Orcadex is an information platform designed to help the world understand cryptoassets and blockchain technology.
The Cryptocurrency Bubble
Let’s start with the elephant in the room. Critics slam “cryptocurrency” as a great bubble. Take a look at a graph of total market cap for cryptoassets as of today:
Does this look familiar?
This is the “Dot-com bubble” in early aughts. If we believed the detractors after the market fell in 2000, the story ends here; the Internet goes away, and the technology disappears forever.
As we know now, that isn’t what happened. The hysteria subsided (in the wake of many real busts), but the companies and projects committed to the underlying technology (the Internet) successfully built the infrastructure that secured the industry’s long-term future.
As with all things, perspective is everything. Let us look at some data from our friends at Yahoo Finance to examine the average closing price of eight Internet tech companies from 1998 to present day to put the dot-com bubble (highlighted in red) in perspective:
With the benefit of hindsight, we see that the aftermath of the “bubble bursting” was really just a sustained period of development and broader acceptance. The Internet went on to become so central to our lives that we can hardly imagine a world without it.
Distributed ledger technology and decentralization, like the Internet, is here to stay. “Cryptocurrency” may no longer be a quick 100x investment, but we’re still only at the beginning of growth and integration of the underlying technology. Data (courtesy of Chris McCann) shows us that estimates of global cryptoasset ownership is at a mere 25 million people. If cryptoasset adoption continues to emulate that of the Internet penetration rates (as it has so far), there will be hundreds of millions of people joining our party in the coming years.
Cryptoassets have a market cap of over $300Bn post-burst. To date, venture funds have invested over $3.5bn in blockchain projects since 2012, and token sales (private + ICOs) have already surpassed $3bn of funding in 2018 alone.
On the other side of the coin, this exuberance has given way to an alarming number of scams defrauding investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars. There are clearly some growing pains for the industry, chief among them is an asymmetry of information.
The Intelligence Problem
Fragmentation
There is too much information being generated too quickly by too many sources. A quick scan of the space will turn up thousands of articles, websites, and newsletters, with hundreds more popping into existence every week. Many of these sources are unreliable and/or biased, and it comes down to the individual to decipher for themselves whether a source has merit.
Blockchain is Hard
Jimmy Song’s recent post cuts to the core issue between the current conceptions of “blockchain” and what the technology actually offers. Despite this gap, many projects of questionable feasibility continue to forge ahead, and people with money continue to finance their efforts. As a result, this industry is asking questions and raising issues faster than qualified sources are currently equipped to answer or solve them.
Bad Information
In the absence of qualified sources (and regulations), many snake-oil salesmen have risen to the task of relieving unsuspecting investors of their hard-earned cash. Digital con-artists have pounced on the lack of structure and organization, pushing Ponzi schemes and token scams on the unprotected public. Industry leaders, regulators, and even market participants are working hard to tackle this issue, but we all know that it won’t be a quick or an easy fix.
So… What is Orcadex?
We are a platform that organizes, verifies, and contextualizes the information in the industry to help you make sense of it all. We create high quality content to help present this information — we are building a comprehensive directory of blockchain projects, writing research reports to help with investments, producing short videos with visuals to explain key concepts, and partnering with industry thought leaders to bring you their words directly via podcasts and more.
Our mission is to bring objectivity and professionalism to an industry that lacks both. In order to keep our efforts transparent and worthy of the community’s trust, we’ve put together a list of guiding principles that we hope will help us stay on track:
- Data-first.
One of the biggest reasons for the industry’s information problem is because much of the reporting is actually opinion and punditry. Our pursuit to distribute objective information starts with data. - Qualified sources.
Rather than simply asking the community to trust us as newcomers, we’re committed to being partners that provide a platform for voices that are already established. We want to build Orcadex with the community rather than simply for it, a place for contributors of signal to build and distribute.
- Token-free.
Decentralization solves many but not all problems. Square-pegging a token into the round hole that is our centralized content platform would be antithetical to our mission. We’re a venture-backed company with traditional shareholders. Very few projects that have raised funds with both traditional investors and token-holders have been successful at reconciling the long-term interests of both parties (check out Vinny Lingham’s post for a deeper dive on this divide). - No ads.
Advertising in this space has led to very visible conflicts of interest, so we’re committing to an ad-free experience to eliminate the potential for inappropriate advocacy or mistrust. We may experiment with branded partnerships or programmatic advertising down the road but it will be entirely unrelated to blockchain or cryptoassets. You will never see us promoting a specific token, giveaway, or project. - Radical transparency.
At Orcadex, our team operates with clarity and candor, and we will apply this to the larger community we serve. We’ll walk you through our business plan and keep you posted on Twitter and Medium at every step of the way (in fact, our next piece on here will be a detailed look at our methodology for putting together investor relation materials in April). At the end of the day, we’re here to be a part of the community, earning trust and reputation the old-fashioned way.
In Conclusion…
Orcadex’s role for the time being is to help bring context and clarity. We understand that our vision is very ambitious; it’s not trivial to gather and sort through all of the information in the space. It’s going to be difficult and we’ll our best. We also recognize that we need help so please Tweet us, comment on Medium posts, and email us to help us improve.
If you’re looking for a more formal way to help, check out our careers to read about the positions we’re looking to fill immediately.
Thanks for making it this far! We hope you’ll stay with us for the rest of what promises to be a wild ride.
