Curious, what are your longer term projections and potential point of ‘maxing out’ on Amp’s value?
So that’s almost an impossible question to answer, but I love a good challenge so let me try to tackle it. Disclaimer: obviously most of this is just hypothesizing and brainfarting.
The first thing to understand before anything else is that Amp is a collateral token. This means its marketcap will not merely signify value of investment capital in the project but also critically refer to the total value of collateral available to the Flexa payment protocol (though that amount will by nature always be less than the total marketcap).
Therefore we can look to several things such as general credit/debit card transaction volume/value as well as digital payments transaction value as a guide for how much value Flexa’s collateral (Amp) — and by extension overall marketcap value — should be worth at any given time. Visa alone has an estimated credit and debit transaction volume of about $30 billion daily. That’s just Visa. MasterCard would add another $10 billion daily to the total. Combined that would be nearly $15 trillion a year. According to certain sources payment transactions that are specifically digital amount to about $1.3 trillion in value a year. Strictly bitcoin transactions amount to about $3 trillion a year.
Because Amp is designed to be “flexible,” available to collateralize any asset transfer regardless of nature (though principally bridging digital assets to real world goods/applications), it’s safest to assume the total value of collateral at any given time would need to take into account both real world transaction volume as well as digital transaction value, including bitcoin txns as well as the txns of other crypto/digital assets. And while the $15 trillion a year includes credit transactions, which arguably is not exactly how Flexa is being utilized at the moment, consider the following remarkable data point: Visa’s 2020 annual debit volume was greater than its credit volume by nearly 50%, and that was a 20% increase in difference from the previous year ending in 2019 (Visa’s debit volume alone is nearly $7 trillion annually or roughly a little over $18 billion daily). In any case, for simplicity sake and to err on the side of [reasonably bullish] reality, let’s just go with the combined total (credit and debit, MasterCard included, but excluding exclusively btc and digital payments txns for now) of $15 trillion annually and $30 billion daily.
One more important data point for this admittedly haphazard analysis (as, among other things, I will for now ignore other potential use cases for collateralization that Amp [with or without Flexa] could one day be involved with such as securing more exotic/alternative/sizable asset transfers/transactions like real estate and complex loans). The total value or marketcap of the entire cryptosphere. It currently sits at around $2.5 trillion with bitcoin alone averaging just over $1 trillion. This data point is important because, presumably, crypto (or some form of it) will be the preferred currency utilized for Flexa/Amp collateralized transactions. Now consider that the current $2.5 trillion is expected to grow tremendously — actually, tremendously doesn’t quite describe it as the amount of growth, well, let’s put it this way ... it’ll either blow your mind to smithereens or you’ll immediately dismiss me as a lying charlatan; as alluded to in my most recent post, where institutional adoption has finally truly begun thanks to the organizing and galvanizing regulatory drive (led by the SEC first and next the actual federal government), and if the SP 500 having a total current value around $40 trillion is any indication, the crypto market can and will one day see a total combined value in the tens of trillions, and actually most likely even much much more, as in the hundreds of trillions not excluding even 1 quadrillion dollars (the total value of “money” in the world, based on some estimates, is in the quadrillions, and consider how the legacy markets have grown at least 2x every dozen years or so).
Ok ... with all that out of the way, now the fun part. I’ll add general time frames for reference (but it will probably still get messy and confusing). In the next 5 years, Amp’s total marketcap can realistically reach $1 trillion. Most definitely within 10 years (excluding the possibility of any black swan events for the world in general, crypto more specifically, and/or Flexa/Amp exclusively). Why $1 trillion? Well remember the aforementioned data regarding transaction volumes/values in a given day/year, as well as the projected marketcap of crypto broadly speaking. Also quickly consider that, of the circulating supply, not all Amp will necessarily be staked, so a marketcap of $1 trillion will not mean a total collateral value of $1 trillion but say around half less. Now in 5 years $1 trillion would equate to Amp at an average price of $15-18, considering an additional at least 12 billion or so will have been added to the circulating supply making it at least 60 billion. If 10 years is the time frame for a $1 trillion marketcap target, an additional 25 billion or so will have been added making the circulating supply around 70 billion; so in that case Amp could be trading at a little under $15. If someone were to be a little more restrained in their bullishness for Amp for the next 5 years, a $200-500 billion marketcap may feel a little more realistic, giving Amp an average price of about $5-6. (Someone even more conservative could target this price and corresponding marketcap in a 10 year timeframe.)
One thing I can almost guarantee, having written all of the above, is in 5 years Amp will in all likelihood have reached at least $2 with a marketcap of about $120 billion and a circulating supply of about 60 billion. For an investor, this would be the most conservative, realistic, minimum target in a 5 year timeframe — and in all honesty, to me this would signal the Amp project as having essentially failed.
But since you asked for “longer term” with the curious phrase “maxing out,” I’ll add the following. Within 25 years, the total supply will be fully circulating at about 100 billion; though, if you can imagine, with 6 more halvening cycles, bitcoin should have a market cap well over $100 trillion by then — like half a quadrillion. Seriously. And the entire crypto market cap could be easily in the hundreds of trillions — or actually more like one full quadrillion. This would be the reality of crypto essentially accomplishing its one in a quadrillion moonshot. And Amp, with its 100 billion circulating supply will definitely have surpassed a $1 trillion marketcap (by necessity as the protocol would fail if the total collateral value is not adequately greater than the minimum expected daily total transaction volume/value), giving it a minimum, extremely conservative value of $10; *a more realistic projection would give Amp’s marketcap a reasonable value of at least $10 trillion, which would put Amp at about $100 per token**.
So that’s my “long term maxing out projection” answer. In 25 years, with a circulating supply of 100 billion, Amp’s marketcap could realistically be worth at least $10 trillion with a single token trading at no less than $100.
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“Proof of work”
Here’s my grossly oversimplified calculation logic ...
Consider the general current marketcap of the SP 500 ($40 trillion), and use it as a legacy parallel to crypto’s current marketcap ($2.5 trillion).
Consider in 25 years the SP 500 equaling over $100 trillion, as it has and could again 10x in 25 years. Likewise, the crypto marketcap led by bitcoin [sort of] has and [sort of] can again several hundred x in 25 years (“sort of”, because crypto is less than 25 years old, but has now 3 data points over about a 10 year period where it has consistently/consecutively increased at least 100x each time). So also consider the total crypto marketcap equaling $1 quadrillion in 25 years. (Yes it would have flipped the SP, not impossible nor a big deal).
Consider the total transaction volume/value for major legacy payment companies like Visa and MasterCard ($15 trillion annually, $40 billion daily).
Consider that potentially a little more than half but never 100% of Amp’s total marketcap will be staked. Also consider that presumably the total collateral value of staked Amp will likely have to be significantly greater than the expected daily total transaction value, so say 10x.
If in 25 years, total crypto marketcap is $1 quadrillion, roughly divide by 3 (because currently Visa and MasterCard’s worldwide annual transaction volume is about 1/3 the value of the SP 500’s marketcap. Now take that number (~$300 trillion) and divide by 365 to calculate the rough estimated daily crypto/digital transaction volume/value. About $900 billion. Now assume that the protocol will want total collateral value to be at least 10x the estimated daily transaction value. So $9 trillion. Now roughly multiply by 2 for good measure, considering not all circulating Amp will be staked for collateral (currently a little more than half of CS is staked). About $18 trillion. Finally, considering Flexa/Amp will likely not be the sole network powering crypto/digital transactions with its unique collateralization protocol (sorry maxis), divide roughly by 2. ~$10 trillion marketcap (where 1 Amp token equals $100 considering the total circulating supply of 100 billion). Whew.
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**Bonus for the low vol-whitepaper pundits*
Considering bitcoin started out for all intents and purposes under $1 and has meaningfully surpassed $60k about 10 years later on its journey targeting perhaps $30 million in 25 years (so let’s say in the next 10 years bitcoin could hit $15 million), the fact that Amp would reach [only] $100 from an all time low of under 1/10 of a penny in the same time frame kind of does prove Amp’s white paper claim that it does function as relatively “low-volatility collateral.” Relatively. (Read with slight touch of sarcasm.)
In all seriousness, if you read the whitepaper, it becomes crystal clear low vol is referenced explicitly in the context of preventing sudden/steep price drops, that’s drops with a d, as in decreasing, as in low vol works to prevent nasty decreases, naturally, obviously ... not work against price increases no matter how sudden or steep (why would that thought even cross your mind) — because the whole point of collateral is for it to be able to guarantee value, therefore collateral value must always be equal to but in reality actually always greater than the transaction. One more time because I already know people will still not get it. Price goes up, slowly, suddenly, a little, a lot, doesn’t matter, price goes up is great, great, great I tell you, only great, it’s what Flexa/Amp wants — no conspiracy, no plot to destroy Amp, no manipulated dumping — because price increase means collateral happens to be worth more and can guarantee more and Flexa wins. What cannot happen is, if, after the increase, price drops suddenly, quickly, steeply, dramatically, this is bad, decreasing is bad, down is bad, not what Flexa wants, never, because that means the collateral value will drop and therefore may dangerously fail to guarantee network txns, which is the whole point, and Flexa loses. So again, low vol is meant to explicitly defend against dramatic downsides, not prevent dramatic upsides. If we get any style of upside (which is only a good thing because collateral is worth more, yay), you better believe the tokenomics will not want the price to suddenly drop, thereby potentially threatening the security and integrity of the network. And if you are going to ask again why then did and does the price drop dramatically these past few months every time we see an increase ... for the 1 quadrillionth time, it’s because the token and network are literally new; like Amp barely had its 1 year old birthday. Pre adoption people. Barely half of the total supply is in circulation. Merchants are just now starting to get on boarded. Exchange volumes are unsurprisingly coy and inconsistent. Volatility is par for the course for any project legacy or otherwise (but especially crypto) in its earliest phase. The beautiful thing and I expect why many of us chose Amp (I hope) in the first place is because once we finally get that rocket launch to where the marketcap currently deserves to be (add a 0 to our current total), expect less nasty corrections compared to other cryptos, especially as the project ages and matures year over year. At least that is what the whitepaper means and promises when it claims “low vol.” Price is free to go dramatically up, but never allowed to go violently down. Because the whole system is built on collateral.
Ok done. As always, don’t forget to hodl.
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