
QTUM: Investment Case
Disclaimer: This is not investment advice, always do your own research. I will update my view as I learn new information
As always; I welcome opposing views, disagreement and discussion.
Tl:dr: QTUM is showing very similar signs of being a younger Ethereum — back when the price of ETH was much cheaper than now.
Summary of drivers (more comprehensive info & links are in the next section below):
- Strong developer adoption (a very healthy sign that developers believe in a particular blockchain) has already begun (before the mainnet is even launched), as 17 projects have now selected to build on QTUM — making QTUM the second most adopted platform in the cryptosphere.
- Corporate backers (similar to Eth alliance): Near term announcement of 2 companies with revenues >100billion RMB (there’s only a few companies this large in China), including a QTUM alliance.
- A wallet on WeChat (there are over 700 million users on WeChat — for perspective, the USA entire population is 323 million)
- Low market cap QTUM can 23X and still have a smaller market cap than ETH (i.e. an investor doesn’t need to believe in QTUM as much as ETH to create a valid investment case for QTUM).
- Major backers behind QTUM, Long list of heavyweights (read in article below) including 2 billionaires
- Exchange volume is low on a relative basis and also shows the majority of QTUM is traded on Asian exchanges, suggesting the western markets haven’t yet caught on (though this is rapidly changing)
- QTUM is not a threat to other projects, QTUM can coexist & thrive alongside NEO, ETH & others because mainstream crypto penetration is so small. Multiple blockchains are healthy for the blockchain ecosystem.
- Major news (Recent & future): not limited to exchange listings, mainnet launch, corporate backers, new ICO’s, new features (Oracles, API bridges etc)
- Fundamentals are in place: QTUM is very well positioned, resourced and has the right team+tech+partners to take this project to a great future
- The tech: Decentralized Governance Protocol, EVM on UTXO, Proof-of-Stake Consensus, and mobile smart contract functionality, best of BTC & ETH, integrated oracle API bridge, lightening, EVM.
- The price does not (yet) reflect the fundamentals & the future of QTUM
Detailed info and links below:
DISADVANTAGES/RISKS
41% tokens uncirculated (held by ‘partners’)
- Short term risk is that dump cause price spikes downwards & a negative shift in sentiment (‘partners’ dumping their ownership is rarely positive).
- See reasons in “advantages” as to why this isn’t actually an issue over the medium term (the market cap is small compared to similar projects like NEO).
Integrity concerns over Patrick Dai
- Strongly suggest you do your own research on this and build up your own conviction . Integrity is a MASSIVE issue i.e. if accusations are true then I agree that an investor should disregard all other positive info and walk away — the problem however is assuming the accusations are true, without any conclusive facts, and then needlessly overlooking a good project in the process.
- Remember that the QTUM team & project is far larger than Patrick, Forbes named Patrick a “top 30 under 30”, each high-profile backer investor (including 2 billionaires) would have done their own due diligence.
- here’s an article (both positive and negative arguments can be found in the comments sections with links to other forums where guys debate the issues from both sides): https://www.smithandcrown.com/qtum-controversy-patrick-dais-exit-bitbay/
- Patricks community announcement https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/6tgtav/qtums_patrick_dai_comes_up_about_the_bitbay/
Key features still have to be delivered
- As with all projects, QTUM is a work in progress. The risk is that they don’t deliver (on time, or at all, or to the expected quality/functionality required)
- They have set ambitious tech goals which means they have lots of expectation to deliver (i.e. the expectation around their promises could easily be priced in, so if the tech disappoints or is delayed then the market may penalize their price).
- Also most code is “heavily copied” from bitcore according to a dev; calls into question if QTUM is leading this space or simply following.
Now for the good news…
ADVANTAGES/OPPORTUNITIES
Corporate Alliances about to be announced:
- “2 companies >100 billion RMB” — there are only a few companies this large; https://twitter.com/djkddkndm/status/898600711398842369
- no need to highlight how important this news is regarding Chinese corporate adoption:
Risk: these announcements don’t come true (though history has shown past announcements to be true, albeit slightly delayed).
17 other projects chose QTUM to ICO and run on the QTUM chain
- ICO’s choosing QTUM are a vote of confidence that those developers believe QTUM will be the best chain to run their project
- https://twitter.com/PumpPumpCryptor/status/900899914695155717
- Risk: source is one devs slack comment
13 September mainnet launch:
- https://twitter.com/djkddkndm/status/899984849045512193
- Risk the mainnet disappoints or is buggy (testnet practice should mitigate most risk imo).
Exchange listings (just listed on coinone — 2 more major exchanges to come):
- Already on Bittrex, CHBTC, Yunbi, Jubi, BTER, Binance ..and another 10 smaller exchanges
- 2 more major exchanges (over & above Coinone to be listed soon — source slack, Brett: https://qtumnexus.slack.com/messages/C3FPCHBCL/)
- Coinone: Major listing on 4th largest global exchange by volume (25th Aug 2017) Coinone on 28th August. https://coinone.co.kr/notice/posts/246/
- Korea is a massive market and Coinone is very selective, they only have 5 coins.
- Speculation: This listing will likely prompt competitor exchange Bithumb to list — Bithumb is the world’s largest global exchange by volume
Risk: existing on other exchanges has allowed any investor access to QTUM already i.e. new listing won’t necessarily drive up prices because there’s new investors that now have access.
Very active community
1) Slack: https://qtumslack.herokuapp.com/
2) Twitter: https://twitter.com/QtumOfficial
3) Forum: https://forum.qtum.org/recent
4) Blog: https://medium.com/@Qtum
Very active developer work
- https://github.com/qtumproject/qtum/commits/master
- https://github.com/qtumproject/qtum-dgp
- ‘Best of’ BTC & ETH including Oracles & API bridges & Mobile ready
- https://storeofvalue.github.io/posts/is-qtum-the-dark-horse/
- https://github.com/qtumproject/qtum-dgp\
- Co founders blog: http://earlz.net/
Strong roadmap including
- https://twitter.com/QtumOfficial/status/900975233074475008
- Qloha WeChat wallet
- Integrated Oracles & API links (“bridges between blockchains & real-world applications)
The tech
Decentralized Governance Protocol, EVM on UTXO, Proof-of-Stake Consensus, and mobile smart contract functionality, best of BTC & ETH, integrated oracle API bridge, lightening, EVM.https://github.com/qtumproject/qtum
Qtum Community & Development Updates — August 28
Main Network Launches September 13th, 2017
medium.com
High profile project backers:
> Speculative: they likely would have done their own due diligence (not limited to: integrity of the team and the ability of the project to be successful)
> Speculative: They will likely support/assist corporate adoption (especially the two billionaires who have stakes in large corporate).
source https://storeofvalue.github.io/posts/is-qtum-the-dark-horse/
- Anthony Di Iorio — Co-founder of Ethereum
- Chen Weixing — Billionaire Founder of Didi Chuxing (they beat Uber in China)
- Jeremy Gardner — Co-founder of Augur
- David Lee Cuo Chuen — Co-founder of Left Coast and Libai
- Bo Shen — General Partner at Fenbushi Capital
- Jehan Chu — Managing Partner at Jen Advisor
- Qingzhong Gao — Director of HuaWei SC
- Xu Star — CEO of OKCoin
- Lihua Yi — Partner at ZhongWo Investment
- Xiaolai Li — Bitcoin Startup Investor
- Roger Ver — Bitcoin Startup Investor
- Billionaire Investor Charles Xue https://cointelegraph.com/news/80-percent-of-chinese-have-never-heard-of-bitcoin-billionaire-investor-charles-xue
Very small market cap relative to NEO i.e. upside price potential if the tech delivers
- Nominally QTUM at $880m is $1.1 billion less than NEO market cap and $30 billion less than Ethereum. Said differently, QTUM is 44% of NEO’s size and only 2.8% the size of Ethereum.
- “But QTUM has 41% uncirculated tokens (held by partners)” yes — so let’s assume the worst case scenario: all 41m uncirculated tokens being dumped into circulation. This would create an effective market cap of $1.3b at current prices ($13.17) — this is still significantly smaller than NEO
- NEO currently has a market cap of $2b, but NEO has 50m (of 100m tokens uncirculated) so a fairer comparison would be NEO also circulating all their tokens, in which case their market value would be just over $4 billion — QTUM is still $2.7 billion lower than NEO on an effective basis. Said differently QTUM is only 32.5% of the NEO market cap on an effective basis.
- QTUMs effective market cap of $1.3 billion (remember we’re assuming worst case scenario of all partners dumping their tokens into circulation) is still $30 billion less than Ethereum. Said differently, QTUM is still only 4.2% the size of ethereum.
- i.e. QTUM, with all uncirculated tokens dumped into circulation, can return 23X or 2380% and still have a lower market cap than ethereuem
The next few months will be an exiting and interesting period for the QTUM project. No one knows what the future holds, and this entire space is very speculative. But if the above fundamentals prove true then QTUM should see *significant* prices increases.
And one final nugget for your consideration: https://twitter.com/_mr_BTC/status/901438584216891393
Remember to do your own research (from multiple sources) to build up your own conviction. Good luck!
To those kind people who wish to donate for future research (feel free to request research on a specific coin you are interested in):
BTC 1Pqs19fDG1mzWcfooABNKt2EaaYxqS9Ppi
ETH 0x092defbef1fd1c272af566f2c28730e9da7153d8
