Why Algorand? The Hibernating Giant
Welcome to Crypto Pickle Tickle, in this post I'll be talking about my personal favourite altcoin and why I believe in it.
Here’s the TLCBCBAR (Too Long, Clicked But Can’t Be Assed Reading)
WHY ALGO? Here’s 5 nice and simple bullet points for your Pickle Tickling needs.
- Large but FINITE SUPPLY for a steady, long-term investment *cough* unlike a certain Shiba we all know.
- Secure and smart with rapid, guaranteed transaction in seconds.
- Minimum fees, 2nd lowest to NANO (which literally has none.)
- Interest from government and banking/financial institutions. They have a solid foundation for ‘stablecoins,’ for example: USDT and USDC, and a new Brazilian coin, BRZ.
- PURE Proof of Stake – this means you earn interest and there’s no requirement to 'lock' tokens in order to do so, unlike Cosmos, Cardano and the upcoming ETH2.0 update. You can deposit, withdraw and trade freely while maintaining the APY - so your wallet’s juicy token-ticker isn’t interrupted. Not that I like to sit and watch those go up or anything…
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… Moving on ?? You still here? Okay… Details? Okay...
WHY IS IT A GOOD INVESTMENT?
Algorand’s vision of becoming the first fully decentralised economy has been delicately outlined by founder Silvio Micali (winner of multiple awards in computer science and cryptography, including the Turing award – see wiki here) and a fully backed team at MIT.
The vision will take years in the making - nine more years, if you want specifics. For the past four years, Algorand has proven its security and scalability time and time again. The commitment to its goal brings more developers flooding to the network, which shows how much faith is being shifted into the technology; Ethereum is expensive right now and nobody knows for certain the future of the platform during or after the updates in the coming years (no matter how much they claim they do.)
Just to clarify, I love ETH and I’m inspired by everything it has done and is doing; even though it sounds like I’m taking apart a Gameboy and judging it in comparison to a Switch. Anyway…
By 2030, every ALGO token is planned to be in circulation, and the governance voting system of the network will be available to every single person who holds a balance of 1 ALGO. The beautiful thing about this system is simple.
It doesn’t matter whether your balance is 1 ALGO or 49,309,241.095. Everyone’s vote is the same and control is distributed fairly.
“Fairly” means by random selection, which gives the added bonus of making it hard for anyone with a malicious intent to specify a target.
How is this different?
The usual Proof of Stake algorithms require you to not only lock your balance for a certain amount of time, but they will never truly be decentralised; holders of more coins and/or a longer “coin age” (time spent gathering dust flavoured APY) - will always have the power swung in their favour in some way, shape, or technologically jargonized form.
The Giant Rumbles In Its Slumber…
I previously mentioned ‘stablecoins’ and I plan to do a further write-up about them, but just for now: why are they important?
Government and financial institutions can’t take volatile crypto seriously, and if it carries on this way, consumers won’t either. Imagine trying to plan your weekly shop around the crypto market; running to the store during a spike at 3am so you can buy bread and milk, then by the time you get there you can only afford one or the other, because now the market is down 20%...
Stablecoins fix this problem of volatility by tying themselves to the value of fiat or other physical objects like gold or silver. Some now offer APY, like DAI which reflects the price of USD (and probably offers better interest than most central banks.)
What’s this got to do with Algorand?
Other than the fact that these coins are being literally built on it? Let’s see…
Algorand is a member of the Digital Monetary Institute. (And the only crypto that’s ever come close.) Don’t know them? I didn’t either – turns out they are one of the trains pushing forth a secured future for digital money. Choo-choo - no big deal. More info here.
A few other members of the Institute, which you’ve probably never heard of…
Paypal…
Amazon…
MasterCard…
Yeah, just some losers. To be honest – it’s really nice of Algorand to join a club full of unknown, absolutely not multi-billion dollar corporations and help to boost their status a bit. Exceptional charity work. If that doesn’t sell the project to you, I just don’t know what will.
So like, how much are they paying you for this?
Good point. There are some downsides, and definitely some reasons that the giant may just - never wake.
- Algorand doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, does it? Ethereum, Bitcoin, or any other big name that can handle substantial blockchain improvements has the potential to leave Algorand for dead. It’s a sad truth, but, in money, popularity can find more success than technology.
- People have been recently questioning why the Algorand Foundation is putting coins into supply at a quicker rate, and buyers are getting fed up; believing that the token price is being kept down deliberately.
- Staking rewards are not as high as some other projects, and are only likely to decrease as we get closer to 2030.
But this project has always been open about its long term plans, and already has a seat at some of the most powerful tables. How long before the giant wakes? And, when it does, will it just pick its nose and go back for the long nap? Let me know what you think in the comments!
If you are interested in learning more about Algorand, I urge you to visit their website and delve into all the information you desire!
Algorand
And if you feel like browsing the community then join the subreddit. The members are super 'noob-friendly' and their helpfulness inspired me to write this blog. Hope to see you there, Algonaut!
AlgorandOfficial - Reddit
And lastly, to those looking to take the leap and become HODLers: COINBASE and other exchanges are great and all, but make sure to move your ALGO to the official ALGO wallet, or at the very least a non-custodial wallet like EXODUS (not only is it much safer, but you’ll be given a fairer price on your Annual Percentage Yield.)
Thanks for reading! Happy browsing, I hope all your pickles get tickled, if not by this post then by the other wonderful content on Publish0x.
JalapenioJoy
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