N.B: In the spirit of full transparency, the following Coin Report on MonetaryUnit is a Sponsored Post.
Welcome to the ninth Coin Report. In today’s report, I will be assessing the fundamental and technical strengths and weaknesses of MonetaryUnit. This will comprise of an analysis of a number of significant metrics, an evaluation of the project’s community and development and an overview of its price-history. The report will conclude with a grading out of 10. I hope you enjoy the read!
Introduction
MonetaryUnit is a rather special case with regards to my Coin Reports, as one of their team members is a friend of mine in the space: @notsofast. As such, I’m going to be even more brutal than is the norm and tear MUE to pieces… only kidding nsf.
In fact, I first came across the project in November 2017, when notsofast tweeted that he’d had a meeting with the MonetaryUnit team at Brewdog; a brewery I’m a big fan of. Discussion of beer was indeed my first contact with the project. Following that, however, I didn’t pay much attention to it until around June 2018, when I bought a little based on the range it had formed between 1200-1600 satoshis for a period of around four months. The market swiftly sat me down for doing no further due diligence than this little slice of technical analysis, and price broke the range a few weeks later. I sold out of my position at a minor loss, and have not looked at the coin since. Strangely enough, price has again formed a long-term range… but we’ll get to that a little later.
Moving away from my past experience with the project, what is more important is where the project stands now; what it has accomplished; where it is failing on its promises; where it has room for improvement; and whether there is an opportunity here, at current prices, for us speculators. Having completed my research, I can say from the outset that there is quite a lot to get through…
I hope this ninth Coin Report will prove objective where it must be and fair on more subjective matters. For those who’d like to learn a little more about MonetaryUnit prior to reading this report, here are some primary links:
- https://www.monetaryunit.org/
- https://twitter.com/MonetaryUnit
- https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=778322.0
Fundamental
General:
Name: MonetaryUnit
Ticker: MUE
Algorithm: X11 (now pure Proof-of-Stake)
Sector: Decentralised Payments & Services + Masternode Platform
Exchanges: Bittrex, Upbit, CoinExchange, CryptoBridge, Bittylicious
Launch Overview
MonetaryUnit was launched in July 2014, as a Quark clone, but was relaunched in June 2017 as an X11 Dash hybrid. It has since migrated from the X11 Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism to fully Proof-of-Stake, operating alongside a network of masternodes. This migration took place in October 2018. There was a 1% premine (which has since been distributed in its entirety, towards bounties, Bittrex listing and other developments) and no ICO. Further, the coin is in its final block reward stage; a stage that will continue indefinitely – 40 MUE block rewards in perpetuity. This is important to note as we will discuss it in greater depth when we move on to talk about inflation and supply emission.
Price-History Overview
MUE has been trading for over four years, and, as such, has perhaps the most substantial price-history of any coin that I’ve produced a Coin Report on thus far. Since its inception, MonetaryUnit has hit an all-time high of around $0.50 against the Dollar and ~8000 satoshis against BTC. Since hitting these highs, it – as is the case with the entire market – has dropped off considerably, shedding well over 95% of its value against the Dollar. This may be an opportunity, but we’ll know for certain by the end of this report.
Project Overview
When it comes to goals and identity, it seems to me that MonetaryUnit knows where it stands and knows what it wants. This much is clear from even the most surface-level research. In their whitepaper, they state that MonetaryUnit “is designed to be a virtual currency accessible to all” with a clear focus on developing an “ecosystem of services and apps”. If a little broad in the former aim, at least the project is clear in its path to success via the latter. Talk is cheap, however, and we’ll soon see whether the team are succeeding at their intended focus on payments and services.
But first, some metrics:
Metric Analysis:
Below are listed a number of important metrics, all of which are accurate as of 8th January 2019. For anyone reading this who has yet to read a Coin Report, it might be worth reading the corresponding section of the first report, where any potentially unfamiliar terms are explained. For any terms or metrics specific to this post, I will provide explanations besides the figures.
Metrics:
General:
Price: $0.019 (465 satoshis)
Exchange Volume: $13,142
Circulating Supply: 147,601,670 MUE
Total Supply: 147,601,670 MUE
Maximum Supply: 4,000,000,000 MUE (over 120+ years)
% of Max. Supply Minted: 3.69%
Network Value: $2.761mn (686.35 BTC)
Network Value at Max. Supply: $74.827mn
Category: Midcap
Exchange Volume-to-Network Value: 0.48%
Average Price (30-Day): $0.019
Average Exchange Volume (30-Day): $67,773
Average Network Value (30-Day): $2.851mn
Average Exchange Volume (30-Day)-to-Network Value: 2.38%
Volatility* (30-Day): -0.1103
Average Daily On-Chain Transactions (30-Day): 115
Average Daily Transactional Value** (30-Day): $118,056 (source)
NVT*** (30-Day): 23.39
% Price Change USD (30-Day): +15%
% Price Change USD (1-Year): -96%
USD All-Time High: $0.496
% From USD All-Time High: -96.3%
Premine % of Max. Supply: 1%
Premine Location: Fully distributed
Liquidity (calculated as the sum of BTC in the buy-side with 10% of current price across all exchanges): 1.8826 BTC
Liquidity-to-Network Value %: 0.27%
Amount Available on Exchanges: 6,267,367 MUE
% of Circulating Supply Available on Exchanges: 4.25%
*Volatility is calculated by taking the average price over the given time-period, calculating the difference between it and the highest price and it and the lowest price over that same time-period, and multiplying those figures together. The closer to 0, the less volatility during that period, and vice-versa. Read this for more on calculating volatility.
**Transactional Value in $ is calculated by taking the average daily transactional value in MUE and multiplying it by the average price for the past 30 days.
***NVT is calculated by dividing the Network Value by the Average Daily Transactional Value. See here for more on NVT.
Supply Emission & Inflation:
Block Reward Schedule: 40 MUE block reward in perpetuity. 2160 blocks minted per day = 86,400 MUE minted daily. No halvings.
Average Block Time: 40 seconds
Current Block Height: 206852
Annual Supply Emission: 31,536,000 MUE (146.64 BTC at current prices)
Annual Inflation Rate: 21.37%
Circulating Supply in 365 Days: 179,137,670 MUE
Staking & Masternodes:
Network Staking Weight: 39,058,181 MUE (source)
Staking ROI (Annual): 36.33%*
Masternode Collateral Size: 500,000 MUE
Masternode Price: $9,353.48
Masternode Count: 89 (source)
Masternode Count Growth (30-Day): 5.62%
Supply Locked in Masternodes: 44,500,000 MUE
Masternode Reward / Block Reward: 45%
Masternode ROI (Annual): 31.89%**
Masternode Network Value: $832,459
MNV / Network Value: 30.15%
*To calculate annual staking ROI: (Annual Supply Emission * (Stake Reward / Block Reward)) / Network Staking Weight = (31,536,000 * 45%) / 39,058,181 = 0.3633 = 36.33%
*To calculate annual masternode ROI based on current active masternodes: (Annual Supply Emission * (Masternode Reward / Block Reward)) / Supply Locked in Masternodes = (31,536,000 * 45%) / 44,500,000 = 0.3189 = 31.89%
Distribution:
Address Count: 43,979
Supply Held By Top 10 Addresses: 36.26%*
Supply Held By Top 20 Addresses: 41.15%*
Supply Held By Top 100 Addresses: 69.64%*
Inactive Address Count** in Top 20 (30 Days of No Activity): 3
*The top 4 addresses belong to Bittrex and equal 30.13% of circulating supply. This will be in the form of cold storage, hot wallets and MUE in the orderbook. Discounting this amount, the top 10 (5th-15th richest = 8.93% and the top 20 = 12.99%.
**This is discounting the 4 addresses belonging to Bittrex.
Analysis:
That may be the largest pile of metrics I’ve ever published on a coin, but that’s simply because MonetaryUnit ticks all the metric-related boxes: it is a project that features staking, masternodes and has a Chainz explorer, which allows for high-level distribution analysis.
However, it is important to begin with the metric that is most relevant to MonetaryUnit’s core aims; namely, payments. Given this specific aim, on-chain transactions are of the utmost significance, and, for the first time in a while, I’ve been able to calculate transaction-related metrics. Thank you, Chainz. Many explorers make it very difficult to extract information concerning on-chain transactions, but the Chainz explorers make it incredibly easy, though there is admittedly no way to determine just how accurate this data is. Regardless, we’ll make do with what we have – at least there is data:
According to the explorer, MonetaryUnit is experiencing around 115 on-chain transactions per day, using the past 30 days of data. Further, and more significantly, the average daily transactional value is ~$118k. Using this information, we can calculate the NVT of MUE for the past month, and the results are rather stunning: the coin has a NVT of 23.39.
What does this mean, and why is it significant? Well, to give some context, the NVT of Bitcoin is currently around 119, or 5x greater than that of MUE. In other words, if Bitcoin is fair value at current prices, MonetaryUnit seems heavily undervalued based purely on the value of on-chain transactions relative to the respective network values. Now, don’t get me wrong – this is no fair comparison: Bitcoin and MonetaryUnit are playing at entirely different scales. But, it must be said that the most reliable metric for the usage of MUE as a means of payment is very much positive.
So, we’ve established that the coin fares well with regards to its principal aim, but how does it fare elsewhere? I’ll begin by running through the remainder of the General metrics, before moving onto those concerning Supply Emission & Inflation, Staking & Masternodes and finally Distribution.
The first metric that catches the eye is that of the supply of MUE available on exchanges. At 4.25% of the circulating supply, it is rather large, relative to coins from other reports; in fact, MUE has the second-largest percentage of circulating supply available on exchanges of any of the prior coins reported on. This is a measure indicative of a lack of willingness (or incentive) to hold MUE, which, though not a positive for projects concerned with being seen as a store of value, is in fact expected of a coin focused on its utility as a means of payment.
However, MonetaryUnit does feature staking and masternodes as an incentive for holders, but perhaps the rewards are not alluring enough: coins like Bulwark had only 1.18% of the circulating supply on exchanges, at the time of writing, but presented annual returns of around 60% for masternode holders; almost twice those offered by MonetaryUnit masternodes.
Where the above is concerned with measuring supply for the market, Liquidity is its counterpart, relating more closely to demand. MonetaryUnit has Liquidity of 1.88 BTC, or 0.27% of its Network Value. This is indicative of a moderate level of demand at or near current prices, and Stakenet and Bulwark are the only two coins from previous reports to have shown greater Liquidity; Bulwark beating MUE by only 0.02%, however, with Stakenet clearly the most liquid at 0.51%. Regardless, MonetaryUnit doesn’t fail to show signs of buying interest, even in such difficult times for the space.
Next, we should take a look at price, particularly the all-time high. At current prices, the coin is trading at a 96.3% discount to the high of a little under $0.50. This is a possible opportunity, presenting huge upside potential if MUE is otherwise fundamentally and technically sound, as is yet to be determined.
Before I conclude the evaluation of the General metrics by discussing volume, there’s a couple, more isolated points to tie up:
Firstly, the maximum supply of MonetaryUnit is 4,000,000,000, which puts the current circulating supply at less than 4% of the maximum supply. On the surface, this would suggest extreme inflation is inevitable, and thus there shall be major headwinds for price growth, but it so happens that the maximum supply will not be reached for over 100 years, which is well beyond the life-span of anyone reading this and thus irrelevant. We shall come to its implications for inflation shortly.
Secondly, I have included a new metric in this report; namely, Volatility. This is a metric I devised recently when writing a post on risk management, and it is merely a simplistic method of assessing the volatility of any given coin over any given period. As stated in the footnote to the General sub-section, the closer the figure to zero, the less volatile the coin during the period measured. MonetaryUnit scores -0.1103 for its Volatility over the past 30 days.
Having tested the methodology with numerous altcoins over the same period, I can say that this is not too dissimilar from that of Ethereum. As more reports are written, and my spreadsheet of metrics updated, this metric will become more useful; cross-comparisons will be possible based on the volatility of the underlying markets.
Now, let’s take a look at Exchange Volume to conclude this sub-section of metrics: MonetaryUnit experienced ~$13k of Exchange Volume over the past 24 hours, which equates to 0.48% of its Network Value. This is around half of what I like to see for Exchange Volume-to-Network Value, but, given the current market conditions, it is expected. It actually places MUE half-way in the pack of previous coins reported on. But a single day of data is not so reliable.
MonetaryUnit’s Average Exchange Volume for the past month has been closer to $68k. This equates to a much more healthy 2.38% of the Average Network Value across the same period. This is certainly more promising with regards to smart-money interest. Further, it is the second-highest Average EVNV of any coin reported on, beaten only by Arionum. Given present market conditions, I’d say this was a sure sign of accumulation taking place, but this can only be verified by the chart and the rich-list.
Moving onto Supply Emission & Inflation, MonetaryUnit is very much straightforward. With its block reward schedule of 40 MUE per block in perpetuity and 40-second block times, we can calculate that there are 2160 new blocks minted daily, or 86,400 MUE. This equates to an annual supply emission of 31,536,000 MUE, which, at current prices, is 146.64 BTC. The annual inflation rate implied by such supply emission is 21.37% – a modest amount. In fact, it once again places MUE in the middle of the pack: Arionum, Bismuth, Dero and Bulwark all experience greater annual inflation; Stakenet, Covesting, ALQO and Geocoin experience less.
This is, however, surface-level evaluation. Let’s break it down a little bit further and take a look at the relationship between volume and supply emission:
Using the figure of 86,400 MUE minted daily, we can calculate that this is roughly 0.4 BTC-worth at current prices, or $1,620. MonetaryUnit’s Exchange Volume covers this emission by ~811%; its Average Exchange Volume covers it by ~4183%. In other words, MUE trades far more volume on a daily basis than it mints new coins, thus current prices should be sustainable. Decreasing prices at present are more likely to be panic sellers or smart-money distribution than the effect of newly minted coins being dumped. This is important, as it tells us that manipulation has a firmer hold on price than inflation. Further, these calculations are not taking into account the fact that 10% of each block reward is locked in a governance system for budget proposals; something I will discuss at length later. Lastly, when we take into consideration the Liquidity of around 1.88 BTC, daily supply emission is covered almost 5x by buy support within 10% of current prices…
Now, let’s take a quick look at the metrics related to Staking & Masternodes. Unlike for most Proof-of-Stake coins, we are able to determine network staking weight for MUE thanks (again) to the explorer. Given the network staking weight, the annual supply emission and the fact that 45% of the block reward is distributed to stakers, I have calculated the annual ROI to be 36.33%.
More important, however, are the metrics concerning masternodes. With a masternode priced around $9300, they are a little more expensive than many others, which perhaps accounts for the fact that only 89 are active. However, this equates to 44.5mn MUE locked in masternodes, which gives us an annual ROI of 31.89%. At present, it seems staking is more profitable. Both options, however, give solid returns that are greater than the annual inflation.
What about Masternode Network Value? Well, with 44.5mn MUE locked in masternodes, the MNV of MonetaryUnit is $832,459. This equates to a little over 30% of the Network Value, which is indicative of a masternode network that is moderate in strength, but with plenty of room for growth.
Finally, Distribution:
Now, the first point to highlight is that MonetaryUnit has the highest address count of any coin I’ve managed to find that figure for in previous reports – and by some margin. But that doesn’t tell us much about the distribution of the coin or the activity of the largest holders.
With regards to distribution, at the surface, it seems as though the top 10 addresses own over a third of the circulating supply. However, on closer inspection, the top 4 richest addresses belong to Bittrex, so, for more accurate figures, we should discount those. The top 10 richest addresses excluding these Bittrex addresses (i.e 5th-14th) control 8.93%; and the top 20 (i.e 5th-24th) control 12.99%. This is strong decentralisation of supply, but with enough concentration towards the richest addresses to indicate smart-money interest. Further, only 3 of the top 20 addresses (again, excluding those of Bittrex) have been inactive over the past 30 days… but what exactly have the remaining addresses been doing?
Well, 12 of the top 20 are staking their positions and have been doing so for some time, and a 13th address is also staking but distributing its stakes. Of the remaining 7 addresses, 3 are inactive, as mentioned earlier, 2 are running masternodes and accumulating the rewards, and 2 are adding heavily to their positions. Of these 2, one is the 5th-richest address, which has added over 1.5mn MUE to its position since December; the other is the 7th richest, which has more than tripled its position in a month. Very promising signs, indeed.
And that concludes this lengthy section on metrics. Let’s now turn to the MonetaryUnit community:
Community:
There are two primary aspects of community analysis: social media presence and Bitcointalk threads. I’ll begin with the former before moving on to the latter.
Social Media:
Concerning social media presence, there are four main platforms to examine: Twitter, Facebook, Telegram and Discord.
MonetaryUnit is present on only two platforms: Twitter and Discord. To begin, let’s look at the various social metrics that I calculated from the MonetaryUnit Twitter account:
Twitter Followers: 15,109
Tweets: 9841
Average Twitter Engagement: 0.09%
As usual, I will be using RivalIQ‘s social benchmark report for evaluation purposes.
Unfortunately, MonetaryUnit isn’t on Facebook, so we can’t do a comprehensive evaluation of its social benchmarks. I am quite surprised at the lack of a Facebook page altogether; let alone a well kept page with a decent audience, as Facebook is a huge opportunity for userbase growth, particularly for a project that has its sights set on being used for payments in e-commerce. Rather disappointing.
Anyway, as is expressed in the RivalIQ report, the average engagement rate on Twitter across all industries is 0.046%, and the average in the Media industry (the most resemblant industry in the report) is 0.013%.
MonetaryUnit’s rather large Twitter following of over 15,000 does seem to be suffering from a lack of engagement; despite having an average engagement rate twice that across-all-industries, and around 7x that of the Media industry, it falls short against other cryptocurrencies. In fact, of the coins I’ve produced reports on, MUE’s engagement rate of 0.09% is half that of the coin with the second-lowest engagement rate – Geocoin. Clearly, there is work to be done here.
I believe one of the reasons for such low engagement is the frequency of tweets; with almost 10,000 tweets since the account’s inception, MonetaryUnit have been tweeting (or retweeting), on average, 6 times a day for four and a half years. No doubt, being active is super important in building an audience and thus a potential userbase, but there is a lot of fluff. It is quite clear that the higher-quality, more informative tweets posted do show good engagement, particularly those concerning the project itself, as opposed to (for example) tweets about the numerous cryptocurrencies accepted on Flubit.com.
Now, moving onto Discord, MonetaryUnit has 633 members in its group – a very small group relative to the size of its Twitter audience. That being said, the Welcome channel indicates that 24 new members joined in the past week, equating to a 3.79% weekly growth rate, which is quite strong.
The Discord itself has plenty of channels for relevant topics, allowing for ease-of-access and usability. Announcements is updated every 3 days, in general, which is good to see, with recent announcements covering the following: the appointment of a marketing advisor; iOS app release; new wallet release; and cashback for Flubit users in the form of MUE, as a means of growing awareness (very impressive – though I’ve mentioned it twice now, we’ll get to Flubit a little later). Budget Proposals has not been updated since the end of November; Twitter is useful as it allows members to view all MUE-related tweets natively; and Suggestions is not all that active but I did see something about Ledger integration and a listing on Bitfineon… good ideas, both of them. There are also several channels for specific areas of Support, which is very useful for newer users as the responses are specific to their issues; all Support channels also appear to be prompt in their solutions. Lastly, before moving onto the most important channel of the group, there is a Links channel with all important resources linked.
The vast majority of the discussion occurs in General, as is often the case. In this channel, around 30 members of the MonetaryUnit community engage in near-constant daily discussion, equating to a 4.73% engagement rate. This is far, far better than the engagement seen on the Twitter account. However, whilst there seems to be a lot of general conversation and some talk on ‘Muenion 2019’, which I’ll assume is a MUE conference with a terrible name, there does seem to be a lack of discussion regarding future development, community growth and ideas. There is, however, some discussion on price and much on the acceptance of MUE as a means of payment for numerous services. I would like to see the community’s strong engagement (around 4.7% of the group is involved in conversation) more concentrated towards fostering ideas for the growth of the project; perhaps this can be incentivised in some way. Or perhaps my evaluation of the past couple of weeks of discussion is an anomaly.
BitcoinTalk:
The MonetaryUnit BitcoinTalk thread was created on 11th September, 2014, and has since generated 4314 posts spanning 216 pages in 1580 days, giving an average of 2.73 posts per day. However, in the past 90 days, the thread has had 97 posts via ~32 individual posters, giving an average of a little over 1 post per day, suggesting that activity has died down of late.
Regarding the content of the thread, there are clearly lots of development updates being pushed out, which is great to see. I found mentions of an Android wallet release; the changover to MUE 2.0 (full Proof-of-Stake); a new explorer; the launch of MonetaryUnit’s direct-buy service, where MUE can be bought natively on their website; Flubit integration; listing on EmblemDEX; a podcast episode on YouTube; an iOS app; and more. In short, there seems to be a lot going on; strange that this was less evident in the Discord group.
Support queries from the community are swiftly responded to and resolved, and much of the community discussion is focused on masternodes versus staking, in the context of probability. This is good to see, as new users who come across the thread will immediately be inundated with the financial incentives of buying MUE…
That concludes the section on Community. Onto Development:
Development:
For the following Development analysis, I will be evaluating project leadership, the website, the roadmap, the whitepaper, the wallets and finally providing a general overview:
Project Leadership:
With regards to project leadership, there are 7 core members listed on the website, 307 contributors to the Github and 10 members of the Taiga roadmap platform.
Of the 7 core members, there is the Founder of MonetaryUnit (Byron), 3 Developers, 1 Tech Advisor, 1 in control of Finance and 1 ‘Project Controls’. Whilst this is a moderately-sized core team for the size of the project, it would be great to have more information on these roles and the individual members’ experience and expertise – no doxxing necessary; just more indication of experience. Also, there does seem to be an imbalance towards development, which, in itself, is no bad thing, but the lack of a marketing specialist is perhaps an explanation for the weaknesses shown in social media presence and group size on Discord. As was stated earlier, however, a marketing advisor from the Crypto-Twitter community has recently been appointed, which is good news, but I believe a core team member with marketing expertise would be even better.
Update: A recent announcement has brought to light a significant expansion of the MonetaryUnit team, which now comprises of all core members plus the entire staff at Flubit.com, who will be working as part of the MUE project. Flubit is the world’s largest crypto-enabled marketplace, and the original partnership and integration of MUE to the website was impressive enough. But the merger of the two is massive for potential userbase growth of MUE. Good work. Further, the website has been updated to include all of these new additions to the team.
Website:
Firstly, I’d like to say the website is well-branded with regards to colour-scheme, and screams MonetaryUnit as soon as the homepage loads. However, I am not overly impressed with the rest of it. The site is far less information-dense and resource-dense than would be optimal – a website is, after all, usually the first point-of-reference for new users. Further, it is not as easy or intuitive to navigate as many other websites in the space, by projects of equal (or smaller) size. In general, there needs to be more consistency with the design, as some fonts are used for certain copy and others elsewhere, and an update of the UI/UX would be of great service to the project, I think. The Why MUE? section is great; clear and concise and informative – the website needs more of this.
The block explorer is solid and functional, but is not linked in the navigation menu, making it very difficult to find without a direct link. The roadmap isn’t linked anywhere on the website either; more optimally, there should be a native infographic for new users to understand the past, present and future of the project.
Oddly enough, there is a beautiful branding guide linked in the navigation menu. This is amazing, and yet doesn’t seem to be consistently applied across the website.
There is, however, a dedicated forum, but this is hosted on a separate website, and (again) not linked in the main website. Cohesion is paramount. Make things native or at least seamless to navigate to optimise community and userbase growth. A regularly updated blog would be perfect, given the plethora of updates and developments being pushed out elsewhere in snippets. The podcast that is being produced and uploaded to YouTube should also have its own section on the website – make the MonetaryUnit site the one-stop shop for everything MUE; having resources and tools fragmented all over the place does nothing for growth.
Roadmap:
https://tree.taiga.io/project/monetaryunit-monetaryunit/kanban
Whilst not the most user-friendly way to present the MUE roadmap, it is certainly comprehensive and ambitious – as seems to be recurring theme.
Before I dissect the roadmap by sub-section, I’d like to mention that brief descriptions of the goals would be super useful so that new users know exactly what is being focused on and why.
Currently in progress: GSPoint loyalty scheme; MUEX.io (business card cold storage wallets – nice); muewallet.com (web staking wallet); and MUE integration to Coinomi.
Ready for testing: MUE on Ledger; and CryptoFeed.io (altcoin data and statistics).
Live now: Bittylicious integration; MUE 2.0; shared masternodes; Flubit.com integration; and governance system for budgets.
Done: Public block explorer; StartMy.io (crowdfunding for cryptocurrency projects); and MUE Whitepaper (which isn’t linked anywhere, as I’ll come to in the next section).
Ideas: Cloud Staking; web wallet; MUE casino; investment shares; sidechains; and escrow.
Overall, there is a lot to be impressed by in past achievements and much to look forward to going forward, but the roadmap itself could be far more effective at informing new users. Make an infographic version and write brief descriptions of each of the goals, alongside some sort of expected delivery date for each so that progress can be measured accurately by the MUE community.
Whitepaper:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1r4-LA-GTkmw1YJpw49ru5cAOGllIYzplFSR70FVEsN8/edit
For some reason, the whitepaper is linked nowhere outside of the Taiga roadmap. It is possibly because it is in need of updating (the whitepaper is dated June 2014), but as it is the only whitepaper currently available, I’ll make do.
The whitepaper is brief, at a length of 5 pages, but jargon-free, clear, concise and informative – everything you want in a whitepaper besides a degree of depth. The primary aim of the project is stated immediately: Designed to be a virtual currency accessible to all. Further, the path to achievement of this aim is via an ecosystem of services and apps. This is certainly something that is being upheld by MonetaryUnit.
Contrasts against Bitcoin are provided to highlight the difference between it (often seen as a store of value first and foremost) and MUE (primarily a means of payment). This establishes the use-case. There are then clear points provided on why it is suitable for this purpose (faster block-times, low transaction fees, block size can be increased via governance system etc.). We are then shown the emission model, with 120+ years of supply emission before maximum supply of 4bn MUE is reached. Lastly, an explanation is provided as to how the multilayer Proof-of-Work/Proof-of-Stake hybrid solves potential 51% attacks – MUE is now fully Proof-of-Stake, having suffered a 51% attack last September.
Overall, the whitepaper simply needs fleshing out and updating, but the team are aware of this.
Wallets:
Windows, Mac and Linux wallets are available, as are Android and iOS mobile wallets.
The Windows binary was flagged by Avast but this is common in first launch of Qt wallets. Other than that, the wallet is functional, fairly well-branded (though it could be more visually appealing) and, most importantly, it does not occupy a large amount of CPU when running.
Again, this just needs updating, particularly for a payments-focused coin, as the potential userbase may not be familiar with the user-interface of these wallets. Make it seamless for them to store and transact the coin by redesigning the UI/UX of the local wallets and by providing a web wallet (which is in development).
General:
In general, the most significant development achievements have been the Flubit integration (the significance of which, I believe, is very much underplayed by the market as a whole at present, as a symptom of the macro market conditions) and the various ‘assets’ created by MonetaryUnit to function as services for the utility of MUE. These are StartMy.io, CryptoFeed.io, CoinBuy.io, MUEX.io and, of course, Flubit.com (now that they are as one). Further, I think the migration to fully Proof-of-Stake was the right decision.
As for the future, I look forward to seeing MonetaryUnit on Ledger and to the launch of the cold storage business cards (as this is a potential additional revenue stream). Another, more lucrative, revenue stream would be the MUE casino…
The launch of the web wallet goes without saying as a useful addition to the MonetaryUnit toolbox, as it will greatly streamline the ability to transact in MUE online.
With regards to innovation, that’s not really what MonetaryUnit is about. They’ve hit a home run with their partnership and merger with Flubit, and that is what needs to be capitalised on more than anything going forward…
Lastly, concerning the project’s funding, 10% of the block reward is currently allocated to the budget, amounting to 3.15mn MUE annually, or a little over $60,000 a year. Whilst a solid amount, this is likely not enough to really push the growth of the project, and those aforementioned revenue streams will help alleviate the burden of self-funding and any potential clearout of the budget due to unforeseen future issues. Also, if the price of MUE falls, so does the purchasing power of the budget, and with it fails the ability to continue development. This is a single point-of-failure. I’d strongly suggest thinking about additional revenue streams to those mentioned.
Further, I would suggest going all-in on establishing the brand identity of the project, using mediums such as the podcast (and ideally a blog, also) to generate an audience, inform the community, and ultimately entice customers into transacting with MUE. The ‘15%-off for paying with MUE’ incentive on Flubit.com is a perfect start.
To conclude this section on the fundamentals of MonetaryUnit, I’d also like to implore the team to make the project more cohesive in its various links, tools, components and resources. There must be a clear and smooth path of navigation through the MUE ecosystem.
Technical
Firstly, the Weekly chart depicts something of great interest; the opening price of MonetaryUnit’s price-history on Bittrex (from almost four years ago) has formed a level of support for the current range, indicating a lack of willingness to sell below this historical level.
For further analysis, we must shift our view to the Daily, however. Support at a little over 1000 satoshis has since turned resistance, and MUE’s decline from the highs of summer 2017 (18 months ago) finally looks to have found a bottom. A range has formed between ~300 and ~660 satoshis, which has been in play for around four months. Buying interest seems to be growing, and, around Christmas, over 25% of the circulating supply was traded within 24 hours. These are all the signs of accumulation, made more certain by the earlier rich-list analysis.
With regards to current prices for a long-term position, I’d be a fool to say anything other than that you are effectively paying the same price for MUE today as many did in 2015, except with all the developments and partnerships that have come since at little extra cost. This seems like a low-risk, high-reward proposition to me. I will be entering a long-term position, with an aim of an average 450-satoshi entry price. A higher time-frame close above 1100 satoshis would signal a reversal and the beginning of a new bull cycle, so those who are more risk-averse should perhaps wait until that time…
And thus concludes my analysis of MonetaryUnit.
Conclusion
This report is now over 6,000 words, and it is time to draw it to a close.
My final grading for MonetaryUnit is 7 out of 10. There is clearly a lot of promise for MUE going forward, especially with the recent addition of the Flubit team to their own. And the strong performance in significant metrics, coupled with the current price, cannot go without mention for those of us looking to turn a profit. However, there is much that is restricting the growth of the project, but all of it is seemingly easy to fix, if the team resolve to do so.
Lastly, here is a link to a Google Sheets file with any significant data from previous reports compiled for cross-comparative purposes. I will keep this updated as I continue to write these reports.
I hope this report has proved insightful and that you’ve enjoyed the read! Please do feel free to leave any questions in the Comments, and I’ll answer them as best I can.
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