N.B: In the spirit of full transparency, the following Coin Report is the first Sponsored Post on my blog. The Bulwark team recently contacted me with a request to write up a Coin Report on the project. At first, my concern was that the team would expect me to cover up any weaknesses I spotted, which I was not willing to do; in fact, their expectation was the opposite. After they had agreed to my sole stipulation that this report would conform to the rigour of the previous reports, with all strengths and weaknesses being explored and evaluated, I agreed to write the report.
Further, my thinking was that the periodic publishing of Sponsored Posts would benefit the blog in numerous ways: firstly, it would incentivise the ~20 hours a week I spend on compiling material for this blog unpaid; secondly, it would create a greater breadth of coverage on the blog, as material up to this point has been exclusively centred on my own interests in the space; and thirdly, any revenue from Sponsored Posts can be reinvested into the blog so that it grows more quickly and reaches more readers. I have always been fully transparent with everything I do, sometimes to a fault, and I will continue to do so.
Welcome to the fourth Coin Report. Apologies for the long preface, but I felt that it was necessary. In today’s report, I will be assessing the fundamental and technical strengths and weaknesses of Bulwark, examining specifically a handful of significant metrics; Bulwark’s community; its development history and future; and its profit potential at current prices. This will culminate in a grading out of 5. I hope you enjoy the read!
Introduction
I first wrote about Bulwark in Market Outlook #4, but my analysis of it in that post was primarily technical. Back then, it had been range-bound for 210 days (the period during which the rest of the market was dying a slow death) and that is what brought it onto my radar. At that point, it was priced at ~12k satoshis, and price has since fallen by 25% to around 9k satoshis. Evidently, an entry then would have been an early one. Since then, I have paid little attention to the project; that was until the team approached me to write this report.
Having now compiled my research, there is a great deal to discuss regarding the various strengths and weaknesses of Bulwark as a project and as an altcoin. I hope the following report will prove to be thorough and objective where it must be, though, as is the case with these reports, I will provide commentary where it is required for the benefit of the reader.
If you’d like to know more about the project, prior to reading the report, here are some of Bulwark’s primary links:
Fundamental
General:
Name: Bulwark
Ticker: BWK
Algorithm: NIST5
Sector: Privacy Hardware / Masternodes
Exchanges: Cryptopia, CryptoBridge & Blocknet
Bulwark was launched in December 2017 – in the earliest stages of the Winter bull cycle – with a small premine (1.81% of the maximum supply), no ICO and a Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism on the NIST5 algorithm. The launch was fair, with block rewards for the first day (minus the premine block) being set at 50% of the block reward from the following day (25 and 50 BWK, respectively). The Proof-of-Work stage lasted ~182700 blocks, with the project now operating with a Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism, supplemented by a network of masternodes. This transition has brought with it an advantage for the speculator, as we will get into later.
Further, as Bulwark has yet to have its 1st birthday, there is rather little price-history to analyse, which I will dissect in the Technical section, but an all-time high was set in January 2018, as was the case with so many altcoins.
Bulwark, as a project, seems to be less concerned with grand ambitions and more concerned with consistency. As is stated in the whitepaper, they “offer a simple value proposition with no grandiose promise: we will deliver a privacy coin that works today and into the future.” The project is, as stated, primarily focused on privacy, with development goals centred on hardware development. Privacy is about as inextricable an ideal as you can get in this space, and, with the plethora of projects devoting their attention to it, it will take a lot to stand out. We’ll see how Bulwark deliver on that front later.
For now, let’s begin with some analysis of the metrics:
Metric Analysis:
Below are listed a number of important metrics, all of which are accurate as of 10th November 2018. 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. Also, Transactional Volume, NVT and Network Staking Weight have been omitted due to lack of functionality of the block explorer (and integrated privacy, obviously) for such calculations. Lastly, rich-list analysis was undertaken using https://explorer.bulwarkcrypto.com/#/top and some masternode statistics are sourced from https://masternodes.online/currencies/BWK/.
Metrics:
General:
Price: 9199 satoshis ($0.59)
Exchange Volume: $28,550
Circulating Supply: 13,566,663 BWK
Total Supply: 13,885,717 BWK
Maximum Supply: 27,000,000 BWK (the reported Max. Supply is just the Circ. Supply 5 years post-launch – there is some supply emission after this point)
% of Max. Supply Minted: 51.43%
Network Value: 1277.35 BTC ($8.21mn)
Network Value at Max. Supply: $15.965mn
Category: Midcap
Exchange Volume-to-Network Value: 0.35%
Average Price (30-Day): $0.67
Average Exchange Volume (30-Day): $28,592
Average Network Value (30-Day): $8.585mn
Average Exchange Volume-to-Average Network Value: 0.33%
% Price Change USD (30-Day): -15.6%
% Price Change USD (1-Year): N/A
USD All-Time High: $16.03
% From USD All-Time High: -96.3%
Premine % of Max. Supply: 1.81%
Premine Original Location: https://explorer.bulwarkcrypto.com/#/address/bWMiJk57wsPJuGFFJCp8MzSsvzepf7CFAi
Liquidity (calculated as the sum of BTC in the buy-side within 10% of current price across all exchanges): 3.677 BTC
Liquidity-to-Network Value %: 0.29%
Supply Available on Exchanges: 159,940 BWK
% of Circ. Supply Available on Exchanges: 1.18%
Staking & Masternodes:
Network Staking Weight: Unable to determine
Staking ROI (Annual): Minimum 38.57% (if all circ. supply minus supply locked in masternodes is being staked)*
Masternode Price: $2,956.54
Masternode Collateral Size: 5000
Masternode Count: 1533
Supply Locked in Masternodes: 7,665,000
Masternode Count Growth (30-Day): -0.58%
Masternode ROI (Annual): 59.39%**
Masternode Reward / Block Reward: 60%
Masternode Network Value: $4.532mn
MNV / Network Value: 55.2%
*To calculate minimum staking ROI for the next 365 days: ((Annual Supply Emission * 30%) / (Circulating Supply – Masternode Locked Supply)) * 100 = 2,275,986 / 5,901,663 = 38.57%
**To calculate masternode ROI for the next 365 days: ((Annual Supply Emission * 60%) / Masternode Count)) / Masternode Collateral = (4,551,973 / 1533) / 5000 = 59.39%
Supply Emission & Inflation:
Current Block Height: 314027
Block Reward Schedule: 31.25 Block Reward for next 31574 blocks (~33 days) > 25 Block Reward for 86399 blocks (~90 days) > 21.875 Block Reward for 86399 blocks (~90 days). ~4 years until final block reward stage of 1.625 BWK per block. More info on p8 of whitepaper.
Days To Final Block Reward Stage (Block 1728000): 1472
Supply Emission Until Block 1728000: 14,149,056 BWK (1301.57 BTC)
Supply Emission (Next 365 Days): 7,586,622 BWK (697.89 BTC)
Annual Inflation Rate (Next 365 Days): 54.64%
Circulating Supply in 365 Days: 21,472,339 BWK
Annual Supply Emission After Block 1728000: 569,400 BWK (52.38 BTC)
Annual Inflation Rate After Block 1728000: 2.03%
Distribution:
Address Count: Unable to determine
Supply Held By Top 10 Addresses: 5.2%
Supply Held By Top 20 Addresses: 7.39%
Supply Held By Top 100 Addresses: 15.3%
Inactive Address Count in Top 20 (30 Days of No Activity): 6
Analysis:
Well, that’s a lot to get through…
Given that Bulwark is a privacy-focused masternode coin, and thus payments are a critical component to the success of the project, it’s a shame that Transactional Volume (and thus NVT) couldn’t be measured. This is, in part, a byproduct of being a privacy coin, which does make calculating that metric far more difficult. But it’s also because the Bulwark block explorer has little functionality regarding transactions. The team are, however, developing a new block explorer (which we’ll talk more about later) and they have taken my suggestions onboard. That being said, whilst Transactional Volume has been omitted from this report, there are plenty of other meaty metrics to dig into, particularly those concerning masternodes, inflation and distribution. But, we’ll begin with the General:
The first metric I’d like to highlight is the Supply Available on Exchanges, as this is inconceivably low. Supply metrics are all well and good when evaluating prices and valuations, but what often goes without consideration is how much of this supply is actually available to buy on exchanges. Exchange trading is the primary means of acquiring a position in an altcoin for the vast majority of us, and, as such, it makes sense to monitor how much supply is on the market.
In Bulwark’s case, this is extremely little. 159,940 BWK is currently on the orderbooks across Cryptopia and CryptoBridge (the two primary exchanges that Bulwark trades on). This equates to a measly 1.18% of the circulating supply. What this implies is that the conviction to hold Bulwark is strong, and it also significantly reduces headwinds for price growth. As so little supply is available on the market, in order to purchase a significant amount, one would inevitably be forced into increasing price.
Of course, this figure is dynamic, with the supply available on exchanges shifting from day-to-day; however, the most important takeaway from this figure is that very few holders are willing to sell their Bulwark at present. Now, when we cross-compare Bulwark with some of its competitors, this figure makes more sense. Phore has 1.27% of its circulating supply available on orderbooks across its listed exchanges, and Solaris has 1.11%. Privacy-focused masternodes are in high demand across-the-board, it would seem.
Supply Emission and Inflation is of particular interest, as always, given that the primary objective for readers of this report is likely to turn a profit on a position. Analysis of supply emission is paramount in this regard. As we can see from the metrics listed above, Bulwark is currently providing 31.25 BWK block rewards, though this will be reduced to 25 BWK per block in a little over a month.
As my approach to speculation is long-term, I like to calculate at least one year’s-worth of emission statistics before I can accurately evaluate current prices. To that end, we can see that there is ~7.6mn BWK to come into existence over the next 365 days, giving an annual inflation rate of 54.64%. Now, this is a little high, but Bulwark seems to be unusually good at maintaining prices despite such inflation, as we’ll get into when we take a look at the chart. Regardless, it must be said that inflation for the next year is indeed high.
But how does the inflation fare against Exchange Volume? ~7.6mn BWK coming into existence over the next year equates to 697.89 BTC of supply emission at current prices, which equates to ~1.91 BTC of daily supply emission ($12.2k). Exchange Volume over the past 24 hours was $28,550, and Average Exchange Volume across the past month was a fraction higher than this. Thus, Average Exchange Volume covers daily supply emission by ~232%, and, as such, if similar levels of traded volume persist, current prices should easily be maintained. Promising.
Now, where this gets even more interesting is when you take an even longer-term view. There are 1472 days remaining before Bulwark enters its final stage of block rewards at block 1728000, at which point the reward will be 1.625 BWK per block. Between now and then, ~14.149mn BWK will come into existence, or 1301.57 BTC at current prices. On average, this equals 0.88 BTC ($5687) of daily supply emission leading up to block 1728000. If Average Exchange Volume is maintained, it would be 5x greater than daily supply emission, and thus more than enough to sustain present prices, if not indicating that price growth is inevitable.
Further, once block 1728000 is reached, annual supply emission will be 569,400 BWK; an inflation rate of 2.03%. This is not taking into account the fact that 10% of block rewards will be going into the Bulwark Governance fund once we enter the next block reward stage in 33 days.
We’ve established Bulwark’s primary purpose of facilitating private transactions, but an equally important component of the project is its masternode network. So, let’s dig into the masternode metrics:
N.B: it’s quite unfortunate that Network Staking Weight was unable to be determined using the block explorer or the local wallet, and I hope that functionality will be implemented in future releases.
Now, the first point-of-interest concerning masternodes is that Masternode Count totals 1533, with -0.58% growth (9 less) over the past month. (Note: this is due to a wallet upgrade that took place a week ago, which temporarily disabled the masternode network.) This shows that the network is at least stable in its size. Secondly, ROI on masternodes for the following year works out around 60%, given the current number of live masternodes. Whilst figures on masternode statistics websites (like masternodes.online) show an ROI closer to 90%, this is not accounting for the changes in supply emission over the course of the year. Regardless, 60% is a solid reward; not too high, not too low. It’s about the sweet spot when looking for a good ROI on a masternode, especially when the above sections on average volume covering supply emission are taken into account.
This means that entries at current prices for those that can afford the ~$3,000 masternode are doubly-attractive, as the rewards from running the MN would serve to lower the average entry price with low probability for capital loss. This is further reinforced when taken into consideration with the fact that Bulwark is 96.3% below it’s all-time high.
Lastly, and most importantly, we must look at Masternode Network Value. A deeper explanation of this concept can be found in my dedicated article. Bulwark’s MNV can be calculated by multiplying the number of masternodes online by the collateral size of one masternode by the price of Bulwark. With 7,665,000 BWK locked in masternodes, this gives us a MNV of $4.532mn. This is equal to ~55% of Bulwark’s Network Value, which indicates a strong masternode network. For context, I calculated ALQO’s MNV to be a little under 50% in a previous report.
Before we conclude this section with some analysis of the distribution of Bulwark, there’s some house-keeping to do with remaining metrics from the General sub-section. Let’s take a look at volume against network value: for both, Exchange Volume-to-Network Value, and its 30-day average, the figures come out at around a third of a percent. As I have mentioned in previous reports, this is likely due to the current bear market, as I tend to prefer positions in altcoins that exhibit a 1% or greater EVNV. For purposes of cross-comparison, ALQO had an Average Exchange Volume-to-Network Value of 0.18%, Covesting was 0.36% and GeoCoin was 0.13%. Relative to the others examined, Bulwark is showing stronger signs of interest.
Moving onto Distribution, Bulwark seems to outshine the vast majority of altcoins in this regard. As quoted earlier, Bulwark prides itself on its fair launch and its strong emphasis on decentralisation (a trait we also saw when studying ALQO). To that end, Bulwark’s top 10 addresses control a measly 5.2% of the circulating supply, the top 20 control 7.39% and the top 100 control 15.3%. For comparison, ALQO’s top 100 richest addresses control 15.77% of its circulating supply. Fair play, Bulwark. Fair play.
Let’s explore this distribution a little more thoroughly: 6 of the top 20 richest addresses have been inactive for the past 30 days; the 2nd-richest address has recently increased position size by over 25%; the vast majority of these top 20 addresses are either staking or collecting masternode rewards; the only address distributing recently was the 14th-richest. Overall, the rich-list points at current prices being a potentially good area for an entry.
And that concludes this section on Metric Analysis. Onto the Bulwark 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 five main platforms to examine: Twitter, Facebook, Telegram, Discord and Slack.
Bulwark doesn’t have Slack, but is present on the other four. To begin, let’s look at the various social metrics that I calculated from the Bulwark Twitter and Facebook accounts:
Twitter Followers: 8319
Tweets: 733
Average Twitter Engagement (30-Day): 0.41%
Facebook Likes: 416
Facebook Posts (90-Day): 54
Average Facebook Engagement (30-Day): 2.16%
Using RivalIQ‘s benchmark report as a point-of-reference, as usual, Bulwark’s Average Twitter Engagement rate of 0.41% is 8.9x greater than that across all industries and 31.5x greater than the Media industry (the closest industry in the report). However, it is half the engagement being shown on Covesting’s Twitter, less than a third of the engagement on ALQO’s Twitter, but twice the Twitter engagement of GeoCoin. Overall, positive against the rest of Twitter, but mediocre within the altcoin space.
Bulwark also don’t seem to have put a whole lot of effort into growing their Facebook page (416 Likes) to a similar following found on their Twitter (8319 followers), despite posting 54 times on Facebook in the past 90 days. Clearly, the intention is there and there is commitment to providing updates but perhaps the marketing hasn’t been so effective on Facebook.
Also, concerning Facebook, Bulwark’s engagement rate is 2.16%. Of course, this higher figure is natural given the smaller audience, but let’s delve a little deeper: the average engagement rate across all industries is 0.16% – Bulwark is experiencing 13.5x greater engagement; the Media industry’s average engagement rate is 0.08% – Bulwark is 27x greater. Now, let’s compare it with the altcoins from previous reports. GeoCoin had a 0.08% engagement rate on Facebook, ALQO had a 3.43% engagement rate (though, similarly to Bulwark, the page had only a fraction of the audience of that of their Twitter account) and Covesting had a 0.16% engagement rate except with 50x more page Likes. Twitter and Facebook don’t seem to be Bulwark’s strong point, at least relative to other altcoins.
Moving onto Telegram, Bulwark’s group has 2178 members. Over the past week, I noticed around 60 or so individuals forming the bulk of the conversation (2.75% of the group). I also saw consistency in team-driven updates, which was great. The Marketing Director, Jack, clearly wants to make sure the community is aware of development progress. From the community’s side, the conversation was predominantly centred on support, with questions and issues being promptly and informatively answered by the team. There was some off-topic conversation between group members, which is not necessarily a bad thing as it shows that those individuals view the Bulwark Telegram group as a place for general conversation – they enjoy spending time there.
However, I would have liked to have seen more community-driven conversation concerning the future of the project, perhaps with suggestions and proposals and some community-led marketing. What was very promising, however, was the fact that the group was used to drive votes for a masternode competition, which led to Bulwark winning the competition and beating out Phore, Deviant and GINcoin. This win gives Bulwark a fee-free listing on a new exchange. Overall, 4 out of 5. If more of the group was engaging, this would be a 5.
To conclude this section on social media presence, let’s look at the Bulwark Discord group. The group has 5224 members and plenty of internal channels that are clearly segmented and defined. This makes the Discord user-friendly and easy to navigate. The Announcements channel is updating at least every other day recently, which is good to see. The Official Links channel is incredibly useful for new users, with a comprehensive list of resources and relevant links. Weirdly, Development Updates is barely updated but the Github channel sees at least two or three new commits a week. Most conversation, as would be expected, occurs in the General channel, occuring between ~50 members for the most part. As with the Telegram group, I would like to see more of the community involved in discussion. That being said, the channel is in near-constant conversation, with very few extended breaks over the past week.
With regards to improvements, I would like to see more action in the Content Creators channel – this is a great idea for a channel, as the greater the level of commitment from the community in creating marketing and promotional resources for the project, the broaders its potential user-base and the more likely Bulwark takes on a position of permanence in the space. Overall, a solid 4.
BitcoinTalk:
Bulwark launched its BitcoinTalk announcement on 2nd December 2017, and has generated 3016 posts across 151 pages of conversation during those 342 days. That works out at 8.8 posts per day on average. However, over the past 90 days, there have been 112 posts from 32 individual posters. This shows a decrease in activity of late. That being said, the team continues to display an excellent level of commitment to providing regular updates, with numerous posts concerning developments. Further, the thread is used to push more detailed updates via Medium blog posts. With regards to general conversation, it is a familiar story: promptly answered support questions but little community input on the future of the project. Again, a 4 out of 5.
And that concludes my analysis of the Bulwark community. Time to take a look at the project’s 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:
According to the website, there are 8 core team members, including multiple developers, branding and marketing specialists and a community manager. This is slightly larger than ALQO’s core team despite Bulwark’s lower Network Value, which is positive. There is a good breadth of areas of expertise and experience. One possible improvement would be to perhaps get someone from the community to join the core team as a marketer, providing community-led updates via some form of engaging content. I would imagine this would help to drive greater overall community engagement whilst also increasing brand awareness.
Website:
The website is great: it’s easy to navigate with sleek UI/UX; it is informative but concise, with a backlog of resources linked in their own relevant sub-sections; there is a dedicated blog that is regularly updated with long-form progress updates. However, the block explorer needs to be more fully-functional, with greater detail on the rich-list, as well as more information on transaction history. Despite that, it’s a 5 out of 5. It’s what you want from any altcoin website, really.
Roadmap:
www.bulwarkcrypto.com/roadmap/
The roadmap is the best part of the website, as there is a separate page for the present and future roadmap and a dedicated page with a full history of past developments. Let’s begin with the present and future roadmap. It is specific, detailed and ambitious, with clearly delineated quarterly goals. With four quarters of future goals planned out, there is plenty to look into.
This quarter (Q4 2018) sees a cohesive and comprehensive design framework being created to be used with all future applications, for the purposes of creating strong brand identity. What I like about this is that not only is there an explanation of the goal itself but also a justification for the work being undertaken. The rest of this quarter will see progress being made on a new block explorer, new local wallets and mobile apps, all for release in Q1 2019. Further, the Governance system will be integrated this quarter, and research & development is set to begin for the Aegis hardware wallet and the Citadel home router. Hardware development is no joke, and this is clearly a route that could distinguish Bulwark from their many competitors if it is met with success.
Moving onto Q1 2019, the New Year will see Bulwark incorporated as a business to allow for team expansion in line with the ambitious roadmap. It will also see the release of the aforementioned explorers and wallets and applications, alongside Bastion (a centralised exchange with Bulwark pairings). Most significantly, in my opinion, Q1 2019 will see the public release of their Aegis hardware wallet. This is a lot to do over the next 5 or 6 months, and perhaps they are putting a little too much pressure on themselves to deliver so much, but they do seem to be consistent with their delivery on promises so far.
Q2 2019 will see the Secure Home Node 2 released, which is a limited edition version of their already-released Secure Home Node (the first bit of hardware they manufactured earlier this year).
Q3 2019 culminates in the release of Citadel. Looking at this roadmap, there’s certainly a lot to look forward to, but I almost feel as though the workload of the first quarter could be more evenly distributed amongst the latter two in 2019; but, if they can deliver on those promises, that will be mightily impressive.
Concerning the dedicated page for past developments, this seems to be regularly updated with clear information and relevant links for further research. It shows the most recent and significant achieved goal of Zerocoin integration, along with the release of a Staking Script, a dedicated forum, the original block explorer, the first Secure Home Node release, the establishing of the Knowledge Base, the transition to Proof-of-Stake, the implementation of masternodes and the fair launch – all in the past 11 months. The roadmap scores a 5 out of 5.
Whitepaper:
https://bulwarkcrypto.com/docs/EN_-_Bulwark_Cryptocurrency_Whitepaper.pdf
What impressed me straight off the bat was the lack of wild dreaming in the whitepaper. One of the first statements made is that they “offer a simple value proposition with no grandiose promise: we will deliver a privacy coin that works today and into the future.” If more whitepapers could begin with a fair assessment of their strengths and potential, rather than with claims of never-before-seen innovation, that’d be great. As I talk about in my book, I want to buy altcoins that do the simple things well, more than anything else, and that continue to deliver on their promises. Of course, innovation must play a factor, but not everything is original nor should it be. The focus on “results rather than hype” is promising.
The prose is jargon-free and concise, thus readily accessible to those unfamiliar with cryptocurrencies, in general. Blockchain parameters are also clearly illustrated, including the initial premine of 489,720 BWK. A nod is given to PIVX and Dash, on which Bulwark was built, and the whitepaper states that the project will differentiate itself from other privacy masternode coins by focusing on fairness and decentralisation, unlike the majority of PIVX/Dash clones that were launched at a similar time.
Potentially unfamiliar terminology is clearly explained. However, there is a palpable feeling of genericness in the whitepaper. There’s no plagiarism, but there’s also nothing that stirs excitement or genuine interest whilst reading. What I do like is that there is a clear commitment to keeping the whitepaper up-to-date, as brief notes have been added in relevant sub-sections in line with the progress of the project. It makes a change from the static nature of most whitepapers.
A solid 4.
Wallets:
With regards to wallets available, there are three local wallets (Windows, Linux and Mac), functionality for the Raspberry Pi 3, and a paper wallet generator.
The Windows wallet is functional and easy-to-use, if a little bare and bland (a bit like the whitepaper). It kind of looks like a Windows 98 application at present. I’m just poking fun, but I would imagine this will be rectified with the release of the new wallets and the design framework. Overall, it does work well and it uses very little CPU, but it doesn’t say much about Bulwark. 3 out of 5.
General:
In general, the development of Bulwark is promising. The project began with little ambition besides being a fairly-launched privacy coin that remained consistent, and it has since evolved into grand ambitions of manufacturing its own hardware wallets and other security-based kit. It is in this hardware development that I think Bulwark can really get an edge over its competition.
Where, at present, the project is funded partly via the premine but primarily via the team and community, over the coming months the project will secure funding via the Governance system (10% of block rewards) for proposals backed by the community and also from hardware sales. Funding is vital to survival in this space, and the revenue stream that could come into play when the hardware starts rolling out could be huge. Hardware wallets, in particular, are in huge demand, and there are only really three or four key players currently in the game. Watch this space…
That concludes this final fundamental section. Onto the chart:
Technical
Bulwark, as mentioned previously, has only 11 months of price-history. In fact, it has 339 days of price-history. 252 of those days have been spent inside one of the longest ranges I’ve ever seen… price has been bouncing between 9-18k satoshis for the best part of Bulwark’s existence, holding that range through mass supply emission and a macro bear market.
Bulwark is currently looking as though it wants to break below that range support, if only briefly, and is trading within a couple % of its all-time low. The fact of the matter is that there has quite literally never been a cheaper entry for this coin; but, at the same time, breaking below a support level that’s been strong for 36 straight weeks wouldn’t be the best. There is a chance that the level gives way in order to form a spring and return back into the range shortly afterwards, and, for those with lower risk-tolerance, it would perhaps be the wise thing to do to wait for that before entering.
Similarly, one could enter a position at these prices and set a soft stop loss around 8000 satoshis, in case of a Daily close at or below that level (10% below the current all-time low). Those are two possible low-risk approaches. My preferred method for midcaps is to allocate a fixed % of capital at an average entry that one is comfortable with (all-time lows are perfect for this). Then just allow time to prove you right. The downside to this is obvious: if 9k gives way without swift reclamation, we could see price bleeding down into uncharted territory. Either way, there is a lot of scope for growth from present prices; especially since the previous all-time high came one month into Bulwark’s existence, when there was little to no progress.
Conclusion
As per usual, this report has crossed the 5,000 word mark, and it’s time to draw it to a close.
My final grading for Bulwark is 4 out of 5. There was a lot that impressed me; but it also evident that there’s room for improvement in some critical areas, particularly around community engagement.
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.
If you’ve enjoyed this post and want to receive new posts straight to your inbox, I’ve set up a RSS-to-Email feed that will be sent out weekly; every Monday, 12pm. Just submit your email and I’ll make sure you’re included in the list. Cheers.
Very professional, detailed to the core and well articulated. One of the best coins I like. Can’t wait to read your other reports.
Very professional, detailed and well articulated. Can’t wait to read your previous ones.
Thanks Nik!
As always, detailed, thoughtful and thorough. As an existing BWK holder and MN owner it was great to have earlier analysis validated more thoroughly. Interestingly, ALQO is also one of the few other MNs that I run so the comparison’s also been fascinating. Both active teams, both delivering the goods.
Two points on your Bulwark commentary though:
1. Staking and MN interplay
The more recent introduction of staking for BWK has probably accounted for the reduction in Masternodes. I certainly played with the staking for a little while on small amounts, watching the staking rewards, before eventually flicking one MN off and moving those coins to a staking wallet. Staking generally, and certainly within Bulwark, is a big dark hole in terms of visibility from a project perspective. I talked to the lads over at NodeCheck (great MN monitoring service) about whether they could add monitoring of staked amts/wallets/addresses and from what I understand, that would require RPC-accessible functionality to be added – seeing this article reminded me of this and I’ll reach out to the Bulwark team about that. It’s a general problem though – the locking of coins for staking, like MNs, provides some insights to the project yet it’s an area unencumbered by easily accessible data.
2. Community and communications
Over time I’ve dealt with over a dozen MN projects and the Bulwark team would easily be the most professional and responsive. As you note they monitor the channels and respond, and are also very engaged which I think is observable from the various channels. Personally, I don’t have a huge amount of time to spare in channels, but as someone else commented – they’re just getting on with it! Like you, I’m looking at the longer term – I periodically check the roadmap and the discord and keep all software patched and updated. Mostly the roadmap review is followed by a “Far out, these guys are both kicking the goals they projected, AND setting a multitude of new ones”. I totally rate them!
Great write-up as always Nik – thanks for the transparency and the detailed analysis. You rock!
Glad you enjoyed the report! And yes, I think you’re probably right regarding staking – also, the team let me know that the wallet upgrade a week ago temporarily disabled the MN network, which skews the data on masternodes.online. But yeah, very few projects seem to have easily accessible data for staking. Cheers!
Presumably you meant “encumbered”
@Bone Vays Actually, no, I meant unencumbered. 🙂
The data on masternodes, the network, the transaction rates etc etc all very accessible and transparent from so many angles. The data on staking far less so. Yes it’s possible to see by looking at the wallets – Top 100/whatever for example – which wallets are holding how much – but not at all clear which ones are staking and which ones are not, which UTXO set size is most effective in receiving rewards, etc etc. If you’ve know how to drill into that I’d be really interested!
I’m loathe to ask this question, but I have googled and googled. I just read your book, and I cannot find guidance anywhere on how to determine emission rate or block reward schedule Any tips?
P95-102 of the book deal specifically with supply emission and block rewards. Hope that helps!
Good review. I agree with you that deveopment, production and selling of hardware wallet should be main concern of the team. I know community looking for Bastion but i think this is more important. And i have the same opinion about community should be more active.
Any project can create an exchange; very few bother with the work required to develop and sell hardware!
I don’t particularily agree with your points on community engagement. It’s one thing to keep your community members informed in a concise and efficient manner, another entirely to recruit someone for the sole purpose of blathering on about which “crypto-con of the week” they trolled about and went to the bathroom at for no other purpose than spamming their coin name and logo about social media. Bulwark has a solid and loyal (if not somewhat apathetic in terms of promotion) community, as shown by their ability to win the masternode competition. With a little more internal encouragement, they could spread the word more effectively through re-broadcasts of real meat & potatoes developments without diluting their presence with baseless hype. one of the hallmarks of an honest and hard-working team to me is simply “boring is best”.
Keep it boring, Bulwark! 🙂
That’s fair enough, but that’s not really what I meant. If you look through the ALQO report, you’ll see the sort of thing I mean by greater overall community engagement. I emphatically state that I like Bulwark’s no hype approach – that’s certainly not what I’m looking for from the community.
I didn’t think so at all, and yes I’ll definitely check out ALQO. Thanks for this report. Don’t think we’ll ever see anyone else go into such great detail as you do on individual metrics. You really make life (a little too) easy for the casual researcher. 😉
Haha, well that’s the aim! Glad you’re finding the reports useful.