Cryptocurrency has been around for quite some time now and there are multiple papers and articles on the basics of cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrencies have not only flourished but also opened up as a new and credible opportunity for investors. The crypto market is still young but mature enough to pour enough data to analyze and predict trends. Although it is considered to be the most volatile market and a huge gamble as an investment, it has now become predictable to a certain point and Bitcoin futures are proof of that. Many of the concepts of the stock market are now applied to the crypto market with some modifications and variations. This gives us another proof that many people are adopting the cryptocurrency market every day and currently more than 500 million investors are present in it. Although the crypto market has a total market cap of $286.14 billion which is about 1/65th of the stock market at the time of writing, the market’s potential for success is huge considering its age and the presence of already established financial markets. The reason behind this is nothing but the fact that people have started trusting the technology and products that support crypto. This means that crypto technology has proven itself and so much so that companies have agreed to keep their assets in the form of crypto coins or tokens. The concept of cryptocurrency became successful with the success of Bitcoin. Bitcoin, once the sole cryptocurrency, now contributes only 37.6% of the total cryptocurrency market. The reason is, the emergence of new cryptocurrencies and the success of projects supporting them. This does not indicate that Bitcoin has failed, in fact the market capitalization of Bitcoin has increased, rather it indicates that the crypto market as a whole has expanded.
These facts are enough to prove the success of cryptocurrencies and their markets. And in fact investing in the crypto market is now considered safe, to the extent that some invest for their retirement plans. So we need the next tools to analyze the crypto market. There are many such tools that enable you to analyze this market in a similar way providing metrics similar to the stock market. Including coin market cap, coin stalker, cryptos and investments. Even thought these metrics are simple, they provide important information about the crypto under consideration. For example, a high market cap indicates a strong project, a high 24-hour volume indicates high demand, and circulating supply indicates the total amount of crypto coins in circulation. Another important metric is the volatility of a crypto. Volatility is how much a crypto’s price fluctuates. The crypto market is considered to be extremely volatile, cashing out at a moment’s notice can make huge profits or pull your hair out. Thus what we are looking for is a crypto that is stable enough to make our calculated decisions. Coins like Bitcoin, Ethereum and Ethereum-Classic (not exclusively) are considered stable. Along with being stable, they need to be strong enough, so that they don’t become illegal or cease to exist in the market. These features make a crypto reliable, and most reliable cryptocurrencies are used as a form of liquidity.
As far as the crypto market is concerned, volatility comes in hand, but so does its most important property i.e. decentralization. The crypto market is decentralized, meaning that a price drop in one crypto does not mean a lower trend in any other crypto. Thus giving us an opportunity called mutual fund. This is the idea of managing a portfolio of cryptocurrencies that you invest in The idea is to spread your investments across multiple cryptocurrencies to reduce the risk involved if a crypto bear run begins.
Similar to this concept is the concept of indices in the crypto market. Indices provide a standard point for the market as a whole. The idea is to pick the top currencies in the market and distribute the investment among them. This selected crypto currency changes if the index is dynamic in nature and only considers top currencies. For example, if a coin ‘X’ drops to the 11th position in the crypto market, the index considering the top 10 coins will no longer consider coin ‘X’, but will start considering coin ‘Y’ which replaced it. Some providers like cci30 and crypto20 have tokenized these crypto indices. While this may seem like a good idea to some, others are opposed as these tokens have some pre-requisites for investing such as a minimum investment amount. While others such as cryptos provide methods with currency components and an index value so that an investor can invest his desired amount and otherwise choose not to invest in a crypto included in an index. Thus, indices give you a choice to smooth out the volatility and reduce the risk involved.
Conclusion
The crypto market may seem risky at first sight and many may still be skeptical about its authenticity, but the maturity this market has achieved in a short period of its existence is astonishing and proof enough of its authenticity. One of the biggest concerns of investors is volatility, for which there was a solution in the form of indices.