This is certainly an asset I would hold if it was issued as a UIA on bitshares. As the issuer will profit from the trading fees on the UIA someone will soon create the UIA if there is market demand for it.
I'm interested in an asset of this type but I don't want to secure yet another wallet (sorry nxt). Perhaps when moonstone integrates with nxt and bts I'll hold the nxt asset while a bts UIA is still yet to exist.
It would save so much time researching and holding a varied crypto portfolio.
It will be attractive to whales that are yet to be initiated into crypto. I'm quite sure that whichever crypto's "win" and get significant adoption in the long run most likely already exist in the top 20 today. Holding a single index asset that tracks these 20 coins makes a 'punt' (bet) on crypto far easier to make as it requires far less research and a one-time transaction and wallet setup.
I see holding this index asset as a bet with very high odds of winning.
The crypto-economy as a whole is still very small and worth less than $5Bn.
The current 'market cap' of all financial markets in the traditional industry is in the $100-1000's of Trillions.
Crypto, being more efficient than the current system, could one day come to replace this entire market. Growing the crypto market from $5B into $100T is a
x200,000 increase.
The current financial markets are only available to ~20% of the worlds population at best due to regulatory restrictions and barriers to information and understanding. If 100% of the population had easy and intuitive access, it could be argued that the market would be
x5 larger - sizing it at ~ $5,000 Trillion.
The efficiency of crypto also allows far more numerous and complex transactions to occur.
This indicates that the global economy as a whole will rapidly expand into new markets not possible before. Transactions today require trust and access to a regulated financial institution. How many more businesses and use cases for financial markets would arise without these limitations? I estimate it has to translate into an increase in the global economy of at least
x100.
Compounding these 'multipliers' brings my estimation for the size of the crypto-economy (which then will be the normal economy) to
$500Petadollars, or $500,000T in USD 2015 dollars.
The crypto economy (including the top 20 coins) is currently worth around $5B.
I estimate the potential market that the crypto economy will one day saturate (5-30 yrs) could be worth $500,000 Trillion. This gives a potential growth of x100Million.
If 5% of each crypto in the top 20 is held in this index then so long as at least one coin is "successful" and increases by
at least 19 times in size (to make up for any losses on other coins) then the index will retain it's value.
I also predict that the future crypto-economy will have lots of competing altcoins and a 'big 4' of coins that dominate most of the market. So any number of the current top 20 could make it big, so the index has even more upside potential.
This 'bet' of buying the index wins if any one of the coins increases it's market share of the current crypto-economy (gains against bitcoin) OR if the crypto-economy as a whole expands and the coins retain their share of this expanding market (hold their value against bitcoin).
The moment an Index UIA of this kind is issued on the BitShares exchange it will have buyers.
It's also a quick and easy sell to whales to get their
feet tails
wet dry.
A simple method for getting started and securely storing private keys is needed though.
Click here (One button light-client cold storage set up).
Print this (multisig paper backup).
Type account name and send btc here to buy the index. (Metaexchange etc)
Done.