Investing in cryptocurrency can be extremely difficult. There are thousands of coins to choose from and lots of noise about which cryptos are best.
You can try and filter through the noise by doing a little research, checking out crypto Twitter, Reddit, Telegram, and other media sites and resources, but in the end, you’ll probably come away even more confused.
So, what’s the best approach to investing in crypto?
While it’s hard to say for sure, I found that there are four primary things to dive into and understand about any particular cryptocurrency you want to invest in:
- Does it solve a hair-on-fire problem?
- Does it have a stable vision and purpose?
- Is its price maintaining or building a healthy market structure?
- Is it showing progress in terms of development and adoption?
These critical questions, among others, are what I apply to any crypto investment and today I’ll be applying them to Kyber Network (KNC).
Kyber Network (KNC) - Does it solve a hair-on-fire problem?
“Kyber is an on-chain liquidity protocol that aggregates liquidity from a wide range of reserves, powering instant and secure token exchange in any decentralized application.” – Kyber Network
The Kyber Network cryptocurrency is one crypto in which I am extremely excited about because it’s an on-chain liquidity protocol that enables decentralized token swaps between Ethereum (ETH), Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), and other ERC-20 tokens.
The protocol can be easily integrated into any application to facilitate the seamless and instant exchange of value between all parties in the ecosystem. Developers can take Kyber’s protocol and build various financial dapps including instant token swap services, ERC-20 payment gateways, exchanges and trading integrations, decentralized finance (DeFi) dapps, and more.
Therefore, right off the bat, you know that Kyber Network is solving a hair-on-fire problem by enabling the decentralized exchange of tokens.
For instance, with Kyber, users are presented with a decentralized alternative to centralized exchanges and this a big deal for a number of reasons:
- Centralized exchanges require users to submit identifying know-your-customer (KYC) information. This identifying information could get hacked and put users at risk, or it can simply be shared with governments for tax purposes.
- Centralized exchanges require users to send crypto to the exchange. Therefore, users no longer have control of their private keys and their crypto can be stolen if the exchange gets hacked.
- Centralized exchanges often have deposit, withdrawal, and trading fees which make exchanging tokens expensive.
- Sending crypto to and from a centralized exchange takes time and is not a simple and seamless experience.
All in all, Kyber Network solves all of these serious problems in which many users experience with centralized exchanges.
Therefore, Kyber Network gets a check for the first requirement for being a good crypto to invest in.
Kyber Network (KNC) - Vision and Purpose
In order for a cryptocurrency or any company to succeed over the long-term, it must have a stable vision and purpose. If it does not, it will fail to recover from market downturns and fade away into oblivion through time.
To provide an example, twenty years ago during the dot com boom, investors and everyday people were throwing money at any company with ‘.com’ in its name. People were blinded by greed and euphoria and invested in many startups with no stable vision and purpose.
Then, the bubble popped and everything came crashing down. Even successful startups with a clear vision and purpose suffered major losses.
Amazon suffered a -94% loss, going from $106 per share to $6 in less than 2 years.
The same happened to Adobe, which suffered a -77% loss, going from $40 per share to $9.
Apple went from $5 to $1. That’s a -80% loss.
The list goes on.
The point is, even though the aforementioned companies were making great products at the time, they were all negatively affected by the massive market crash.
However, we all know what happened next. Companies with a true vision, strong purpose, and great products passed the heavy stress test of the market. They eventually became far more valuable than they were in the dot com boom and stood the test of time.
As for companies with no stable vision or purpose, they couldn’t recover as they had nothing going for them after the hype subsided.
The cryptocurrency market has experienced a similar market crash which started at the end of 2017, lasted throughout 2018, and is still suffering from it today at the end of 2019.
In these trying times, only projects with a solid vision and purpose will survive. Crypto’s with a use case, growing adoption, active development, and a vision for the future.
Fortunately for Kyber Network, the project has everything going for it.
Kyber Network, as it stands today, already has a purpose and is being used to exchange ETH and ERC-20 tokens in a decentralized manner every day (more on this later).
As for Kyber Network’s vision, the project is evaluating various cross-chain solutions to provide seamless token swaps between Bitcoin and other non-Ethereum network tokens.
In doing this, Kyber Network has a vision to connect the fragmented tokenized world by enabling instant and seamless transactions between platforms, ecosystems and other use cases.
All in all, Kyber Network is currently laying the foundation for cryptocurrency payment processors, decentralized exchanges, instant token exchange, and more advanced applications for the future.
Therefore, I would say Kyber Network has a stable vision and purpose.
Kyber Network (KNC) - Price Action and Market Structure
The next thing a crypto must have in order to be considered a good investment is its price action. More specifically, is it maintaining or at least building a strong market structure?
To put it simply, the market structure in regards to price action is the macro price action of an underlying asset.
A strong market structure is when an asset is trading and holding above major macro levels of support. It becomes even stronger when the price makes higher lows and is pushing upwards past previous levels of resistance.
Weak market structure is when an asset has broken through and is trading below major macro levels of support. If the asset fails to break above key price levels and continues to make new lows, that shows incredible weakness in the underlying asset.
So, how does Kyber Network (KNC) fair in regards to price action and market structure?
The chart above shows Kyber Network’s entire 2+ year price history on a log scale.
KNC reached its peak price of $5.74 on January 9, 2018. It has since crashed (along with the rest of the crypto market), eventually reaching a low of $0.117 on December 14, 2018.
Now, highlighted in the chart above, you can see that the price of KNC made a double bottom formation before pumping up to near $0.40. This effectively showed that the bottom was in and that KNC was ready to start building a proper market structure.
Since the bottoming formation, the price of KNC has managed to stay range-bound mainly between $0.15 and $0.25. The fact that KNC is holding above its lows and maintaining a fairly steady price, shows that Kyber Network is building a strong market structure at these levels.
If KNC manages to hold above these levels and push even higher to create higher lows, then the price will become very bullish.
So, for now, I would say that KNC’s price action is showing signs of strength and that buying at these levels is a good investment for the long-term.
Kyber Network (KNC) - Progress and Adoption
Perhaps the most important factor to consider when investing in a cryptocurrency is its level of progress and adoption.
Just like the other investment factors laid out in this article, Kyber Network dominates this area too with checkmarks across the board.
Kyber Network Stats
Kyber Network continues to experience growth month after month and its overall growth is trending upwards. In Kyber’s most recent month of November, the network hit and surpassed $400 million total volume on Kyber, carried out the 500,000th trade on the network, and hit a daily all-time high volume of $7.33 million.
It’s quite obvious that Kyber is being heavily adopted and its level of adoption is trending up:
- Source
As seen from the charts above, volumes continued their strong growth into November with a 47% increase in USD and a 62% increase in ETH terms.
In addition to the growth of Kyber Network volumes, the Kyber Network ecosystem is growing as well. There are new integrations, new reserves, new tokens, and new tools to onboard new users.
See below, a list of Kyber Network’s top 10 integrations where users can instantly and securely swap tokens for one another in a decentralized manner:
In addition to these top 10 integrations, Kyber Network features:
37 End User Token Swaps - Wallets that allow users to swap tokens without leaving the wallet application.
22 Decentralized Payments Services - Services allowing vendors to accept payments in a wide range of tokens while receiving in DAI, ETH, or any token you prefer.
3 Exchanges and Trading Platforms - Which share or source for liquidity using Kyber, and write arbitrage programs that take advantage of market inefficiencies.
18 Decentralized Finance Applications - Dapps enabling users to seamlessly liquidate assets or rebalance token portfolios in a single transaction.
30+ Reserves - These provide liquidity for Kyber-integrated applications.
See all of Kyber Network's integrations in the image below:
While all of the above integrations are very impressive from an adoption standpoint, what’s even more impressive is that half the time, the user doesn’t even know they are using Kyber services.
The Kyber Network protocol integrates so well and provides such a seamless experience for instantly exchanging tokens that by the time a user swaps tokens, they don’t even realize what happened in the backend with Kyber.
This is exactly how exchanging cryptos should be and is a key attribute for mass adoption.
Contributing to crypto mass adoption is Kyber Network’s integration with MyEtherWallet (MEW), which is a well-known Ethereum wallet platform with more than 4 million web visits on average each month.
The Kyber-MEW integration enables users to instantly swap more than 70 different cryptocurrencies from directly within the MEW wallet. The interface is specifically designed to ensure non-technical newcomers can easily swap tokens.
All in all, Kyber Network has experienced a great level of adoption thus far and it’s only trending upwards.
As for progress, Kyber Network continues to be integrated into new wallets, dapps, and services and the team behind Kyber is actively researching and developing the protocol to provide seamless token swaps between Bitcoin and other non-Ethereum network tokens.
Therefore, the future looks bright for Kyber in terms of progress and adoption.
Conclusion
After doing a deep dive into Kyber Network and analyzing various factors for whether or not it’s a good investment, I can confidently say that Kyber (KNC) is, in fact, a good investment.
Kyber is solving a hair-on-fire problem right now in the crypto space by enabling people to seamlessly, instantly, and securely swap their crypto tokens in a decentralized manner without any trusted third parties.
Not only is Kyber solving a critical problem right now, but it has a solid vision, it has adoption, and is progressing towards its goal of connecting the fragmented tokenized world by enabling instant and seamless transactions between platforms, ecosystems and other use cases.
On top of all that, Kyber’s (KNC) price action is looking solid as it builds a strong market structure that will support long-term sustained growth.
That being said, Kyber Network (KNC) is an extremely good investment right now.
What do you think about Kyber Network (KNC)? Do you think this project has what it takes to rise to the top?
Let me know what you think in the comment section below.
