N.B: In the spirit of full transparency, the following Coin Report on Altbet is a Sponsored Post.
Welcome to the tenth Coin Report. In today’s report, I will be assessing the fundamental and technical strengths and weaknesses of Altbet. 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
Before we begin, I must confess that prior to researching this report I had not even heard of Altbet. Someone connected to the project contacted me and asked if I would be interested in writing a Sponsored Post for them. I had a quick look at their website and Twitter account and agreed to do so, as there seemed to be plenty to talk about. My only reason for rejecting a proposal for a Sponsored Post would be if the team did not agree to my research process or if I felt that the report would not be of much interest, either to myself or to readers. Neither was the case, and so I pencilled the project in on my schedule for publication this week.
Having now completed my research, I can confirm that there is indeed a great deal of interesting discussion to be had about Altbet, but also a number of problems and flaws – at least in the eyes of the speculator – that need addressing.
Regardless, I hope that this 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 Altbet prior to reading this report, here are some primary links:
- https://altbet.io/
- https://twitter.com/altbetofficial
- https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5076219
Fundamental
General:
Name: Altbet
Ticker: ABET
Algorithm/Consensus: Quark (Proof-of-Stake/Masternodes)
Sector: Mutual Betting Platform
Exchanges: CryptoBridge
Launch Overview
Altbet was launched in June 2018, operating with a Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism on the Quark algorithm, supplemented by a network of masternodes. At launch, there was a 1% premine, amounting to 210,000 ABET, allocated to development and marketing; the specifics of which I shall go into a litter later. The coin is now approaching its final reward stage, which is expected to begin ~30 days from now. This final reward stage will provide 10 ABET block reward for 4 years, until the maximum supply of 21,000,000 ABET is reached. I’ll discuss the block reward schedule at length when I tackle the Metrics.
Price-History Overview
Given Altbet’s brief existence, there is very little price-history to dissect, but the coin made its all-time high against the Dollar of $2.54 on 31st October, 2018. This coincided with its all-time high against Bitcoin of ~40,000 satoshis.
Project Overview
With regards to the project itself, Altbet is unique in that it is the first mutual betting platform in the space. Mutual betting is a form of betting wherein bets are pooled together and divided amongst winners. Despite being around 6 months old, the project seems to have a clear sense of identity and direction, and is firmly settled in its niche. Most impressive at first glance is the existence of a fully-functioning betting and gambling platform with no multi-million dollar ICO, but we’ll get into this later. Overall, as stated in its whitepaper, the project aims to revolutionise online gambling by providing cryptocurrency-backed mutual betting with zero house edge.
Let us see how it fares against this aim.
Metric Analysis:
Below are listed a number of important metrics, all of which are accurate as of 22nd 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: $0.67 (19008 satoshis)
Exchange Volume: $5,736
Circulating Supply: 780,008 ABET
Total Supply: 780,008 ABET
Maximum Supply: 21,000,000 ABET
% of Max. Supply Minted: 3.71%
Network Value: $522,326 (148.26 BTC)
Network Value at Max. Supply: $14.062mn
Category: Lowcap
Exchange Volume-to-Network Value: 1.1%
Average Price (30-Day): $0.621
Average Exchange Volume (30-Day): $7,245
Average Network Value (30-Day): $370,001
Average Exchange Volume (30-Day)-to-Network Value: 1.96%
Average Daily On-Chain Transactions (30-Day): Unable to determine due to lack of explorer functionality – as such, I’ve used the last 100 transactions to calculate the related metrics below.
Average Daily Transactional Value* (Last 100 Transactions): $21,781 (source)
NVT** (Last 100 Transactions): 23.98
% Price Change USD (30-Day): +26%
% Price Change USD (1-Year): N/A
USD All-Time High: $2.54
% From USD All-Time High: -74%
Premine % of Max. Supply: 1%
Premine Location: https://altbet.io/explorer/#address/APni2QrxtB8JgpCqK3R987RrBTVKgK8kqY
Volatility (30-Day)***: -0.0774
Liquidity (calculated as the sum of BTC in the buy-side with 10% of current price across all exchanges): 0.9611 BTC)
Liquidity-to-Network Value %: 0.65%
Amount Available on Exchanges: 5,181 ABET
% of Circulating Supply Available on Exchanges: 0.66%
*Transactional Volume has been calculated using the last 100 transactions, as opposed to the average daily volume over the past 30 days, as this is the limit of the block explorer functionality. The figure is calculated as the sum of all ABET transacted in the last 100 transactions multiplied by current price. This is a less accurate figure than was calculated for MonetaryUnit in the previous report, as there is far less data available.
**NVT is calculated as the Network Value / Transactional Volume. See here for more on NVT.
***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.
Supply Emission & Inflation:
Block Reward Schedule: 1440 blocks minted per day, with increasing block rewards until the final reward stage begins at block 182441 (~30 days). Current block reward = 7.5 ABET. Final block reward will be 10 ABET, and final block reward stage will last 4 years. For more info, see p7 of the whitepaper.
Average Block Time: 60 Seconds
Current Block Height: 139684
Annual Supply Emission*: 4,985,471 ABET (947.64 BTC)
Annual Inflation Rate: 639.16%
Circulating Supply in 365 Days: 5,765,479 ABET
*Annual Supply Emission is calculated as: supply emission pre-block 182441 + (days remaining of one year * block reward * blocks minted daily) = 161471 + (335 * 10 * 1440) = 4,985,471 ABET
Staking & Masternodes:
Network Staking Weight: Unable to determine
Staking ROI (Annual): 544.84%*
Masternode Collateral Size: 1000 ABET
Masternode Price: $669.64
Masternode Count: 597
Masternode Count Growth (30-Day): 90.73%
Supply Locked in Masternodes: 597,000
Masternode ROI (Annual): 668.07%**
Masternode Reward / Block Reward: 80%
Masternode Network Value: $399,776
MNV / Network Value: 76.54%
*To calculate annual staking ROI: (Annual Supply Emission * (Stake Reward / Block Reward)) / Network Staking Weight. In this case, Network Staking Weight is calculated as the maximum possible staking weight (circulating supply – supply locked in masternodes), to give a minimum staking ROI: (4985471 * 20%) / 183008 = 544.84%
**To calculate annual masternode ROI based on current active masternodes: (Annual Supply Emission * (Masternode Reward / Block Reward)) / Supply Locked in Masternodes: (4985471 * 80%) / 597,000 = 668.07%
Distribution:
Address Count: N/A
Supply Held By Top 10 Addresses: 8.11%
Supply Held By Top 20 Addresses: 10.68%
Supply Held By Top 100 Addresses: 24.85%
Inactive Address Count in Top 20 (30 Days of No Activity): 0
Analysis:
So, there’s a lot to get through here, but which of the above metrics are most relevant, given the aims of the project? Well, as a mutual betting and gambling platform, the most important metrics are those related to on-chain transactions. These give us an indication as to how often (and to what degree) ABET is being utilised, excluding for speculative purposes. A better measure of ABET’s usage would be volume data for the betting platform, but this is yet unavailable.
Usually, for transactional metrics, I like to use 30 days-worth of data, but the Altbet explorer only allows for the last 100 transactions to be shown. As such, Transactional Volume and NVT are admittedly less reliable than in previous reports. That being said, let’s crack on:
Altbet’s on-chains transactions amount to $21,781, using the current price of ABET and the sum of ABET transacted across the previous 100 transactions. This gives Altbet a NVT of 23.98 for the period measured. Now, this differs to the NVT calculated for MonetaryUnit, as that was based on the average daily transactional volume across a period of 30 days.
Given that the 100 transactions used for this calculated occurred within a period of 3 days, we can crudely argue that the average daily transactional volume of ABET is closer to $7,260 (one-third of the total). This would give Altbet a NVT of 71.94. For context, Bitcoin’s current NVT is around 120. In short, ABET is trading at a lower multiple of its on-chain transaction value than Bitcoin. But, Bitcoin operates on such a vastly grander scale that this is to be expected; further, ABET has some monetary policy flaws that will skew this calculation, as we will shortly uncover. Overall, however, it is good to see a healthy amount of on-chain transactional value for a relatively new lowcap project.
Now, the next point I’d like to highlight is the unbelievably low Supply Available on Exchanges. Altbet is only currently listed on CryptoBridge (technically untrue, as it is on Escodex but there is zero volume and only 10 ABET in the orderbook). On the CryptoBridge orderbook, there is only 5,181 ABET available to buy, equating to 0.66% of circulating supply. This is the lowest supply available for purchase of any coin I’ve produced a report on, and by some measure: the next-lowest was Bulwark, with 1.18% of its circulating supply on exchanges – almost twice that of Altbet. What does this tell us? Well, simply that the incentives to hold ABET are great enough that very few wish to sell at present.
The counterpart to this metric comes in the form of Liquidity, which is a measure of the buy support available on exchanges. For Altbet, this amounts to 0.9611 BTC within 10% of current prices, which equates to 0.65% of the Network Value – a demand metric that is almost equivalent to its supply metric. This level of Liquidity is also the highest of any of the coins I’ve produced a report on, with Stakenet coming in second at 0.51% of its Network Value. This suggests that demand is high at current prices and supply is low, pointing more strongly towards strong incentives to buy and hold. We’ll come to these incentives shortly. But, for now, it seems like Altbet is in a very strong position based on its supply, demand and transaction-based metrics.
Moving onto price, there are a few points that need highlighting:
Firstly, the all-time high of $2.54 was set when ABET was first listed on CryptoBridge. Initial trading usually produces anomalies due to illiquidity; as such, I do not believe this to be a useful figure.
Secondly, the average price for the past 30 days is $0.62, around 8% lower than current prices. For a lowcap on a single exchange, this indicates some degree of price stability, and suggests potential accumulation taking place at current prices. This will have to be confirmed when we come to volume analysis and an evaluation of the rich-list.
Lastly, and more alarmingly, at current prices, the Network Value at Maximum Supply stands at $14.062mn – around 27x the present Network Value. Thus, the catch for all the positive metrics so far seems to be a great deal of inflation. We shall study this in detail before the conclusion of this section…
Now, before I move on to the most substantial area of the General sub-section (volume), there’s one final metric to highlight: Volatility. This is a relatively new metric to these reports, first appearing in the previous report on MonetaryUnit. It is one I devised recently when writing a post on risk management. It measures the 30-day volatility of a coin from its average price across that same period. The closer to 0, the less volatile the coin across the past month. MonetaryUnit had Volatility of -0.1103. This was a degree of volatility similar to that of Ethereum. Altbet has Volatility of -0.0774. This indicates that Altbet is almost a third less volatile than MonetaryUnit over a period of 30 days.
To conclude the analysis of the General metrics, we must look at volume:
For the past 24 hours, Altbet traded $5,736 of volume. This equates to 1.1% of its Network Value. Given the present market conditions and the fact that Altbet is only traded on CryptoBridge, this is quite impressive. Further, its Average Daily Volume for the past 30 days was $7,245, equating to 1.96% of its Average Network Value for the same period of ~$370k. Both, EVNV, and Average EVNV, place Altbet towards the top of the pack, relative to other coins I’ve written reports on. Only MonetaryUnit and Arionum beat it for Average EVNV. This is certainly indicative of a high level of market interest.
Let us now move on to analyse what I feel is the dealbreaker for any speculative position: Supply Emission and Inflation:
The block reward schedule sees the final reward stage for ABET entered within the next month, after which point rewards will be set at 10 ABET per block for the next 4 years, with 60-second block times. Using the block reward table provided on p7 of the Altbet whitepaper, we can work out that 4,985,471 ABET will be minted over the next year. This equates to an annual inflation rate of a whopping 639.16%, and puts the circulating supply at 5.765mn ABET in 365 days. This is hyper-inflation on steroids, and is disappointing to see given the very strong metrics found thus far.
Further, of the coins previously reported on, Altbet’s annual inflation rate is 6x that of the next highest: Arionum. Purely based on present inflation, I cannot sincerely recommend any speculator to buy at current prices in an effort to turn a short-or-mid-term profit. That being said, there are potential advantages the long-term holder, based on the incentives that shall become clearer a little later. Overall, however, such high inflation is not what I like to see.
Now, using the figure of ~4.985mn ABET minted over the next 365 days, we get an average daily supply emission of 13,658 ABET. This equates to 2.595 BTC of new ABET minted daily at current prices, or a little over $9,000-worth. This means that the amount of ABET minted daily surpasses the amount of trading volume that the coin tends to experiences over the same period; a sign of strong headwinds for price growth at present. Also, if we consider the Liquidity of 0.96 BTC, daily supply emission is three times the amount of buy support within 10% of current prices – it would seem depreciation is inevitable.
Update: Having spoken to the team at length, they have informed me that, as per the wishes of the Altbet community, the team are considering options available to curb the hyper-inflation ASAP. This is good to see. Such high inflation will destroy what, at this stage of the report, seems to be a very decent coin.
Now, let us move on to Staking and Masternodes:
Unfortunately, I can’t determine the Network Staking Weight, as the explorer does not have this functionality; as such, I’ve used the maximum staking weight, calculated by subtracting the supply locked in masternodes from the circulating supply, to find a minimum annual staking ROI. Using these figures, the staking ROI comes in at 544.84% – an insane ROI but expected given the hyper-inflation. Further, this ROI does not actually cover the annual inflation rate.
With regards to masternodes, there are 597 active masternodes; a count that has grown by 90.73% in the past 30 days. This is huge growth of the masternode network. But why are so many flocking to join the MN network? Well, because the current annual returns are in excess of 668%. This figure does cover the annual inflation rate, and thus would seem the wiser choice for those seeking ultra-high, short-term returns. But, as I lay out in The Speculator’s Guide to Masternodes, such returns are problematic for those seeking short-term profit, as it is really just a gamble as to which masternode operators can dump their rewards before others, thus securing returns at current prices.
That being said, there is a possible advantage for long-term holders, as I mentioned earlier. Those who believe in the longevity of Altbet can use the high returns to increase their position size exponentially (something that cannot be done at present via exchanges) and, in doing so, lower their average entry price. The objective here would be to continue to accumulate ABET to the point where hyper-inflation has dissipated, average entry cost is very low and price can finally experience a period of growth undeterred by headwinds. This is a risky game.
To conclude the analysis of the masternode network, let’s consider the value of it. At current prices, the Altbet masternode network is valued at $399,776, which equates to 76.54% of the Network Value. This is indicative of a very strong masternode network, but also presents the problem of low circulating supply for the purposes of betting and gambling on the the Altbet platform.
Now, to bring this lengthy section on Metrics to a close, I’ll take a look at Distribution:
The total address count cannot be determined via the block explorer, but the decentralisation of supply is evident.
The top 10 addresses control 8.11% of the circulating supply; the top 20 control 10.68%; and the top 100 control 24.85%. Less than a quarter of the circulating supply is in the hands of the top 100 addresses. This is the third-lowest of all the coins I’ve reported on, only behind ALQO and Bulwark. Further, none of the top 20 addresses have been inactive over the past 30 days.
But what comprises such a high level of large-holder activity?
Well, only 1 of the top 20 addresses is in distribution. The other 19-richest addresses are either staking, accumulating masternode rewards or actively buying. This aligns with the aforementioned thought that ABET is currently in accumulation, despite the hyper-inflation. At present, it seems, large holders are willing to neglect the supply emission in favour of the high returns.
Now, let’s take a look at the Altbet 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.
Altbet is present on all of these except for Facebook. To begin, let’s look at the various social metrics that I calculated from the Altbet Twitter account:
Twitter Followers: 1669
Tweets: 239
Average Twitter Engagement: 3.1%
As usual, I will be using RivalIQ‘s social benchmark report for evaluation purposes.
Firstly, it is quite surprising that Altbet have neglected to create a Facebook page for their platform – there is a lot of opportunity for community growth here being missed.
The Altbet Twitter account has a little under 1700 followers, which is quite modest in its size. That being said, the project has only been on social media for around 4 months. Its engagement levels, however, are very strong. Of course, it is easier to show high engagement with a smaller following, but 3.1% Average Twitter Engagement is over 67x greater than that across all industries in the RivalIQ report, and 238x greater than that of the Media industry. Further, it is the second-highest engagement rate of all the coins previously reported on, behind only Dero at 3.64%.
Discord:
The Altbet Discord cements this strength in engagement and is perhaps the most engaged Discord group I’ve seen in the process of research these reports. The only group I can think of that was as engaged was that of ALQO.
The Discord has 3645 members (much larger than the Twitter audience) and the Welcome channel shows 158 new members this past week; a weekly growth rate of 4.33%. The group features an admin ID channel to help prevent new members from being scammed by being able to clearly identify team members and moderators.
More importantly, however, are the two separate announcement channels; one for Major Announcements and one for Minor Announcements. Minor is updated almost every day, indicating a strong commitment to keeping the community informed with day-to-day activities of the team. Major is generally updated weekly or fortnightly. In the Major Announcements channel, I found a detailed end-of-year update from December and a decision to split an upcoming major announcement across three days due to the depth of the update.
This major announcement series began this week, with the following taken from the first day: Altbet is branching out from mutual betting to create multiple use-cases moving forward, with a second platform being developed; new games are to be released this quarter; special events are upcoming; a referral program is in the works; the platform is being optimised for mobile; wallet update incoming; second platform release incoming; and a whitepaper and roadmap update also incoming. It is made clear that these announcements are outline or overviews, with more specific announcement relating to each individual goal set to be released upon their respective completions.
The second major announcement was related to ideas for events and tournaments, and an update on exchanges: sponsorships are in the works for streamers and gamers; community and local tournaments are being considered with prizes; and a platform competition based on leaderboards is also being considered. Regarding exchanges, Mercatox listing was discarded as the community expressed a distrust for the exchange and Cryptopia was hacked before a listing had been paid for. The options remaining are STEX, CoinExchange, Crex24, Shardax and Graviex.
The third announcement is to follow today – see their Discord upon publication of this report for more info.
With regards to the rest of the content of the Discord, there is an Official Links channel with all relevant resources, increasing accessibility for new users. Further, there is a native channel for the Roadmap that is kept updated upon the completion of a goal. This is not something I see in most Discord groups. There are channels dedicated to media and PR, too, as is the norm.
Lastly, we come to the General channel, which is the hub of all discussion. This channel is always active, and I found a lot of excitement and genuine interest in the platform itself from the community. There were around 100 members active over the past week, and some community members have taken to calling themselves altbetters. At first, one could be forgiven for thinking this is a little cheesy, until you realise that almost all strong fanbases or communities of public products or personas have a name; it is a crude sign of commitment. Further, there seems to be far more discussion about the platform than the price of the coin, which is refreshing and implies a lot of the members are users of the platform and not just speculators.
Overall, very impressed.
Telegram:
The Altbet Telegram group is, as expected, less impressive than the Discord, but it seems to be a secondary platform for the community. There are 925 members, with 10 new members in the past week. Updates and announcements are pushed out here, which is good to see, but the group is not very active outside of sharing memes and gifs.
BitcoinTalk:
The Altbet BitcoinTalk thread was created on 26th November, 2018, and has since generated 73 posts spanning 4 pages in 57 days, giving an average of 1.28 posts per day. This isn’t particularly strong, as the first few months of a project’s launch is usually the busiest period of discussion on its Bitcointalk thread.
That being said, the announcement does highlight the 0% fees/zero house-edge on an already-launched platform at the time of thread creation. This is impressive, as they had a working product almost immediately. The copy in the announcement needs proof-reading, however (as does much of the website and the whitepaper, as I’ll discuss a little later). What I like more than anything in the thread, however, is the clear breakdown of the premine and its allocation. I also liked that some early data was provided as to the userbase of the platform in November/December 2018: 16,000 unique monthly visits in the month of launch. Overall, there’s not that much content to dissect here, but most of the discussion is again focused on the platform.
Update: The first Altbet BitcoinTalk thread was deleted due to an issue with bounties, which explains the low page count.
That concludes my analysis of the Altbet 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:
There is no information related to the team on the website. There are 2 contributors to the Github and 4 team members mentioned in the Discord group.
Having spoken to the lead dev, I have been informed that full team information will be released once Altbet has been incorporated and is granted licences. For now, the team is comprised of altbetdev (the lead dev), JJ (the web developer), French (the social media manager) and TFinch (helping with the blockchain. There are freelancers that work on the project also.
It would be great if we had some further information on the relevant experience of these team members; anonymity is not a problem at all, but lack of information relating to experience is.
Website:
The website is well-branded and contemporary in its design but the navigation bar is quite poorly-designed, in my opinion. Provably Fair shouldn’t be a navigation heading, but perhaps belongs within a menu relating to the features of the platform. Having broader but clearer headings with menus providing further specificity would greatly improve UI/UX. The content of the site is highly informative but the copy needs a lot of attention; there are grammatical errors everywhere that reduce the perception of quality of the platform itself. The content does, however, highlight the advantages of the Altbet platform. Wallets and social media channels are clearly linked, and the roadmap is native to the homepage, allowing new visitors to effortlessly get a better understanding of the direction of the project. Further, the coin specification, block reward schedule and premine allocation are clearly displayed with infographics – full transparency is great to see. Lastly, I like that there is a dedicated Medium blog with detailed weekly updates.
The block explorer works perfectly well but is limited in its functionality. Perhaps investing in a Chainz explorer, or building similar functionality into the native explorer, would be useful for users.
Roadmap:
The roadmap is presented in timeline format with monthly separations. It’s not very visually appealing or highly detailed but it is certainly comprehensive and specific:
May 2018 was a period of research.
June 2018: The project launches and the platform is developed.
July 2018: The whitepaper is written and the roadmap devised; the team is organised; and social accounts are launched.
September 2018: The launch of the closed alpha for the platform; mobile version testing; the blockchain is developed; the wallet is created; website launched; BTCTalk pre-ann created; the whitepaper is release; and early marketing begins.
October 2018: There is a presale of one-third of the 1% premine; genesis block created; wallets released; public platform beta goes live; social campaign begins; CryptoBridge lists ABET; and further platform development occurs.
November 2018: New games are released; price pegging integration; and eSports mutual betting launched.
December 2018: New games released; CMC listing (not yet done); and CoinExchange listing (not yet done).
January 2019: Sports betting launch; promotion and marketing; and mobile wallet research begins.
February 2019: Updates and optimisation of platform; mobile wallet development; and governance platform development.
March 2019: Mutual betting launches for tradeable markets; plus promotion campaign and governance platform launch.
Q2 2019 and forward: Roadmap update; whitepaper
update; ‘big’ exchange listing; mobile wallet release; global marketing campaign; and web wallet research + development.
Overall, there is lots to like but it would help to have more information on individual goals/aims, as well as some indication as to progress.
Whitepaper:
https://altbet.io/whitepaper/371967dfb4c2c351f85732f51ed33848/altbet-whitepaper.pdf
The whitepaper is dated October 2018. It is written mostly in broken English and is in dire need of proofreading. The prose is generally easy to understand but the grammatical errors lower the quality of the document; this should have been outsourced. Perhaps a community member would be willing to make the necessary corrections?
The Overview states Altbet’s aims of revolutionising online gambling by providing zero house edge mutual betting using their own cryptocurrency, ABET. The mutual betting mechanism is then explained and the whitepaper explicitly states that there will be no ads on the platform to increase user satisfaction.
We are then told that the platform will cover Sports, eSports, Markets and Special Events, as well as traditional casino games. The document goes on to introduce masternodes, which, on top of the usual reward-based incentives, will allow special privileges on the platform. The masternodes will receive 80% of block rewards, which is a very high reward.
The following section on price sustainability clarifies how ABET functions within the platform: the current ABET/BTC rate determines the amount of
ABET required per bet placed. This will be pegged to USD in the future. I would have expected some sort of reward scheme here for holders or
something similar; potentially buy-backs to counteract the insane inflation rate.
The Coin Specification section is highly informative, as is the explanation of the block reward schedule (but the inflation ratebecomes clear here). The roadmap is also printed within the document. Market Potential goes on to provide some indication of market size and highlights the issues with traditional online gambling. This is great, as it shows that there is indeed a gap for Altbet to exploit, but this is a highly competitive space.
The Market Plan section shows how the platform is provably fair and transparent, as well as highlighting that it is the first mutual betting platform in the space. There is zero house edge, anonymous gambling and the project is actively seeking out licences. Further, there are 3% commissions on eSports and Sports betting.
The concluding pages of the whitepaper detail facts about the premine: 1% of the maximum supply was premined, amounting to 210,000 ABET. One-third of these will be sold publicly to raise funds for platform development and launch, with the total raised from this sale expected to be 28.5 BTC. One-third will go into the bankroll for the live games on the platform; 19.3% to promotion and marketing; 7% to the team; 5% for the community fund; and a miscellaneous fund of 2% is for unforeseen circumstances. The remaining 99% of total coins are to be minted over the course four years.
Wallets:
There are currently Windows, Mac and Linux wallets available, with mobile wallets scheduled for release in Q2 2019.
General:
In general, I really like a lot of what I have uncovered in the process of researching this report. Altbet, as a project, has a clear niche with a working product, developed without an extravagant ICO. This shows commitment and competency on the part of the developers. Further, the team are also clearly equally committed to keeping the community well-informed.
The most significant development goal so far achieved was undoubtedly the succesful launch of the betting platform within the first three months of the project’s launch. I look forward to monitoring how this platform is updated and expanded over the coming six months, in line with the aims on their roadmap.
With regards to funding, the team have informed me that the 210,000 ABET premine is now reduced to around 120,000 ABET, accounting for development and marketing costs of the platform launch, with much of the expenditure being funded via Bitcoin by the team themselves. This leaves roughly $82,000-worth of funds at current prices. Further, the platform takes 3% commissions on Sports/eSports betting and the bankroll on the platform grows with user losses and these fees.
Most importantly, as a speculator, the team are seriously considering options to cut inflation. As I have stated already, present inflation is beyond that which is acceptable for me to personally invest, but I look forward to seeing how this unfolds going forward.
That concludes my Fundamental analysis of Altbet.
Technical
Unfortunately, I can’t provide a detailed dissection of Altbet’s price-history for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the project is only a few months old, so there ais barely any data to analyse, as it is. And secondly, it is not listed on Coinmarketcap, and so, TradingView charts cannot be drawn for ABET. Instead, I have sourced the following chart from CoinGecko:
As I said, there’s very little to discuss here. That being said, we can see that ABET seems to have found a bottom above 8000 saotshis, and has sinced bounced and formed a short-term uptrend, with a series of higher-highs and higher-lows, despite the daily supply emission. Regardless, based purely on current levels of inflation, I would not recommend buying at these prices. I would like to see either a reduction in supply emission before entering a position or prices around 6000 satoshis; the latter would give ABET a Network Value at Maximum Supply of around $4.5mn, which is much more reasonable.
Conclusion
This report is now approaching 6,000 words, and it is time to draw it to a close.
My final grading for Altbet is 8 out of 10.*
*The caveat to this being that, were it not for the team acknowledging the need to curb the hyper-inflation ASAP, the project would score a 6. As they have made their intentions clear, and the project is otherwise fundamentally strong, in my opinion, I believe an 8 is fair. Any decision against significantly reducing the supply emission would have this grading decreased.
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.
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Reasonable modification to reduce emissions over 2 week periods to curb hyper inflation.
https://github.com/altbet/abet/commit/5b5aed2106c256fc00978bed9872a7dcd2d005ca
As you report, even these mods can potentially be a bit more aggressive. Given the attention to this issue, I think they will revisit the phases as they pass if tweaking is needed.