Should You Invest in Skycoin…?
What is Skycoin anyway?
I’ll bet it’s just another ICO trying to get money out of people!
More smoke and mirrors designed to market a pipe-dream to entice would-be investors…
Words uttered by the natural sceptic.
Don’t get me wrong you should be sceptical! It’s your hard earned money, after all, you’d be stupid to throw it at something without doing thorough research. My personal rule of thumb is to spend at least a third of the time researching an investment as it took me to save the money… So if I saved $10k over a year I’d spend 4 months researching a group of potential investments. (The exception being advice from a trusted third party)
What I’m getting at is it pays to be sceptical… BUT, don’t let your scepticism stop you from doing the appropriate research!
Proper research is a lot of work!
Failure to do so is why most people don’t make much money investing.
Either they invest in things they know nothing about, do insufficient research into their investments or they mistime the market then panic and sell at a loss.
I’m not an expert investor by any means, however, after putting thousands of hours into researching Blockchain and working in the industry for many months now I’ve come to realize you can easily weed out 90% of the projects from even crossing your mind as a possible investment.
It’s actually very easy to do, it just takes some time! I’ve laid out some basic instructions in the video below:
Ok, if you’ve watched that video then you understand the difference between a blockchain platform and a ‘blockchain company’ is night and day!
Once you understand what a successful blockchain platform should look like… Considering Skycoin as an investment should be an easy decision.
To tip you over the edge I’ve laid it out plain and simple below.
You ask should I invest in Skycoin…?
Here’s the situation; in the next bull run there will be 20x as many people coming into the market. Although we’ll see the largest influx of people into the industry yet… Most of the money flowing in will be from a small number of institutional investors. Instead of investing into 100s or 1,000s of ICO projects, they’ll be looking at platforms that survived the ‘Crypto Winter’ and have a proven track record of delivering. Qualifying platforms will need:
- A strong development team
- Software and functional products/services
- Their own Blockchain
- A Blockchain programming language
- Hardware
- And a strong community!
Does Skycoin fit the criteria? Definitely!
In fact, once you understand blockchain technology, and what needs to happen for a successful decentralized economy to form; Skycoin is one of the only logical choices.
The Origin Story:
Skycoin has been around since March 2011, although at that time it was 3 nameless projects spawned to overcome the problems Bitcoins was facing.
These 3 projects eventually consolidated into Skycoin with Synth naturally slotting into the role of Project Manager.
During these early days, the Skycoin team stripped Bitcoin back to its bare necessities, then using this refined version as a template they re-imagined and wrote the fundamentals of Skycoin from scratch using Golang as a base language instead of C++.
After some time developing, Skycoin was born and ‘officially’ launched to the public late 2013. (Skycoins official GitHub was created 1 day after Ethereum)
Price Talk:
For the time being Skycoin is still flying under the radar!
But, Skycoin will be a household name by the end of the next bull run, mark my words!
Currently hovering around the 180–220 rank on Coin Market Cap, Skycoin is well down from its previous ranking in the 50s just a few months ago.
What’s the reason for this?
Well, the bear market is a good start followed by the unfortunate home invasion of one of Skycoins founders Synth!
Some of Skycoins Chinese marketing contractors were caught siphoning off Skycoin over around a 6 month period. When caught they did the logical thing and apologized returning the SKY… HA! Yea right!
Naturally, they hired gang members and broke into the bosses home to steal more money! Then roughed him up a bit, broke a rib or two, threatening to stab him to death and smacked his girl around a bit… Because; well that’s what you do if you’re a piece of shit!
The 9 assailants held Synth and his partner hostage for a number of hours in efforts to extort more money. After about 6 hours trying to gain access to 10s of millions they gave up and left with the contents of a hot wallet containing 18.8 BTC and 6466 SKY.
The criminals tried to sell the how-wallet contents and siphoned coins on Binance, Binance picked up on what was going on and froze withdrawals from their accounts. Unfortunately, this meant they were still able to dump their few 100k Skycoin for Bitcoin which did wonders for the trading price! (The court case is finally coming to an end now)
This struck fear into weak investors, they feared that Synth would leave the project due to the severity of the incident; obviously, this didn’t happen! Instead, Skycoin beefed up their security with the help of John Otto previously the CFO of Triple Canopy, Inc. (A private security organization)
The Skycoin ‘Competitors’ saw a moment of weakness and proceeded to slander Skycoin with paid FUD in attempts to ‘finish off’ the project with outrageous allegations of ‘Insider Trading’ spawned from a joke Synth made about an insider group that was getting rich off trading Kittycash cats back and forth…
To top it off, all this coincided with Skycoins Binance listing and trading competition. Both factors saw a massive increase in volume; peaking at around 50 Million USD in daily volume.
High volume, plus the dumping of stolen coins in an overall bear market devastated Skycoins price as it dropped from $30 (Second peak) down to its current level around $1 over the course of many months.
Questions about the Skycoin supply often come up due to some idiot saying “It’s pre-mined, it must be a SCAM!” along with fears that all the coins will be magically dumped onto the market just for the lols…
Yes, all coins were created at genesis (which removes the need for mining) 25% of these coins are available now with 75% of the coins time-locked to help ensure fair distribution. Christian Ott does a great job of explaining the whole distribution method.
In short 25 Million coins are being distributed now of which 12.5 million have been distributed. Once the 25 million cap is reached a maximum of 5 million coins will be released each year until the 100 million cap is reached. The release of these coins requires unanimous consensus among the key holders.
At its current market cap Skycoin makes up 0.01% of the 113 billion USD cryptocurrency market cap.
Skycoin is poised and ready to capture a decent chunk of the market during the upcoming bull run! It’s fair to assume the total crypto markets will reach 1 trillion (More likely 10+) and it’s also reasonable to conclude that Skycoin could capture 1% of this market. Putting the Skycoin market cap at around 10 billion USD.
One rule I’ve always followed for investing is to buy bad news! When the majority of people are running scared you should invest in fundamentally strong companies with a track record of overcoming problems and delivering on the goods.
Skycoin suffered more than its share of FUD during 2018 and at $1, in my opinion, Skycoin is a once in a lifetime investment opportunity!
Exchanges and Liquidity:
Skycoin is on a number of different exchanges, the most notable being C2CX, Lbank, and Binance. Binance recognised Skycoin as one of their Gold investments! All the major remaining exchanges are lined up for 2019.
You can also buy Skycoin anonymously directly through their website.
Liquidity for Skycoin has been pretty steady for the last 2months usually falling between 300k and 1 million USD in a 24-hour window. At the current market cap of 12 million, this is a healthy 2.5–12% of daily trade activity.
Team:
The early Skycoin team consisted of developers from Bitcoin and later Ethereum, over the years there have been over 450 developers work on the project with a current team of over 100 working for Skycoin (Mostly Software and Hardware Developers) backed by a Skyfleet of over 10k active members.
There are 2 offices in Shanghai, China (Including the head office) with around 10–15 offices worldwide! Skycoin is a global revolution!
The Skycoin team is always looking for top talent and rapidly expanding!
Check out some of the positions available here:
Or send your resume to jobs@skycoin.net (English is a requirement)
Skycoin has its own Blockchain:
I feel like I really need to emphasize how important this is…
Skycoin has its own custom blockchain!
Yes, it was built from scratch, and no it’s not a copy of another blockchain like almost all other projects.
Here’s a list of projects that actually built their own blockchain, it might surprise you! Most are smoke and mirrors when you look a bit closer.
Skycoin has 45 repos on Github and more developers than most projects entire staff. In fact, when cryptocurrencies are ranked on all their Github activity Skycoin is firmly in the top 10, alongside projects like Ethereum, Cardano, Waves and Tron.
How has Skycoin improved upon other blockchains?
- Lightning Fast: Transactions take as little as 2 seconds. With no bottlenecks or fees, Skycoin is faster than other cryptocurrencies and competitive with credit cards and Apple Pay.
- Infinitely Scalable: Each project gets their own blockchain! no sidechain or sharding BS. You’re not competing with anyone else for transactions and have full control over what you do with your blockchain.
- Zero Fees: Skycoin transactions use Coin Hours, a separate currency accrued just by holding Skycoin in your wallet. Coin Hours are earned at a 1 to 1 ration per hour and used as an anti-spam mechanism.
(1 Skycoin = 24 Coin Hours per day) - Secure: Built from the ground up in Golang, Skycoin makes full use of time-tested cryptographic standards to ensure transactions can’t be tampered with. Skycoin renders threats such as 51% attack, reversal, duplication, and malleability useless.
- Sustainable: Without the enormous computational energy requirement typical of PoW and PoS processes, Skycoin can run on a 30-watt cell phone processor.
Skycoins answer to ERC-20 is Fiber; Fiber enables each project to have their own unique, fully customizable blockchain with the following Features:
- 300 TPS per blockchain, scaling to 3,000 with hardware advancements.
- Instant access to their own versions of Skycoins software and hardware wallets.
- As said above each project gets their own fully customizable blockchain.
- Skycoin is working on their own Decentralized Exchange (DEX) which will allow every Fiber project to list their coin for free, immediately and start trading without paying ridiculous ‘listing fees’.
Projects Using Fiber:
My Daily Life (MDL) Talent Hub: “MDL aims to build a trust-chain for the $2.3 trillion entertainment industry. The MDL platform features a unique prosumer-based ecosystem marketplace and micro-KOL (Key Opinion Leader) partnership programs to raise revenue.”
Solar Bankers Coin (SLB): “Solar Bankers is the first decentralised solar energy network based on the Skycoin blockchain and fully integrated with our highly innovative, proprietary solar energy generating hardware. By incorporating five separate products into one integrated system, Solar Bankers will create an environment in which small-scale clean energy generation becomes economically viable. We do this by enabling individual energy producers to trade their excess power with neighbouring homes and businesses.”
Spaco: “Spaco is a decentralized service built on Fiber, running storage and data transfer, a peer-to-peer encrypted Internet browser with built-in anti-spam and versatile user-controlled feed filtering, as well as secure future applications in custom site-creation, shopping, games, video, and much more.”
There are around 10 projects using Fiber publically and more privately or under NDAs. This number will grow exponentially when CX (Skycoins programming language) is integrated with Fiber (the blockchain) enabling any programmer to create functional DAPPs on the platform.
This integration is happening as I write this article and won’t take long!
Software:
Here’s the second link to Skycoins impressive Github, make sure you check it out! I’d recommend favouriting some repos so you know what’s going on.
Briefly, Skycoin has the following current software components:
Wallets: Desktop wallets for Windows and Mac, a thin wallet and Android/IOS versions. Download here:
CX Object System (CXO): “In effect, CXO combines the immutability associated with blockchain and the scalability of a content distribution network (CDN). This is useful in cases where content needs to be easily available and verifiable, but not necessarily stored on the blockchain.”
Coin Join: “Skycoin’s transaction structure was designed to seamlessly adopt gmaxwells CoinJoin protocol. Once integrated, Skycoin mixes transactions from multiple wallets to ensure they are indistinguishable from one another.”
Skymessenger: A decentralized, encrypted messaging app similar to Telegram, and also an instrumental feature of Skywire for secure node communication.
BBS: Skycoins Bulletin Board System is the foundation for a slew of decentralized social media platforms. John McAfee has expressed that he’d like to use a decentralized social media platform for his upcoming 2020 US Presidential Campaign and is considering using one developed by Skycoin.
Obelisk: “Skycoin’s unique consensus algorithm, is central to the entire Skycoin infrastructure. Web-of-trust consensus changes the way we understand and use blockchain technology. It removes the need for costly mining resources, eliminates the vicious cycle of mining incentives, exponentially improves transaction speeds, and delivers greater security.”
CX: Ethereum has Solidity, Skycoin has CX its superior blockchain programming language that will usher in the age of functional blockchain games and DAPPs. The first version of the CX Textbook is available with other books specific to games and Dapps in the works. Skycoin has been approached by the largest publisher in Beijing who are interested in seeing the textbook distributed to all Universities in the area (300k potential students)
The latest version of CX can be found here:
“ CX is a general purpose, interpreted and compiled programming language, with a very strict type system and a syntax similar to Golang’s. CX provides a new programming paradigm based on the concept of affordances, where the user can ask the programming language at runtime what can be done with a CX object (functions, expressions, packages, etc.), and interactively or automatically choose one of the affordances to be applied. This paradigm has the main objective of providing an additional security layer for decentralized, blockchain-based applications, but can also be used for general purpose programming.”
Skywire: A decentralized peer-to-peer secure internet that’s free from censorship and the tyranny of ISPs/Big Business/Government.
Skywire is Skycoins flagship application, and likely the first widely used real-world application of blockchain technology.
Skywire is currently in test-net with over 9,500 active nodes and quickly closing in on Bitcoins 10,300… Not bad for an application on a platform during a bear market!
“Each node is assigned a personal blockchain that acts as a “public broadcasting channel,” where its every action is publicly recorded and visible. As all consensus decisions and communication occur through the personal blockchains of each node, the community can easily audit nodes for cheating or collusion — without compromising privacy.”
The Skywire network is built using Skycoins custom software and hardware (Which I will discuss below) however, the differentiating point in my eyes is that all the software and hardware is open source! This sparked an active DIY community of thousands who are exponentially growing the Skycoin network and community.
Think early internet days when the majority of network expansion and development was done by passionate skilled volunteers who believed in the long term vision! Skycoin has a very similar feel… it’s a movement!
Hardware
This is one of the areas where Skycoin really shines!
When you start talking about creating a new peer to peer internet utilizing blockchain technology many will often overlook the hardware aspect.
You cannot rely on hardware created by big business to build out the network. They’re too susceptible to corruption or manipulation, and the hardware needs to be open source!
Skycoin is creating the backbone to the new internet with a range of hardware products:
Skyminer: The Skyminer is a mini computer cluster comprising of 8 CPU boards that each act as a node on the Skywire network forwarding data packets or running decentralized applications (The current version uses Orange Pi Primes)
Skywallet: Skycoins first hardware wallet is targeted at mass adoption due to it’s inexpensive $30 price tag (This may go as low as $10) The wallet accepts Skycoin, soon to be BTC and ETH with future software enabling any coin to create a ‘plugin’ enabling storage.
Antennas: Skywire requires Antenna to plug into Skyminers for servicing the last mile and creating backhaul for the new internet. 3 versions are currently in development, a point-to-point antenna capable of up to 15km line of sight and excess of 100Mbs (Being tested atm). A wifi-like antenna for the local area and a low bandwidth high rang (50+km) LoRa antenna for developing countries.
Custom PCB board: The custom boards will feature in all future Skycoin products including the Second Generation Skyminer, POS Systems, Crypto Phones and Laptops, plus different Hardware Wallets.
Skycoin also develops hardware projects for clients who want to use Fiber for their projects. This is an invaluable service as it means you’re a ‘one stop shop’ for blockchain development.
Marketing and Influencers:
2018 was a massive year for Skycoin on the marketing and influencer front!
Let’s start with a name that everyone’s familiar with… John Mother F%#$# McAfee met up with the team in Malta and loved what Skycoin was doing so much he was inspired to get inked with the Skycoin logo! Rational or not you have to love how eccentric and influential the man is!
McAfee is the biggest influencer in crypto and is running in the 2020 US Presidential Election, likely as the Libertarian candidate. This will grant him a platform and influence among the 5% of the American voting public that supports the Libertarian ticket. He’ll be getting a lot of media time on CNN and NBC etc. all the while being a vocal supporter of Skycoin. His campaign is scheduled to get underway in March 2019.
Social Media:
During the bear market of 2018 Skycoin grew their Youtube channel from nothing to over 2k subscribers, Twitter from under 4k to over 14k, Reddit from 50 to over 3.5k, A Medium blog from nothing to over 1K and the main Telegram room from around 3k active users to more than 10k.
Media Mentions:
Skycoin has been gaining traction among mainstream media with 2018 being the first time Skycoin was covered by Nasdaq and had an article on Forbes.com where it was ranked the #1 Blockchain project to keep an eye on.
With all the announcements and scheduled releases in 2019 the media attention will continue to grow exponentially, especially after the launch of Skywire which is scheduled for Q1 2019.
Community:
Community is one of the most important drivers behind any successful company, it’s accentuated with blockchain because this is a global movement that could never be accomplished by 100s or even 1,000s of employees…
It requires the dedication of passionate individuals who believe in the vision of the project and want to further the vision.
I strongly believe that Skycoins community, dubbed the Skyfleet, is the best community in the space. It includes some of the most intelligent, forward-thinking people I’ve had the pleasure of knowing. Everyone is chipping in to help bring Skycoins vision into fruition with very few ‘moon boys’, being a part of the community is an enlightening experience.
I implore you to join the community so you can see for yourself!
Where To Start!
Skycoin Telegram Room: You won’t find ‘moon talk’ here, the main telegram is strictly moderated and routinely cleansed of bots and toxic people. This keeps the conversation intelligent and on topic. Join the room and you’ll see what I mean!
Skywug.net: Created by a passionate Skyfleet member, Skywug is a forum for everything Skycoin (You can find lots of amazing DIY Skyminer guides here)
Skywire Room: Lead by Skycoins technical team and many active Skyfleet members this is where you can get help building a DIY of Official Skyminer.
Join and check it out!
Skyfleet Youtube: Each month I will run through the monthly community update articles (Found here) and adding some extra informative nuggets. I’ll try to keep them as entertaining and concise as possible. Subscribe here!
More Popular Skyfleet Websites:
- Want to track how many Skywire nodes there are?
https://skycoin-node.bchain.ovh/ or https://stats.skycoin.si/discovery/ - Want to learn about the Skycoin basics? https://christianott.co/skycoin/
- Want to learn Skycoin terms? https://skycoinwiki.com/
- Want to keep up to date with all the Fiber projects? https://skyfibergazette.com/
Recommended Further Research:
At the end of the day, it’s up to you to do your own research!
I’m hoping this article intrigues enough of you to dive a bit deeper and look into Skycoin. There’s so much to love about this project!
I’d recommend you check out some of the websites I’ve mentioned above.
Reading the Skycoin blog and Medium blog is a must for anyone who’s serious about researching their investments! You can also check out the Bitcoin Talk thread which dates back to Skycoins official inception in 2013. (I’ll also put a bunch of infographics at the bottom of this article for further info)
Summary:
I wholeheartedly believe that Skyoin is a once in a lifetime opportunity at these levels, yes it might go a bit lower… but do you think early bitcoin investors really cared if they bought at $1 or 50 cents? NO!
I’m investing what I can afford to lose with a long term mentality (2–5 years) and accumulating as much as I can at these levels!
Skycoin is almost 8 years old and will be one of the projects to emerge out of this Crypto Winter as a clear winner. The only question is, are you going to miss this opportunity or have some skin in the game!?
Check out the Skycoin Website here:
Thanks for reading this article and I hope it’s helped you to make an informed decision about Skycoin.
Infographics:
