What is Ampleforth?
Ampleforth (AMPL) is a cryptocurrency that runs on top of the ethereum blockchain making it an ERC-20 token. Ampleforth is a non correlated asset, meaning that it is not backed by fiat currency or any other asset and aims to be unaffected by the price movement of other cryptocurrencies and especially bitcoin (BTC), which often dictates the alt coins' price action.
Two features of AMPL make it stand out compared to other cryptocurrencies, its elastic supply and its non dilutive nature. Let's try to explain these two in simple terms. Elastic supply means that we can add or remove tokens from the supply, just like fiat currencies but in contrast to bitcoin which will reach a maximum of 21 million tokens and then production will stop. By being non dilutive, AMPL holders own always the same percentage of the total supply no matter how many tokens are added or removed. This is achieved with the rebase mechanism.
What is rebase?
Ampleforth's target price is 1$ and to keep the price as close to that as possible the rebase mechanism is used. Simply put, rebase is a daily function that increases the tokens in ALL wallets containing AMPL if the price is above 1.06$ and decreases the number of tokens when the price is below 0.96$. Between 1.06$ and 0.96$ no change is occurred. Since these token adjustments happen on all wallets, the holders' share of the supply remains exactly the same.
The logic behind this mechanism is that when the price increases above 1.06$, holders possess more tokens and are incentivised to sell bringing the price down. On the other hand, when the price is low and tokens are removed from every wallet, traders can acquire a bigger share of the total supply cheaper, thus leading to an increase in price.
How to get it and where to store it?
You can get AMPL from decentralized exchanges like Uniswap by trading it with ETH, USDC etc, or by buying/trading it from exchanges like KuCoin, Bitfinex and others.
As mentioned, AMPL is an ERC-20 token so it can be stored in any wallet that supports these assets. Examples of hardware wallets supporting it are ledger and trezor, while software wallets you can use are atomic, trust, enjin and many more.
Can you stake AMPL?
Yes! Staking AMPL is possible but it is a more advanced topic and is beyond the purpose of this article. However, to give you an idea of it, you must provide liquidity of AMPL paired with ethereum(ETH) or usd coin(USDC) on Uniswap, Balancer or Sushiswap at the time of writing this article. After that you must deposit the liquidity pool tokens you previously got, at Geyser, Ampleforth's incentive project to provide liquidity, and get AMPL rewards based on the amount and the time you stake.
Thank you for reading!
