What's the Next Verge? My Speculative Gamble

Verge pumped astronomically in December, gaining over 4000% when I recorded this video although having corrected some now given Bitcoin's recent dip. The privacy coin space as a whole has heated up and given this fact, I decided to take a look at the returns of the different coins in the space to see if there were any opportunities and decided to take a bet on NAV Coin.

Before we continue further, I would like to make a disclaimer. This is obviously, by nature, speculative and extremely risky. It is not investment advice and is simply a bet I am making with a small portion of my portfolio. In short, don't be an idiot and follow me blindly, especially given that this particular analysis is NOT fundamental at all. In other words, it's more akin to gambling than investing.

I pulled up 8 different cryptocurrencies to compare the 3 month and 1 month returns. The cryptocurrencies I used to represent the privacy coin space are (by market cap):

  1. Dash
  2. Monero
  3. Zcash
  4. Komodo
  5. PIVX
  6. Zcoin
  7. NAV Coin
  8. Zencash

At this point, it is relevant to clarify that these choices are only based on how the GENERAL public perceives these cryptocurrencies, meaning that political opinion on what is or isn't a privacy coin does not matter as none of this analysis is fundamental.

Over a 3 month period, using Dash & Monero as sort of the 'index' for privacy coins (it really doesn't matter since they are so close to one another), only two cryptocurrencies have underperformed: Zcash and NAV Coin. While Zcash has underperformed by more and hence has more opportunity to catch up, it is a much larger cryptocurrency and hence less likely to pump.

NAV Coin sits all the way at the bottom of the top 100 list on CoinMarketCap, even slightly lower than where Verge was just earlier this month. Given this, there is plenty of opportunity for it to pump. More importantly, I've been seeing more 'buzz' around NAV Coin given the success of Verge as people compare the two as if fundamentals actually matter. If we see the beginnings of a leg up for NAV, it might be all that is required for 'dumb' money to jump in as they view it as the next Verge.

If we switch to the 1 month returns, however, NAV has outperformed Monero / Dash. There are still two underperformers: Zencash and Zcash. While you could argue for Zencash given its small market cap, it is a top performer over 3 month period (given an earlier pump) and I hear about it much less than NAV, which while anecdotal, tends to be important when it comes to 'pump' coins.

As such, I will be taking a VERY small speculative position in NAV Coin. I want to reiterate this is not fundamental in nature and I am fully willing to lose ALL, not some, of my position. However, I see it as a net positive bet (or I wouldn't take it) so we'll see what happens.

Lastly, if it pumps because of this video, then all I will say is be careful because you're playing with fire. I do not know at this point what affect my channel can have on smaller cryptocurrencies. Altcoin Buzz seems to be able to cover smaller altcoins with limited impact, but his channel is centered on it while mine rarely does.

Be cautious and thank you for watching / reading.

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The pump came from McAfee and his support for it. Happy to have bought few weeks ago. Privacy coins with speed are the future.

Yeah McAfee is definitely the pump & dump king.

wellnot so long ago mcAfee pumped DGB, you think it could follow the same path?

I proved that when he advised to long hold on TRON.

NAV is one of the speculative coins I am invested in as well and thought I would add my two "non-investment-advice two cents (both positives and negatives) on the coin.

Positives: (1):the team is fairly responsive and tracks well to its roadmap and provides frequent updates (https://navcoin.org/news/category/news-2/news/). (2): The NAV team just released an app on android (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.navcoin.navpay), NavPay, that allows you to store and send NAV coins using its privacy payments technology (NavTech). I always like a coin that has some actual assets/IP backing up its valuation. (3): It's a Proof of Stake coin, and the team developed a raspberry pi device called NavPi (https://store.navcoin.org/product/navpi-stakebox/) that enables anyone to stake their coins and get an annual NAV coin award of 4% of their nav holdings; they also made a pretty good calculator (https://navtechservers.com/navtech-tools/staking-calculator/) to figure out how you would break even with this investment. It is not everyday that you see a privacy coin where your investment can naturally earn interest, albeit small, on its own like a savings account. (4) It's got a pretty strong community behind it that believes in the project and is willing to roll up its sleeves and help the development team. For instance, earlier this month, NAV was having some major issues due to the instability of its network, Bittrex alerted NAV team of the issue and the team was able to quickly come up with a security patch (https://navcoin.org/news/community-fund-testnet-security-updates/). But, it was done pretty haphazardly, and a lot of users (who were staking the coins using a NavPi) had issues updating their NavPi to the latest security patch. At the time, I felt that the NAV team didn't really have its act together but within a day, a member of the Nav Community was instrumental in helping the NAV team in writing a step-by-step guide (along with a script) of how to apply the security patch, which NAV was then able to publicize on its website (https://navtechservers.com/tutorials/navpi-4-1-0/). While this was originally going to be a negative (a crypto is only as strong as its development team), having a strong community to get through this challenge made me believe in the project more. (5): a community funding vote just passed (https://navcoin.org/news/community-fund-success/) where the NAV development team gets a certain percentage of staking award automatically (it equated to about 1 million dollars per year at NAV's then-current prices) to use on community projects, which could help improve the project's initiatives and marketing efforts.

Negatives: (1) the marketing effort seems pretty lacking right now. NavPay was released on December 20th, but a simple search on google news generated nothing about the project. In a crowded privacy coin field, having a good marketing team to promote the product is just as important as having a good product itself. (2) strong competition from Monero which has pretty strong word of mouth (i.e. 45 musicians, including mariah carey, accepting it for sales (https://www.projectcoralreef.com/) but news could also be a double-edged sword with a lot of news about malware surrounding Monero as well). (3): development team's ability to firefight (see positive (4) above).

Overall: While the team is still a bit in its nascency and need to work on things like marketing, like you said, there's just a natural buzz around privacy coins right now that the rising tide could float all boats. With a pretty strong community (willing to write script and help with the fixes) and an actual app in the market, I think it's got some potential to move up. While it's already experienced some significant gains this year (I took a really speculative investment back in early October when it was still around 80 cents), it could potentially still be a worthy gamble to multiple a few more times before 2018 is up (assuming the entire cryptomarket doesn't enter cryptofreeze due to issues around tether or bitconnect blowing up the sector). But again not investment advice, just some of my thoughts.

Lastly, just wanted to say love your videos on Youtube, really informative, and I love your sometimes "break from the norm" perspective that allows me to more critically and rationally think about cryptoinvesting. Keep it up!!

Thank you for all that information on NAV. I appreciate your contributions (they add value to the thread) so have thrown you an upvote. Not worth much (for now), but I like comments like these as they help others quite a bit. Hope you stick around for future and thank you for the kind words about my videos!

Well, if I may I would like to join the discussion. All 8 listed above are good privacy coins, but do not forget about Cloak coin as well, old good established project, just small comunity and dev it seems its one man show.

But in general if we speak about what coins to buy and hold, I would look at more early entering for better ROI. To buy dash today is 1 thing and to buy 1 year ago is another thing. I entered Dash at 40$ very nice profits. I am holder investor and boy its paying out for me.

And why not to pay your attention on some undervalued coins, which have high potential good technology and community support . Another great choice is DeepOnion - very good privacy coin, I think one of the best out there. There are a lot of new features is planned for 2018, so the price can easily make x2 or x3. Their dev team is getting larger. It's TOR network is one the strongest. They have largest number of TOR nodes so it is really untracable. They are developing new features like Deepvault online portal, Deepsend (similiar tech like Monero) and they are POS so anyone can profit while holding.
And, by the way, Onion still has running Airdrop campaign, which can boost your wallet by 5% weekly! Which, you must agree with me is always a nice bonus!
People are discovering it lately, Kucoin listed them and now Binance is annouced. Worth taking a look 4 sure.
Always DYOR I am not investment advisor, but it is clear shot from my standpoint of view.

I used to hold this coin back in September, but then sold them all. I definitely SALTy right now haha

Anyways, I've heard that the reason for the Verge pump is because of McAfee plus Verge's Wraith protocol. Maybe part of the reason for the initial pump was because Verge was very undervalued, and then the remainder of the pump was because other people FOMO'ed into XVG?

In effect, what you are doing is betting an all or nothing on NAV, because if NAV doesn't moon even 10x, it'll just languish in obscurity and NAV just becomes an opportunity cost at best. I'm guessing you are already invested in NAV, but did you ask yourself these three questions....

  1. Is NAV undervalued?
  2. Will McAfee shill for NAV? Will the media shill for NAV (like they are doing for Verge right now)?
  3. Does NAV have a major update or technological advantage? Is their wallet software nice to use?

I know that was five questions, but final question if all the above is yes: will it moon and when?

P.S. This is probably an unfounded rumor, but I heard Verge was originally a fork off Dogecoin XD

Well be mindful of the fact that this particular analysis was not fundamental at all. As long as it isn't a scam coin (which it isn't in my opinion), it was included. This particular investment is based on two principles:

  1. Reversion to mean (underperforming the rest of small cap privacy coins in short-term, ultimately should catch up).
  2. A rising tide raises all boats (privacy coins are doing well hence NAV will do well).

Combine those factors with the fact that NAV is getting more buzz than ZEN recently (from what I have seen) and it seems ripe for a pump. I don't care if McAfee shills for NAV - he doesn't need to for it to pump. It won't pump like Verge did without outside help like that, but I don't ever invest expecting a 40x return - that's insane.

The other two questions you asked are fundamental in nature. This is more of a trading bet than investing - as such, those two questions are irrelevant (aside from strengthening the bet). Yes, compared to the mean for the group, NAV is undervalued (although there are other metrics that are better measures of this, no one looks at them). I hope that makes sense of it for you - in short, it wouldn't matter if their development team didn't exist for this particular trade (hence why I call it a bet / gamble with some edge).

P.S: Don't be salty - it's only just now starting to recover in BTC value.

How about DentaCoin as the next big altcoin? It secures the dentistry industry using the power of the blockchain. Over the last 24 hours its value has soared by over 100%. It is now number 99 in the coinmarketcap charts by market cap - valued at a cool $164M.

BIG....HUGE.....ENORMOUS....BUBBLE....ANYONE?

Surely, this cannot go on for much longer? The ridiculousness is almost off the Richter scale. We must be getting very close to "peak crazy"?

When this market goes supernova, we'll probably be able to see the blast from space!?

I am not looking forward to that day, but I fear that it is very close to hand.

Interesting video, very simple way to look at it but in this space sometimes under-complexing things can be the best way to look at general trends and possible opportunities for high returns. I think between now and tax time (April) that privacy coins are going to be especially "hot" coins in the market, so overall your outlook is likely quite accurate in general, and the fact that NAV is still at not only a low market cap, but also a low coin cost (few dollars) it many very well see some large moves in the coming months (as not only is privacy coins a big trend right now, but so is low cost coins (cents/dollars) like RDD, SC and alike). I also think you pointed it out correctly that these moves have less to do with logic or reality and more to do with trends and perception, which really is an important point to hit home with in this regard. I may chuck some pocket change at NAV at some point before the New Year for shits-and-giggles.

Kind of interesting that 'low cost' coins are even a thing given the fact price doesn't mean anything (market cap does), but it's a mistake made over and over in the stock market so I'm not surprised to see it happen in this space as well.

I think you kinda missed the point, verge pumped so much because of it's high coin count and low pricing, especially if you consider the possible jumps below 100 sat.That's why doge can also easily pumped to x3 x5 even x10 in a matter of days.

From what I'm observing(I may be biased) people are looking for PoS coins, becuse of all the "energy waste" posts on social platforms, news etc. So if I were to guess what kind of coin has that potential next, it'd be high coin count, low market cap, PoS coin.

Now being a random coin is also not enough, it needs to stand out, in some way or the other, for Verge it was the privacy, also as far as I'm hearing, their community is also quite friendly and supportive. Community what "pumped" raiblocks for example.

I bet my money on ECC, stuck on one exchange, under heavy development, active community.

NAV has been standing out lately - look around, there is buzz for it just because of the nonsense with Verge. I don't buy into the whole 'low cost' deal either - it shouldn't make a substantial difference as market cap is all that matters. In the end, it'll take the same level of capital to attract people in. Yes, we may see a few extra people in the same way a stock split causes more individuals to invest in a stock despite no value difference, but in reality it should have a limited effect.

Picking the next "Verge" feels like playing roulette. This kind of speculation is akin to looking at which numbers have hit recently, and then "logically" deducing that any number not already on the board somehow has a better chance of being selected, despite the odds not changing at all.

You are right to call it a speculative bet, but then in this market, what isn't? On that note, I'm thinking to do something similar to your privacy coin gamble, however, instead of focusing on privacy coins, I'm going to go with new coins (not ICOs since I'm in the US). Kind of like placing a bet on Black 24, come on 1:36 odds, daddy needs a lambo that he can take pictures in front of but never drive!

Ps. Thanks for sharing your opinion / tactics. Even if I don't follow them, I find them helpful in navigating my own thoughts on the crypto market.

I think part every diversified portfolio needs some speculation. In comparison to other speculative plays this one is 'safer' 1. good solid fundamentals 2. undervalued inc omparison 3. specs better than verge

Best of luck with your bets! I don't expect to actually see Verge like return, but even 2x is insane (despite what some people might say).