasible, but the regulators squashed that idea.
Also ETFs are great, but they are not a panacea for every asset class. Sometimes there are fundamental reasons why they don't work, but the idea is so buzzy that you can make a buck off selling garbage and calling it an ETF. Reminds me of something...
While many of these cryptocurrencies have some underlying function besides speculation, seems to me they are mostly a way around pyramid scheme laws at the moment. Such a huge number of competing pyramid schemes going all at once should produce some good data for a few economics PhD's.
I strongly suspect that buying these currencies will be much, much easier than selling them. There will be lots of tiny currencies where people are grateful to give currency for US $, but very few people want to give US $ for your currency.
WorldPay is probably in that group, it has a market cap of $1-$3. Dollars. But many of them, in a given day, trade value in the millions to billions. It drops off pretty quick after the top 5 by market cap (Ether is #2 and is in the billion/day range, Ripple is #3 and half that, Lumens is #12 and is $44M).
[+] [-] bandrami|8 years ago|reply
They seem to mean "which has the biggest increase in spot price this year?", which is a kind of weird thing to judge a currency on.
[+] [-] saosebastiao|8 years ago|reply
I'd argue that if it were possible to isolate effects from hoarding and speculation, that the spot price would represent the intrinsic value of its liquidity and other intrinsic benefits. And thus, to the degree that prices are not influenced by speculation, the price reflects performance.
But since we know that prices are heavily influenced by speculation, I'd argue that the better metric for performance should be daily trading volume. Because that is a more direct measure of liquidity. It might be meaningless by itself (the trading volume doesn't "represent" anything more than the total value that exchanges hands everyday), but contextually it is important. The 24 hour bitcoin trading volume is currently $1.6B. The currency trading volume across all worldwide currencies is $5T [1]. So BTC can roughly be considered to have 3-ish orders of magnitude of difference in liquidity over the worldwide currency market. As someone who has no involvement in BTC whatsoever, I find that pretty impressive.
[0] https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/
[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/global-markets-currency-volum...
[+] [-] mbrock|8 years ago|reply
It's definitely possible to exchange cryptocurrencies for goods and services. I paid for a plane ticket with BTC just the other day (AirBaltic) and it was more convenient than using my debit card (because my bank requires a particular proprietary 2FA scheme that I don't always carry).
There are many people who charge for their programming services in cryptocurrency... there are huge dark markets... several cafés accept cryptocurrency (Paralelni Polis in Prague just switched to Litecoin from Bitcoin)... etc etc.
The top cryptocurrencies are valuable, liquid, and offer many benefits over other payment methods, so it's obvious that you can use them for exchange.
[+] [-] tanduri|8 years ago|reply
In way tells you what lies behind a price
[+] [-] linsomniac|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dwaltrip|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] icpmacdo|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] schoen|8 years ago|reply
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/10/business/dealbook/winkelv...
I don't know whether the SEC's reasons for rejecting it would apply to other proposed cryptocurrency ETFs or not.
[+] [-] hectorr|8 years ago|reply
Also ETFs are great, but they are not a panacea for every asset class. Sometimes there are fundamental reasons why they don't work, but the idea is so buzzy that you can make a buck off selling garbage and calling it an ETF. Reminds me of something...
[+] [-] eigenvalue|8 years ago|reply
https://www.iconomi.net/
[+] [-] NicoJuicy|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexchamberlain|8 years ago|reply
Aren't we 5/12-s into 2017? Given the volatility of these currencies, a month could make a lot of difference.
[+] [-] subverter|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] njarboe|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chipuni|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] linsomniac|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CupOfJava|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wehadfun|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deweller|8 years ago|reply
Others are platforms (ETH) or ledgers (XRP) that are seeing significant growth in usage.
But in the grand scheme of things, ALL of these are speculation plays at this point. With maybe, just maybe, the exception of bitcoin.
[+] [-] RangerScience|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] subverter|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Dirlewanger|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] atm0sphere|8 years ago|reply
coinbase
gemini
poloniex
rule 2. don't leave coins on exchanges.
[+] [-] vocatus_gate|8 years ago|reply