N.B: In the spirit of full transparency, the following Coin Report on Groestlcoin is a Sponsored Post.
Welcome to the 50th Coin Report. In today’s report, I will be assessing the fundamental and technical strengths and weaknesses of Groestlcoin. This will be comprised 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
As I’m sure readers are likely already aware, Groestlcoin is part of the old guard of altcoins, having been created only a few weeks after I first began trading in early 2014. I’ve seen the project survive through multiple cycles and out-perform even the strongest performers during the peaks of those cycles; but where is Groestlcoin today? Is it still a functioning project and is there any value to be found here – or, more precisely, are there speculative prospects for us speculators? It would be easy to write the old guard off and answer those questions with a swift no, if we were looking at them through the lens of 2020, with its infatuation with new-fangled use-cases and complexities. But, back in 2014, this space was almost entirely focused on payments – and that is where Groestlcoin began its journey. Having now completed my research on the project, I can say with firm conviction that there is plenty to learn from the projects that have survived for the past six years (if not always thrived), where the majority of 2017/18’s new entrants bloomed and perished with equal swiftness.
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 Groestlcoin prior to reading this report, here are some primary links:
Fundamental Analysis
General:
Name: Groestlcoin
Ticker: GRS
Algorithm: Groestl (Proof-of-Work)
Sector: Payments
Exchanges: Upbit, Binance, Exrates, Digifinex, Bittrex, Huobi Global, Livecoin, BitZ, Hotbit, Sistemkoin, Changelly, BarterDex, Bitladon and more.
Launch Overview
Groestlcoin was launched on March 22nd, 2014, as a Proof-of-Work cryptocurrency; the first to utilise the Groestl hashing algorithm. The project launched with a 0.23% premine of the maximum supply of 105,000,000 GRS, amounting to 240,640 GRS, in order to fund early development. This premine has now been fully depleted and all of the premine GRS are in circulation. There was no ICO. Regarding supply emission, miners are rewarded with 5 GRS per block, with a new block being minted every minute.
Price-History Overview
As Groestlcoin has been around for many years, there is plenty of price-history available, the majority of which I will attempt to dissect in the Technical Analysis section of this report. For now, it will suffice to say that the all-time high was formed in Q1 2018 at 26,530 satoshis and the all-time low printed in late 2014 at ~60 satoshis. Against the Dollar, GRS formed its all-time high at $2.60.
Project Overview
At its core, Groestlcoin is a payments-focused cryptocurrency, continually seeking to build out greater utility for transactions. Though it has opted to use unique technologies to achieve its aims, those aims are the same as many of the earlier cryptocurrencies: to facilitate cheap, fast, secure and seamless transactions.
As stated on its BitcoinTalk announcement:
“We strive to make Groestlcoin available to the masses. Innovative and user friendly, accessible for everyone. We highly value integrity and transparency. Digital currencies are the future and Groestlcoin will be one of the leaders in this revolution.“
Given that the project has now been in existence for over half a decade, I look forward to assessing the progress made towards performing as a payments solution.
Let’s begin with some Metric Analysis:
Metric Analysis:
Below are listed a number of important metrics, all of which are accurate as of 20th May 2020. 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: $0.15 (1547 satoshis)
Circulating Supply: 75,085,550 GRS
Total Supply: 75,085,550 GRS
Exchange Volume: $842,470 ($638,673 excluding potential wash)
Network Value: $11.295mn (1160.82 BTC)
Maximum Supply: 105,000,000 GRS
% of Max. Supply Minted: 71.51%
Network Value at Max. Supply: $15.796mn
Exchange Volume-to-Network Value: 7.46% (5.65% excluding potential wash)
Category: Lowcap
Average Price (30-Day): $0.151
Average Exchange Volume (30-Day): $1.016mn
Average Network Value (30-Day): $11.36mn
Average Exchange Volume (30-Day)-to-Network Value: 8.95%
Volatility* (30-Day): -0.0075
Average Daily On-Chain Transactions (30-Day): 185.6
Average Daily Transactional Value** (30-Day): $354,034 (excluding 1-day anomaly of ~193m GRS) (source)
NVT*** (30-Day): 31.91
% Price Change USD (30-Day): +1.9%
% Price Change USD (1-Year): -62.5%
USD All-Time High: $2.60
% From USD All-Time High: -94.2%
Premine % of Max. Supply: 0.23%
Premine Location: Fully depleted and in circulation
Liquidity (calculated as the sum of BTC in the buy-side with 10% of current price across all exchanges): 4.38 BTC
Liquidity-to-Network Value %: 0.38%
Supply Available on Exchange Orderbooks: 2,240,206 GRS
% of Circulating Supply Available on Exchanges: 2.98%
*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.
**Transactional Value in $ is calculated by taking the daily transactional value in GRS 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: 5 GRS per block rewarded indefinitely until the maximum supply of 105,000,000 GRS is reached. Static emission.
Average Block Time: 1 minute
Current Block Height: 3,095,588
Annual Supply Emission: 2,628,000 GRS (40.63 BTC at current prices)
Annual Inflation Rate: 3.5%
Circulating Supply in 365 Days: 77,713,559 GRS
Distribution:
Address Count: 60,588
Supply Held By Top 10 Addresses: 51.62%*
Supply Held By Top 20 Addresses: 62.53%
Supply Held By Top 100 Addresses: 81.77%
Inactive Address Count in Top 20 (30 Days of No Activity): 11
*The #1 address controls 28.9% and is a shared cold wallet between Bittrex and Upbit.
Analysis:
Well, there’s rather a lot to unpack here, so let’s begin with the metrics related to on-chain transactions, as these are undoubtedly the most relevant for Groestlcoin’s purpose:
Thankfully, Groestlcoin has a Chainz explorer, which greatly simplifies my research process, particularly for on-chain transaction analysis. Using this source, I found that Groestlcoin averaged 185.6 Daily On-Chain Transactions for the past month, amounting to an Average Daily Transactional Value of $1.341mn, excluding block rewards + fees. However, this figure is inclusive of a single-day anomaly of ~193m GRS being transacted. Excluding this anomaly, the Average Daily Transaction Value is $354,034 for the past month. This is still very impressive, off the bat, as it gives Groestlcoin a 30-day NVT of 31.91; less than half that of Bitcoin at present, which is 73.2. This means that, relative to its Network Value (market cap), Groestlcoin is processing more than twice as much on-chain transactional value as Bitcoin. Clearly, the blockchain is still very much in use 6 years on.
Before we move on to other metrics, I’d like to quickly highlight Groestlcoin’s 30-day Volatility of -0.0075. This is the lowest figure ever recorded in these reports, which, for me, is highly suggestive of accumulation, at least against the Dollar.
Now, let’s take a look at the remaining General metrics before moving on to Supply Emission and concluding with Distribution:
Some of the most significant metrics to evaluate for speculators are those related to buy-side and sell-side Liquidity. I found Groestlcoin to have buy-side Liquidity of 4.38 BTC within 10% of spot price across all listed exchanges, equating to 0.38% of its Network Value. This is the 14th-highest degree of liquidity found amongst all previous reports, placing it in the top third. Although nominally there isn’t a huge amount of liquidity available, relative to its network value, this is relatively strong.
Concerning sell-side Liquidity, Groestlcoin was found to have 2.24mn GRS available for purchase in the orderbooks across all listed exchanges, equating to 2.98% of its Circulating Supply; the 16th-highest figure among previous reports, indicating an equally modest desire to sell.
There is nothing overwhelmingly strong nor weak in either liquidity measure here.
Now, let’s take a look at the volume-related metrics:
Groestlcoin reportedly traded $842,470 of Exchange Volume in the past 24 hours, equating to 7.46% of its Network Value; a hugely impressive figure, if only it was accurate. Having checked over the individual markets, some of the figures for volume traded are derived from exchanges notorious for wash-trading. As such, having discounted these figures, I calculated that GRS traded $638,673 over the past 24 hours. This equates to 5.65% of its network value – a still-impressive figure for speculative interest.
More importantly, its Average Daily Volume for the past month (again, discounting wash-trading) was $1,016,813 equating to 8.95% of its Average Network Value for the same period; a clear sign of sustained speculative interest.
Moving onto Supply Emission, based on the indefinite block rewards of 5 GRS per block and 1-minute block times, I calculated that 2,628,000 GRS will be minted annually (40.63 BTC-worth at current prices). This gives Groestlcoin a negligible annual inflation rate of 3.5% (ever-decreasing). As such, there should really be no headwinds for price growth.
However, most significant is the relationship between this Supply Emission and the Volume metrics mentioned above:
Given that 2,628,000 GRS are minted annually, we can work out that the average daily supply emission is 7,200 GRS, or 0.111 BTC-worth at current prices. This equates to $1,080 of daily supply emission. As Groestlcoin traded ~$638k of volume over the past 24 hours, and an average of $1.016mn of volume daily for the past month, we find that GRS’ average daily supply emission is covered 591x by its 24-hour volume and 941x by its Average Exchange Volume.
Further, Liquidity of 4.38 BTC covers the average daily supply emission by 39.4x.
In short, any decreases in price are undoubtedly driven either by distribution from larger holders or distribution from smaller holders, and not from daily emissions being dumped on the market.
Finally, let’s take a look at Distribution:
I was relatively impressed to find that there are 60,588 holders of GRS, as this is the 5th-highest address count of all coins previously reported on. That said, one might reasonably expect a relatively large address count given the duration of its existence.
With regards to concentration of supply, the top 10 addresses control 51.62% of circulating supply; the top 20 control 62.53%; and the top 100 control 81.77%. However, one thing to note is that the number 1 address controls 28.9% of the supply, and despite it not being named as such on the explorer I did find that it is a cold wallet owned by Upbit and Bittrex. If we exclude this address, the top 10 addresses control 23.6% of the supply.
Within the top 20 addresses, 11 were inactive over the past 30 days, indicating that around half of the largest holders are content with their position sizes. Among the remaining addresses, 3 were in accumulation and 4 in distribution, excluding the Binance-labelled address at #8 and the #1 address owned by Upbit and Bittrex.
And that concludes this section on Metric Analysis. Onto the Groestlcoin 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.
Groestlcoin is present on all four platforms. To begin, let’s look at the various social metrics that I calculated from the Groestlcoin Twitter and Facebook accounts:
Twitter Followers: 37,310
Tweets: 3,143
Average Twitter Engagement: 0.86%
Facebook Likes: 8,194
Facebook Posts (30-Day): 1
Average Facebook Engagement: 0.09%
As usual, I will be using RivalIQ‘s social benchmark report for evaluation purposes.
Twitter:
Though the Groestlcoin Twitter account does have a large audience of ~37k, its engagement rate is not quite as strong; a common problem, however, for accounts with vast audiences. At first glance, 0.86% seems a fair degree of engagement, but that is inclusive of one post that had anomalous engagement (a tweet about Vidulum). The rest of the posts on the account have far less engagement and the team do not post very often.
That said, in RivalIQ’s report, we find that the average Twitter engagement rate across all industries is 0.045%, which means that GRS’ engagement rate is currently 19x greater. Relative to other coins, Groestlcoin’s engagement is the 18th-highest.
Facebook:
Now, with regards to Facebook, Groestlcoin has a smaller audience but also weaker engagement. With 8,194 Likes, it has the 9th-largest Facebook audience of any coin previously reported on. That said, its average engagement rate for the past 30 days was 0.09%, and this was derived from only one post over that period. There is clearly a lack of commitment to regularly interacting with the audiences on Facebook and Twitter, which is driving low engagement.
Discord:
The Groestlcoin Discord group has 2,231 members.
There are numerous relevant channels here, with a useful FAQ for beginners, as well as a bot displaying content from social feeds, though this is quite limited, as mentioned in the previous sections.
There is also an Announcements channel that is updated for each significant development, with the last one occurring a month ago, as Flare and Vidulum announced support for GRS. Prior to this was the March 22nd announcement on the project’s 6-year anniversary (more on this in the next part of the report).
The channel we are most concerned with for evaluating the community, however, is General, where one commonly finds daily discussion between the team and community. In Groestlcoin’s General channel, however, I found less than 10 messages posted in total over the past week. The only message of note was concerning the listing of GRS on SwapSpace, allowing users to buy GRS via a price aggregator without requiring signup.
Overall, I’m pretty disappointed with the lack of interest amongst the community in this group.
Telegram:
The Groestlcoin Telegram group has 1,814 members.
In all honesty, there isn’t very much to discuss regarding the group – much like Discord – as there is very little activity at all, with only a few dozen messages posted over the past week and some days passing by with no discussion at all. The team do continue to answer questions where there are any but there are only a handful of active community members chatting amongst themselves.
BitcoinTalk:
The Groestlcoin BitcoinTalk thread was created on March 22nd, 2014, and has since generated 5700 posts spanning 285 pages in 2251 days. This equates to 2.53 posts per day, on average. However, in the past 90 days, the thread has had 20 posts via 5 individual posters, giving an average of 0.22 posts per day; a significant decline in engagement.
The announcement itself is well put together and all relevant links are provided in the header of the announcement, followed by the launch date and the original purpose of the project – i.e. to act as an accessible and cheap digital currency. Interestingly, we do find an up-to-date timeline of every update and development that has been released, beginning in 2014 and concluding with the most recent updates in March 2020. This is great to see, as any potential users that navigate to the announcement will be able to immediately see the latest news and the fact that the project remains actively developed. Moreover, each update in the timeline has an outbound link to further reading on that specific point. We also find links to numerous explorers and social platforms. At the footer of the announcement, we find the coin specification, with the block reward schedule.
And that concludes my evaluation of the Groestlcoin community.
Let’s take a look at 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 are 16 core members listed on the website, the majority of whom are anonymous, as one might reasonably expect from an old-school, decentralised project that, importantly, is not operating as a business. Among the core team, there are half a dozen primary developers.
Overall, it is a rather small team but – as will be detailed in subsequent sections – they have clearly achieved a lot, despite the minimal premine and no ICO.
Clearly, the team is very much committed to the project.
Website:
The Groestlcoin website is not particularly well-branded nor modern in its design, but it is highly informative and easy to navigate, with a comprehensive navigation menu covering all possible topics of interest and relevant links to exchanges, wallets and other services.
The homepage itself is quite simple, beginning with links to wallet downloads and the About section of the page (which is a short scroll lower). In this About section, we learn that Groestlcoin is Segwit and Lightning-ready, having been launched in March 2014 with a focus on payments. The release of a major development every 3 months is also highlighted, which I will cover at length in the next section of this report.
We also discover that GRS has innumerable wallets across all possible platforms and that the fees to transact on the network are effectively zero, which is a huge positive for merchants utilising GRS in their payments systems. The team is also stated to be actively developing, which, from the subsequent section of this report, will become self-evident.
Moving down the homepage, we also find a countdown to the next quarterly update (32 days and counting), as well as a Changelly integration to buy GRS with fiat instantly. There are also dozens of exchange listings provided, along with a team overview (as covered earlier) and links to recent articles. At the footer of the homepage, we find social links.
Circling back to the navigation menu, I like that there is a separate tab for Pay with GRS, as this is Groestlcoin’s primary purpose and it is made clear. Links are provided here to merchants that accept GRS, GRS Debit Cards and GRS Payment Processors. We also have a tab specifically for wallets, highlighting the huge choice that users have for storing their coins on any possible platform. The News and Info tab is most relevant for speculators, as it is here that we can find a detailed Wiki, the roadmap and development progress tabs that I detail below, as well as Latest News. The sheer volume of information available is fantastic and I wish more projects would opt to ‘over-provide’.
Finally, if we navigate to their Github via the Follow Us tab, we find that the team have been working on a colossal 336 repositories since 2014, which itself will become apparent when I take you through the Roadmap section…
Overall, the website isn’t particularly attractive but there is enough meat here to sink a battleship.
Roadmap:
The Groestlcoin roadmap can be found here.
One thing that Groestlcoin clearly do better than most is provide detail and transparency with all of their development, with the roadmap being one component of their commitment to doing so.
The roadmap is not particularly visually appealing, but it is comprehensive, to say the least. It provides a full timeline of the history of the development of the project from March 22nd, 2014 (the launch) through to the plans for the years ahead.
I’ll refrain from detailing everything here, as it really would encompass a report of its own and many of the updates provided are minor, but I really love that any individual could navigate to this page and see precisely what has been occupying the team’s time for the past six years.
Prominent past developments include:
- The release of their Android wallet in December 2014.
- Electrum compatibility in March 2015.
- The release of v2.1 of the Core wallet in August 2015.
- The BIP66 soft fork in September 2015.
- The release of Groestlcoin Armory in September 2015.
- Multiple wallet releases in January 2016.
- A dozen wallet updates in March 2016.
- The release of Groestlcoin Lite in June 2016.
- The release of Blackberry and Android versions of Groestlcoin Samourai and Sentinel in September 2016.
- The release of Groestlcoin Core V2.13 in January 2017.
- Segwit activation in January 2017 – the first altcoin to do so.
- iOS wallet release in March 2017, along with a web wallet and Electrum Lite client.
- Groestlpay release in June 2017.
- Segwit upgrades and wallet updates in December 2017.
- Onchain atomic swaps via Komodo in March 2018, along with Coinomi integration.
- Hardware wallet storage on Trezor One in June 2018.
- GRSPay release in September 2018, along with significant wallet updates and integration into multiple third-party wallets and services.
- Groestlcoin Core v2.17.2 release in March 2019, plus integration into Zelcore and Ledger hardware wallets.
- Integration of GRS into multiple third-party wallets in June 2019.
- Groestl Nodes in September 2019.
- Release of multiple mobile wallet updates and new services, along with Lightning Network explorer for GRS in December 2019.
And then we arrive at 2020, where in March the Groestlcoin team celebrated their 6-year anniversary with one of their quarterly development updates. In it, they detailed the previous months’ developments, including the release of Groestlcoin Core v2.18.2, the BIP39 Key Tool, HODL GRS for Android, Seed Savior, VanitySearch, Android wallet updates and GRS Moonshine for Android.
Looking ahead, in June 2020, they will be releasing another quarterly update with Groestlcoin Core v2.19.1; the v1.5 of the Webwallet; HODL GRS for iOS; Unstoppable GRS; GRS Lightning App; and Zeus GRS iOS, along with other minor updates. In September, we’ll get Groestlcoin Core v2.20.1. Looking much further ahead to 2021, the team are looking at integration into Trezor and Ledger webwallets, the release of the Wasabi wallet; Taproot and Tapscript and the integration of Schnorr Signatures. They will also be looking at MimbleWimble for privacy, offchain atomic swaps and bulletproofs.
As if such a detailed roadmap wasn’t enough, they also have a complementary web page titled Development Progress, where users can view a visualisation of the progress made so far on each development component.
Perhaps the most impressive of these developments is the full suite for Lightning Network – a testament to the team’s desire to actually build out utility beyond basic initial integrations that many altcoins use as marketing tools based on the flavour of the day.
Whitepaper:
There is no relevant whitepaper available for Groestlcoin.
Wallets:
Groestlcoin has a plethora of wallets to store GRS, including a core desktop wallet, several mobile wallets, a web wallet, third-party storage on Coinomi, Atomic Wallet, Guarda, Zelcore, Flare and others, and also hardware wallet storage on Ledger devices, Trezor and BitFi.
That concludes my evaluation of the development of Groestlcoin.
Let’s dissect its price-history:
Technical
GRS/BTC
Weekly
Daily
Given that GRS has been trading now for about six years, I figured that it would be helpful to provide a Weekly chart and a Daily chart, in order to better understand the coin’s full price-history and its recent movements.
Beginning with the former, you can see that price initially traded around 1300 satoshis, before swiftly falling off and forming a base around 60 satoshis, which became range support and its all-time low for many months. Price stayed in a relatively tight range for a while before expanding in early 2015 and forming a new, more clearly-defined range, with range resistance at 740 satoshis – in reality, during that period, it didn’t seem like a range because the movement from the 60-satoshis base was over 10x to hit resistance, and I recall it playing out like a mini-cycle. With hindsight, we can see that the 60-740 satoshi range that spanned 540 days (yes, well over a year) was in fact a longer-term accumulation range for the subsequent cycles post-2017. After breaking out above range resistance in early 2017, GRS expanded swiftly, hitting its all-time high at 26.5k satoshis in Q1 2018 following a series of successive bull cycles throughout the preceding year. Price then formed a new base at 5500 satoshis in mid-2018, popped up in one final spike to 18.5k satoshis in early 2019, and then capitulated. 5500 satoshis swiftly became resistance and price lost the 200-week moving average. Since, price continued to fall, hitting support at 2000 satoshis in mid-2019, where for several months it formed a new base, with range resistance coming in at 3100 satoshis. A few weeks ago, however, that base was lost, and price fell to 1300 satoshis, above which it currently sits.
Turning to the Daily, we can see that GRS has been capped by the 360-day moving average since 2019 and, as of last month, it has also fallen well below the 200DMA. Range support at 2000 satoshis has yet to be retested as resistance and price is now sitting above old resistance turned support at 1300 satoshis. Whilst I do believe that GRS has another cycle in it, I am not willing to be a buyer so soon after the loss of range support. Instead, I would like to see it reclaimed and for price to start closing above the 360DMA before I become interested. Nonetheless, given that we are at Q4 2017 prices that preceded a 20x pump cycle, I do think that this is where we will begin to see re-accumulation. Failing a reclamation of 2000 satoshis as support, I would definitely be a buyer if we came down into the 740 satoshi area that preceded the entirety of 2017/18.
And that concludes my Coin Report on Groestlcoin.
Conclusion
This report is now over 4,000 words, and it is time to draw it to a close.
My final grading for Groestlcoin is 6 out of 10.
Here, you can find my grading framework, for reference.
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.
