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N.B: The following Coin Report on Bettex is community-selected. Bettex won the recent poll; Cashaa placed second; and NKN placed third. All three will have a report written over the coming weeks.
Welcome to the thirteenth Coin Report. In today’s report, I will be assessing the fundamental and technical strengths and weaknesses of Bettex. 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
Prior to the research process beginning for this report, I had no idea what Bettex was. (In honesty, I have no idea what Cashaa or NKN – the other two community-selected coins – are either.) Having now completed my research, I must say that there is a lot that needs to be discussed here.
Bettex is by far the smallest coin by network value that I will have written a report about, and perhaps that might excuse some of the failings I have found; that said, much of what I consider to be basic practice when it comes to the fundamental quality of a project was found wanting in my research. Despite that, there were also a few absolute surprises (pleasant ones)…
I hope 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 Bettex prior to reading this report, here are some primary links:
- https://www.bettex.bet/
- https://twitter.com/Bettex_coin
- https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4729581.0
Fundamental
General:
Name: Bettex
Ticker: BTXC
Algorithm: XEVAN (now fully Proof-of-Stake)
Sector: Decentralised Betting Exchange
Exchanges: CryptoBridge, Crex24, Graviex & CoinExchange
Launch Overview
Bettex was launched in July 2018, operating on the XEVAN algorithm, with dual Proof-of-Work/Proof-of-Stake. The Proof-of-Work stage has now ended and Bettex is fully Proof-of-Stake, alongside a network of masternodes. There was a 1mn BTXC premine, amounting to 2% of the maximum supply, and no ICO.
Price-History Overview
As Bettex is less than 12 months old, there is very little price-history available for analysis. That said, it did make an all-time high of just shy of 6000 satoshis in late October 2018, and an all-time high against the Dollar of $0.38. Price has since experienced decline, alongside the rest of the market, and is currently trading at 1800 satoshis, a little above long-term support.
Project Overview
Bettex is looking to build a decentralised betting exchange. The project is in its infancy but the beta launch of its platform is set to be released this quarter, as we will discuss at length later.
There are a lot of gambling-related projects in this space, and becoming a leader amongst them is no small feat. Let us see how Bettex fares in this regard:
Metric Analysis:
Below are listed a number of important metrics, all of which are accurate as of 18th February 2019. For anyone reading this who has yet to read a Coin Report, it might be worth reading this 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: $0.068 (1801 satoshis)
Exchange Volume: $11,584
Circulating Supply: 4,830,602 BTXC
Total Supply: 4,830,602 BTXC
Maximum Supply: 50,000,000 BTXC
% of Max. Supply Minted: 9.66%
Network Value: $326,595 (87 BTC)
Network Value at Max. Supply: $3.38mn
Category: Lowcap
Exchange Volume-to-Network Value: 3.55%
Average Price (30-Day): $0.084
Average Exchange Volume (30-Day): $12,782
Average Network Value (30-Day): $392,151
Average Exchange Volume (30-Day)-to-Network Value: 3.26%
Volatility* (30-Day): -0.04098
Average Daily On-Chain Transactions (30-Day)**: 16
Average Daily Transactional Value*** (30-Day): $4,892
NVT**** (30-Day): 66.76
% Price Change USD (30-Day): -31.4%
% Price Change USD (1-Year): N/A
USD All-Time High: $0.38
% From USD All-Time High: -82.1%
Premine % of Max. Supply: 2%
Premine Location: http://explorer.bettex.bet/address/BCSVcJpd9fAqDLGQ6hqTDE5yVxs7AeUe92
Liquidity (calculated as the sum of BTC in the buy-side with 10% of current price across all exchanges): 0.1859 BTC
Liquidity-to-Network Value %: 0.21%
Amount Available on Exchanges: 91,241 BTXC
% of Circulating Supply Available on Exchanges: 1.89%
*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 volatility.
**Average Daily On-Chain Transactions: This is usually calculated by taking the total number of transactions over the previous 30 days and dividing it by 30. However, as the Bettex block explorer has limited functionality, and I was only able to find data for the past 100 transactions, the calculations are less refined. A number of these transactions took place over a period of exactly 4 days; as such, I simply divided 30 by 4 and multiplied this by the number of transactions for that period, dividing the result by 30 to find an expected average daily figure for 30 days. Again, this is unrefined, and 4 days of data is nothing to go on.
***Transactional Value in $ is calculated by taking the daily transactional value in BTXC and multiplying it by price.
****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: Currently in final reward stage of 4 BTXC per block.
Average Block Time: 60 seconds
Current Block Height: 315583
Annual Supply Emission: 2,102,400 BTXC (37.86 BTC at current prices)
Annual Inflation Rate: 43.52%
Circulating Supply in 365 Days: 6,933,002 BTXC
Staking & Masternodes:
Network Staking Weight: N/A
Staking ROI (Annual)*: 9.3% (minimum)
Masternode Collateral Size: 5,000
Masternode Price: $338
Masternode Count: 514
Masternode Count Growth (30-Day): 8.95%
Supply Locked in Masternodes: 2,570,000 BTXC
Masternode ROI (Annual)**: 73.62%
Masternode Reward / Block Reward: 90%
Masternode Network Value: $173,757
MNV / Network Value: 53.2%
*To calculate minimum annual staking ROI: (Annual Supply Emission * (Stake Reward / Block Reward)) / (Circulating Supply – Supply Locked in Masternodes) = (2,102,400 * 0.1) / 2,260,602 = 9.3%
**To calculate annual masternode ROI based on current active masternodes: (Annual Supply Emission * (Masternode Reward / Block Reward)) / Supply Locked in Masternodes: (2,102,400 * 0.9) / 2,570,000 = 73.62%
Distribution:
Address Count: N/A
Supply Held By Top 10 Addresses: 23.35%
Supply Held By Top 20 Addresses: 28.4%
Supply Held By Top 100 Addresses: 39.98%
Inactive Address Count in Top 20 (30 Days of No Activity): 5
Analysis:
So, there’s a fair amount to work through here, and I’ll begin as I often like to: with those metrics related to transactions.
This is of particular significance for a decentralised betting exchange, as BTXC is the means-of-payment for the exchange, thus on-chain transactions will tell us a little bit about how much the coin is actually being used outside of speculation. The problem here is that the Bettex explorer (like many) is limited to data for the past 100 transactions, and so my calculations will not be entirely accurate.
Anyway, I was quite pleasantly surprised to find that there was around $4,892-worth of on-chain transactions, giving Bettex a NVT of 66.76. This did derive from only 16 daily transactions, on average, and also does not account for fees or give us any indication as to how much of this is being transacted on the current alpha version of the betting platform. Regardless, this is a decent amount of on-chain activity for a lowcap project in its infancy.
Now, for the remainder of this section, I will run-through the remaining General metrics, before discussing Supply Emission & Inflation, the Bettex masternode network, and finally Distribution:
Firstly, I’d like to highlight Bettex’s Volatility, which I calculated to be -0.04098. This is the second-lowest 30-day volatility of any coin previously reported on, suggesting some degree of stability against the Dollar over the past month. This is also quite surprising given that lowcaps often are the most volatile of all.
Next up, the supply-and-demand-related metrics: Liquidity and Supply Available on Exchanges.
Bettex is listed on four small exchanges, and thus Liquidity of 0.1859 BTC should comes as no surprise. However, this equates to 0.21% of its Network Value; placing it in the middle of the pack against other coins from these reports. It has weaker liquidity than Altbet, Cloakcoin, MonetaryUnit and Stakenet, for example, but greater liquidity than GeoCoin, ALQO and Arionum.
When it comes to the supply-side metric, there is a little over 91k BTXC available on its exchanges, equating to 1.89% of its circulating supply. This again places Bettex somewhere in the middle, with less supply on the market than Bismuth, MonetaryUnit or Dero, but more available to buy than Bulwark and Trittium. Not bad, on both accounts.
Now, to conclude this analysis of General metrics, let’s take a look at volume:
Bettex experienced $11,584 of Exchange Volume over the past 24 hours, and experienced, on average, $12,782 of daily volume over the past month. It is good to see some consistency in these figures. From this, we can determine that Bettex’s Exchange Volume-to-Network Value is 3.55% and its Average EVNV is 3.26%. These are impressive figures, though I must emphasise that it is more common to find such ratios amongst altcoins with network values below $1mn.
However, when you compare the figures against the two other sub-$1mn altcoins I have reported on (Altbet and Trittium), you find that Bettex wins by a country mile. The Average EVNV of Bettex is 1.5x greater than that of Altbet and a whopping 16x greater than that of Trittium. This suggests that there is some unusual degree of interest in Bettex at current prices.
Now, let us move on to those metrics related to supply emission:
The first point to note is that (unlike Trittium – a project of similar age that has already minted ~80% of its maximum supply) Bettex has only minted 9.66% of its maximum supply. This suggests that we may have a period of high inflation yet to be experienced.
The second point to note is that Bettex is in its final block reward stage of 4 BTXC per block, to occur in perpetuity. With 1440 blocks minted daily, this gives us an annual supply emission of 2,102,400 BTXC (or 37.86 BTC at current prices). This puts the annual inflation rate at 43.52%, which, whilst quite high, is lower than I’d have expected given the above facts.
But how does this supply emission relate to exchange volume?
Well, with 2,102,400 BTXC minted annually, we can work out that, on average, 5,760 BTXC are minted daily. This equates to 0.103 BTC at current prices, or $389.43 of daily supply emission.
Bettex’s Exchange Volume and Average Exchange Volume cover this supply emission by ~29.7x and ~32.82x, respectively. This is certainly suggestive of current prices being sustainable, with weaker headwinds to price growth than would have initially been assumed. Further, Bettex’s Liquidity is 1.8x greater than daily supply emission, indicating that buy support within 10% of current prices would be able to soak up any dumping of newly minted supply, though not all that comfortably.
Now, let’s move on to Staking and Masternodes:
Bettex’s block explorer does not give us the Network Staking Weight, and so I have had to calculate the minimum annual ROI for stakers if all circulating supply (minus that locked in masternodes) was being staked. This resulted in a minimum annual ROI of 9.3%; not a great choice given that annual inflation is ~4x greater.
As for masternodes, Bettex has 514 active nodes (having grown 8.95% over the past month), each allocating 5000 BTXC of collateral, amounting to 2.57mn BTXC locked in the masternode network. Using this figure, I calculated that the annual ROI would be 73.62%; a much better option for potential buyers, and one that amply covers annual inflation. This is a symptom of the 90% block reward share to masternode holders. Lastly, the Masternode Network Value amounts to ~$174k; around 53.2% of Bettex’s Network Value. This is indicative of a moderately strong masternode network.
To conclude, I’ll take a look at the coin’s Distribution:
The top 10 richest addresses control 23.35% of the circulating supply; the top 20 control 28.4%; and the top 100 control 39.98%.
The caveat is that the richest address is a burn address and amount to 13.32% of the circulating supply. Discounting it, the top 100 begins to look far more decentralised at a little under 27%.
Of the top 20 addresses, 5 have been inactive over the past 30 days. And of the remaining 15, addresses, only the 20th-richest is in active distribution. As mentioned earlier, the richest is a burn address, 11 of these addresses are either accumulating stake rewards or masternode rewards, and 2 addresses added 16,000 BTXC to their positions this month. 1 address that is staking is distributing these rewards periodically.
And that concludes this section on Metric Analysis. Onto the Bettex 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.
Bettex is present on two of these platforms: Twitter and Discord. To begin, let’s look at the various social metrics that I calculated from the Bettex Twitter account:
Twitter Followers: 727
Tweets: 137
Average Twitter Engagement: 4.16%*
*one Tweet experienced an unusual amount of engagement, which likely skews this figure.
As usual, I will be using RivalIQ‘s social benchmark report for evaluation purposes.
Twitter:
As is expressed in the report, the average engagement rate on Twitter across all industries is 0.046%, and the average in the Media industry is 0.013%; Bettex’s engagement rate of 4.16% is 90.4x greater than the former and 320x greater than the latter. Whilst undoubtedly impressive, it must be said that this is also a symptom of a small following, plus the single tweet that experienced high engagement will have dragged these figures up.
Relative to all coins previously reported on, Bettex places 1st for Twitter engagement. Discounting the anomaly, it would likely place markedly lower.
Discord:
The Bettex Discord contains 4143 members; an audience far larger than that found on Twitter. Given this fact, I expected a hive of activity and buzz and conversation upon joining the group, but I was massively disappointed.
Let’s begin with the positives: the group itself is organised well, accessible for new users with its Official Links channel full of resources, sees no lack of commitment on the part of the development team regarding support or updates, and features an ID Verification channel with details for the core team and an Announcements channel that is updated at least twice a week.
In this channel, over the past few weeks, I found out about various wallet updates; Huobi listing registration; listing on Midas DEX; an interview with the CEO; a fundraising campaign with $1600 of community donations (short of the $30,000 target); and the inclusion of a new programmer to the core team.
Now, the negatives: I don’t like the fixation from the team on the price of the coin, with multiple messages about “buying while it’s cheap”l this is somewhat unprofessional and certainly not the role of a development team. Also, General – the channel that is most often most active – had 57 messages over the past week, or less than 10 per day. For a group with over 4,000 members, this is very low community engagement. Further, the bulk of these are general chit-chat or “good morning” messages; there is very little, if anything, on the future of the project, the development of the platform, the growth of the community or any community-led suggestions. Somewhat ironically, there were also a lot of messages concerning the community poll for this report.
Overall, I am quite disappointed in this Discord group.
BitcoinTalk:
The Bettex BitcoinTalk thread was created on July 23rd, 2018, and has since generated 499 posts spanning 25 pages in 210 days. This equates to 2.38 posts per day, on average. However, in the past 90 days, the thread has had 182 posts via 36 individual posters, giving an average of 2.02 posts per day; a small decline in average engagement.
Regarding the content of the thread, there is a lot here on the current state of the project and the future aspirations. I found out about the current premine burns (20k BTXC weekly); masternode partnerships; the upcoming beta release of the betting exchange this quarter; negotiations for listings with Poloniex, Kucoin, Livecoin and Exmo (of these, I doubt Poloniex is a serious candidate given the size of the project at present); plans to integrate LocalBitcoins as a fiat gateway to the betting exchange in the future; mobile wallets to be released soon; and the Midas DEX listing.
Further, there are regular updates pushed out by the team and, unlike in the Discord group, I found some palpable community interest in the project.
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 team information on the website. There are 2 Github contributors.
I did eventually find information about the team, in Discord of all places, where there are 6 listed core members, occupying various positions across development, management and marketing. This is the extent of the available info in Discord.
I later found what I was looking for in a separate document linked on the website, where full information is provided for all team members. Please make this clearly available on the website itself, as it took me no small amount of navigation to find.
Despite this poor accessibility as a potential new user, the team themselves are indeed well-experienced and balanced. This, as a positive, should be something emphasised in all areas where new users might be captured (website, Bitcointalk, social platforms etc.).
Website:
The website is quite poor; although modern in its layout, it is poorly-designed from a UX-perspective, with unclear and irrelevant headings in the navigation menu. The content itself is mostly vague and lacks any real detail, with much written in broken English. Totally understandable when the team are not native English speakers, but, as the first point-of-reference for new users, this looks unprofessional – perhaps hire someone to update the design and the copy.
The link provided to the betting exchange alpha release doesn’t actually load, which means that I can’t evaluate anything there. The screenshots provided do, however, look very much clean and user-friendly.
The Getting Started and Where To Find Us sections are much better, with useful information plus clear and relevant links to exchanges and wallets. The social platforms are also easily accessible.
Overall, it just feels very amateurish, and not what you would want for a project looking to tackle the gambling industry, where so much emphasis is given (and so many resources spent) on accomodating users and providing a seamless, sleek experience.
Roadmap:
https://www.bettex.bet/#roadmap
The roadmap, whilst native to the website, is actually more accessible in its design. Visually, it appears, like many roadmaps, in an easy-to-follow, quarter-by-quarter map. However, this is the extent of its merits, as it is severely lacking detail and depth. There are no links with further information, and there are only a handful of goals (each a few words in length) in the roadmap. There are also no measures of progress.
Regarding the content of the roadmap, Q2 2018 states that there was a masternode presale (this conflicts with the Bitcointalk thread where it is mentioned that there was no presale – which is correct?). Q3 2018 saw the first exchange listing and listing on masternodes.online. Q4 saw the alpha release of the betting exchange.
Q1 2019 will see the beta release of the betting exchange; Android and iOS wallet releases; and new exchange listings. Q2 2019 will see the final platform release; a top 50 exchange listing; and mobile betting.
Whitepaper:
https://www.bettex.bet/whitepaper_eng.pdf
The whitepaper is 13 pages in length, and written largely in somewhat broken prose. This does not particularly professional to a first-time reader.
The introduction gives context to the project and the betting industry, and also outlines the current problems with the industry: high fees, troublesome verification, trusted third parties etc. We are then told that Bettex is a decentralised betting exchange, which will use BTXC for payments, and will seek to solve the aforementioned issues.
The platform itself will be based on BigchainDB, and a table is provided to illuminate advantages over traditional blockchains/databases. This is all explained clearly, though again in broken English, which limits professionalism. The main benefit is low latency over traditional blockchains.
The following sections are concerned with BTXC, the coin, stating it to be a fork of PIVX, Proof-of-Stake with masternodes. We are told that 1 million BTXC was premined, but there is a conflict here as it mentions that there are plans to sell this to investors and plans to burn 1 million BTXC. They are currently burning ~20,000 BTXC a week, and the printed block reward schedule indicates a dev fee of 20,010 BTXC every 10,800 blocks.
It is unclear whether this is in addition to the supply emission depicted in the reward schedule or forms a portion of it; I would imagine it is in addition, as the dev fee would be 50% of the minted supply otherwise, which I highly doubt is the case. It is also unclear whether it is this dev fee that is being burned each week and whether the 1mn premine was sold to investors, or whether the dev fee is collected and the premine is burnt. Further, this dev fee, even if in addition to other supply emission, constitutes a ~33% fee (20,010 / 63,210). There is just a lot of confusion here…
Now, I have taken this directly from the conclusion:
“we against the deception of people, involved in the cryptocurrency industry. We against SCAM, HYP, copied and unreasoned projects.”
Whilst a wonderful sentiment, the quality of the whitepaper (or those sentences) does not reflect this message.
Wallets:
There are Windows, Linux and Mac wallets available, with iOS and Android wallets in development.
General:
In this concluding fundamental section, I’d like to talk about the Presentation document that differs from the whitepaper.
Here, it is stated that the goals of the project are to: create a decentralised betting exchange; create a bot based on AI for betting purposes; build a service for trusted management of funds for professional bettors (I assume something similar to social trading); build peer-to-peer gateways; host private events; and ensure anonymity.
More importantly, there is a section on funding, which states that the project seeks to crowdfund $277k for development via the sale of Bettex stock – a separate token based on the Waves platform. Holders of Bettex stock will receive 30% revenue share from the betting exchange.
What is the incentive to buy and hold BTXC, then? And why is this separate token obscured from the website (it is mentioned in the footer, with no detail)?
Technical
Despite only 5 or 6 months of available price-history, there do appear to be a couple of short-term cycles that have played out, alongside some important levels having formed. The most important of these is the level at which price has recently bounced, it being an area of long-term support. This support is also the bottom of an accumulation range from back in October 2018.
Volume has been declining for the duration of the decline from the local high from December (~5250 satoshis), which aligns with a low-risk short-term buy around current prices. I would not personally be a buyer because of the fundamental evaluation that preceded this section, but those looking purely at technicals have a low-risk, high-reward opportunity with a soft stop at 1600 satoshis and targets above 5000 satoshis. That is ~30% risk versus ~120% reward, or 4:1 reward-to-risk.
Conclusion
This report is now over 4,000 words, and it is time to draw it to a close.
My final grading for Bettex is 5 out of 10.
Despite the various strengths (some immense, such as those in the Metrics section), there is simply not enough here at present for me to consider being a buyer or to grade the project above a 5. There is plenty to work on moving forward, and perhaps when those fundamental qualities have improved, I would take another look.
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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