Investment Case for Vertcoin (VTC)

Vertcoin is a fast growing digital currency that has managed to stay under the radar from mainstream media. This cryptocurrency has been quietly making major advancements through partnerships and leads the industry with the most cutting edge technology in the space. Today, Vertcoin trades at $3.97, but I see this cryptocurrency reaching new heights because of its partnership with Litecoin, being ASIC resistant, positioning itself to become one of the first coins to have the Lightning Network deployed on its protocol, and the additional drivers that I have outlined below.

Basics:

1. Launched in Febuary 2014, Vertcoin is a digital peer to peer currency based in the United States
2. Vertcoin focuses on the decentralization of mining through ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) resistance
3. Vertcoin is easily accessible to the everyday user without extensive technical knowledge

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   Ticker: VTCPrice: $3.97Ranking by Market Cap: 29Market Capitalization: $164,382,645Circulating Supply: 41,386,600 VTCMax Supply: 84,000,000 VTCAverage Trading Volume: $3,905,709Block Rewards: 50 coins per blockBlock time: 2.5 minutesAlgorithm: Lyra2RE(v2)Consensus: PoW

Team:

1. Leading the Vertcoin team is James Lovejoy. Mr. Lovejoy is currently a undergraduate researcher at MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative, which is the program behind the Lighting Network
2. The Vertcoin team currently has 6 additional developers working on the project full time
3. The team is also VERY transparent. They constantly and consistently hold bi-monthly development updates and provide a real time roadmap update of their plans to the community

Drivers of Growth:

1. Vertcoin is the most decentralized coin in the market place because it is ASIC resistant, meaning the mining of this coin cannot be done with expensive hardware. As a point of reference, Bitcoin can be mined with ASIC hardware allowing people to centralize the hashing power
2. Every four years Vertcoin’s reward for each block, currently 50, gets halved. During the halving years, this feature of the protocol will drive the demand for the coin up, similar to what we saw with Bitcoin’s price this year
3. Vertcoin has a very active and transparent partnership with Litecoin, and is even mentioned in Litecoin’s roadmap. Vertcoin is working on cross-chain atomic swaps with Litecoin, meaning once the Lightning Network is launched, any merchant that accepts Litecoin must accept Vertcoin as well
4. Vertcoin is participating in the Lightning Network to increase transaction times and reduce the cost of each transaction
5. As previously mentioned, Vertcoin’s team lead is currently doing research at MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative, who is responsible for the Lightning Network. This relationship will allow Vertcoin to be one of the first coins to have the technology deployed on their protocol
6. Vertoin is currently SegWit activated which allows users to benefit from faster transaction times until the Lightning Network is implemented
7. Vertcoin has made itself easily accessible to the everyday user without extensive technical knowledge through features like their One Click Miner

Headwinds:

1. As of now, Vertcoin’s explosive growth has happened purely through word of mouth. There has currently been no marketing dollars spent on this project
2. The developers working on this project are volunteers and rely on donations from the community as compensation
3. Since regulation will always trail innovation, the digital currency space can be subject to new regulations in the future

Summary:

Based on the current valuations of projects similar to VTC:

Litecoin:

Price: $72.33 Market Cap: $3,900,233,727  Volume: $1,799,235 Circulating Supply: 53,920,483 LTC Total Supply: 84,000,000 LTC

Monero:

Price: $138.48 Market Cap: $2,129,572,890 Volume: $16,020,596 Circulating Supply: 15,377,976 XMR

Without incorporating a growth rate my 12 month price target for VTC is:

Current:

Price: $3.97Ranking by Market Cap: 29Market Capitalization: $164,382,645Circulating Supply: 41,386,600 VTCMax Supply: 84,000,000 VTC

12 Month Price Target:

Price: $6

Taking into account a compound average growth rate of 20% my 12 month price target would be closer to $7.2 a coin.

I hope you all enjoyed this week’s write up on Vertcoin. After receiving an over whelming response from my Metaverse write up, a large portion of my readers would like my next week’s entry to focus on the benefits of cryptocurrency and the solutions it provides our current financial system.