Amidst all the market hype in crypto, where we have currency like Ethereum which at times has seemed to prove itself one of the most volatile currencies to ever exist, I want to shine light on a cryptocurrency that I think has a lot of potential for growth not only in market cap, but also in the actual project behind it. There's hundreds of garbage coins that have absolutely no projects backing them whatsoever with low market caps. This is not one of those coins.
Before I begin, I must disclose the following because it's obviously relevant and you need to know this as a potential investor who is, by reading this article (and many others), doing your due diligence.
1. I own shares of Ubiq ($UBQ)
2. I am not trying to "hype up" Ubiq
3. This article is intended to give you an overview of the Ubiq project and hopefully give you some pieces of information to make your own educated decision about whether or not Ubiq is right for you to invest in/if it's undervalued/overvalued/etc.
Disclaimer: This is not investment advice and you assume all risk and responsibility for the investing decisions you make with real capital.
Current Ubiq Statistics as of 6/23/2017
Market Cap - ~$85M
Price - $2.27
Primary Exchange - Bittrex
Overview
Ubiq is an Ethereum fork, much like Ethereum Classic. There are several other Ethereum fork type cryptos that are hardly worth mentioning, but the 2 primary forks of the Ethereum blockchain are UBQ and ETC.
It is most easily described as a stable, enterprise-ready build of the Ethereum blockchain. Ethereum is an innovative technology that is always changing and thus is always in an "alpha stage". This is where the majority of the forward technology is developed. However, this makes it extremely risky for a global enterprise solution because it contains bugs and susceptibilities that cost a lot of money to fix and then update. (Think: A stable OS that has been tested and had the kinks worked out vs. A brand new OS that is still being beta tested by secondary developers.)
So for large companies who are looking for an "enterprise-ready" platform to build applications on, this is where Ubiq's value really shines through. Ubiq's developers can literally look at the things Ethereum has implemented and decide whether or not a feature has been vetted and useful enough to be worth adding to the Ubiq blockchain.
When it comes to raw capital, who do you think is going to have more money to pour into application development? Consumers or businesses? Obviously, businesses are going have the best development teams and most capital to really dump into application development which will contribute to the growth of the crypto asset over time.
Community
There are just over 3000 members in the Ubiq Slack. The Ethereum Classic Slack has closer to 5000 members, yet it has a market cap of 1.87 Billion. This is roughly 22 times the market cap of Ubiq.
Assets
Ubiq is the only Ethereum type cryptocurrency that has had assets built on top of it.
Monetary Policy
Ubiq is the only Ethereum fork with an implemented monetary policy. This means block rewards start out at 8 UBQ and decrease by 1 UBQ yearly until it reaches a minimum of 1 UBQ per block. This essentially causes a negative logarithmic inflation rate year over year.
Development Team
The Development team is literally the single most important factor in determining the value of a project/company. If your development/management team is garbage, your company or project will most likely not be worth much or move forward in any significant way. The opposite is also true. Warren Buffet looks for companies to invest in that are not only undervalued on the books, but also have phenomenal management at the top running the company.
Ubiq's development team, in my opinion, has the best long term vision for blockchain out of any other blockchain. The reason? They're focusing on an Enterprise solution as I mentioned above. The Ubiq dev team attended three AI Fintech conferences in Vancouver, Toronto, and Lagos, Nigeria in which global banks, private equity firms, venture capitalists, and governments from around the world also attended. Who was absent from these conferences? The Ethereum Enterprise development team.
What is also particularly different about the Ubiq development team is that the coins that they personally own had to be obtained by mining the coins themselves or purchasing them on Bittrex. There was no premine. This means that the team literally has a vested interest in their project succeeding, as they had to front all the money and resources to gain that vested stake in the projects asset. You don't see this in a lot of other crypto assets. This shows that the development team is more interested in building the business rather than "getting rich quickly."
Potential Return for Average Investor
Total Potential Loss: 100% - If you invest $100 or $1000 or even $1,000,000 you cannot possibly lose more than you invest as long as you're not trading on margin. And even if you do trade on margin, you'll get margin called before you lose all your money.
Total Potential Gain: 100+% - Most people who trade in the stock market are lucky to beat the S&P 500 and get 7-9% on their money in a year's time. If you're really good, you might be able to do 20-25%. Because we're so early in the game with cryptocurrencies, it's extremely easy to see a 100% return in a short period of time. And as we've seen over the past year, if you bought into good crypto asset projects about a year ago, some people saw returns on their money much greater than 2000%. This provides great opportunity for the average person who may not make a lot of money at their job and is doing their best to save for the future and become financially well-off.
While this does provide great opportunity, it also poses a great risk, and that is why I always suggest doing your extensive due diligence before investing in any crypto asset. You can just as easily lose half your money as you can doubling it.
Conclusion
The single most important factor for me personally investing in Ubiq, is the development team. I think this team has huge plans for this project and will continue to grow as we see more and more people and businesses coming into the crypto asset space. For this level of potential, I think the rewards far outweigh the risks, with a market cap that is 22 times less than Ethereum Classic.
I just want to make you aware of Ubiq and the potential that it has so you can benefit from the monetary gains it could bring in the future. For me, this is a long term hold, and I do not plan to sell Ubiq anytime soon regardless of price movement.
If you want to follow the team and keep up to date on Ubiq news and development here are some sources to help in your research.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1763606.0
https://ubiqsmart.com/
https://twitter.com/ubiqsmart?lang=en
https://ubiqsmart.slack.com/