RE: Crypto Token Economics Q&A - CargoX
Well argued response @bitbrain, it takes some courage to bring economics and South Park in the same breath :D. Here's what I have to say though.
First, while I do agree that a token burn mechanism can exert some upward pressure on the price, i think this will be eventually counterbalanced by speculative activity around the token and made worse by the lack of liquidity in CXO markets (for example: whales dumping their cheap tokens on illiquid exchanges, CXO price being tied to BTC price fluctuations, etc). This speculation will result in wild price swings which will ultimately affect the cost of transactions for users (price slippage).
To remedy that, I believe it's likely the team will update their smart contract in the future to create more tokens or/and implement something akin to a burn and mint mechanism (explained in the article I linked to) designed to tame volatility and protect large transactions against it.
In the end, the token will end up either 1/ being completely abandoned at the benefit of a larger and more liquid currency like ETH, BTC or crypto fiat 2/ completely abstracted away (instantly swapped to a liquid crypto like BTC/ETH) which brings back the velocity problem: a high velocity circulating supply can offset the price appreciation of the locked/hodled supply.
So to wrap this up. The argument that payment tokens can accrue value through deflation (due to the burn) is deceiving in its intuitiveness (Bitcoin is scarce and has gone up therefore my scarce ERC-20 token must go up) and the fact that it has been largely abused by ICO projects to sell tokens to unsuspecting retail investors makes me even more skeptical with regards to its validity.
The ball's in your court my friend.
I don't see that price slippage will be possible thanks to their "credits" system - the cost should remain a constant for customers.
Well yeah, you know we could "go around the buoy" here until we are blue in the face; after analysis on both sides, you believe one thing and I believe another. It would be boring if we all agreed and there would only be a requirement for very few of us! The only way this will be resolved is by watching and waiting. Of course this assumes that CargoX will be successful. I see not reason why the should not be, the odds are heavily in their favour; but things happen to new companies and there is no guarantee of performance. I thought Envion was looking great at one point...
The South Park thing is really funny. Digging around for source material it was surprising to find that the "Underpants Gnomes" lesson has been used by multiple sources as a legitimate training aid. The author I quoted mentions that fact himself. I think it's about time that economics, and business in general, realise that a jacket and tie and a stern expression don't make you any better or more effective than a few guys in T-shirts who joke while they work. Probably quite the opposite. I embrace the stance adopted by major crypto names like these: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVVDsIYJBQ_C7Bh_aI3ZMxQ/featured or by companies like Google when you look at how they treat employees and what their office spaces look like. I've been in the military for over two decades. Believe me when I say that things like dressing up incredibly smartly, having impeccable manners and discipline, adhering to a strict hierarchal structures etc don't matter a damn when it comes to working efficiently and effectively.
I agree, that's why I usually write my articles in bed wearing shorts and a singlet :D
The field of tokenomics is so new that it is indeed tricky to make predictions whether or not a mechanism is sound. I personally believe that 99% of dapps built on ETH do no require a token and I believe that the successful blockchain businesses of tomorrow will not include payment tokens unless they are absolutely necessary for the protocol (masternodes, staking). Just imagine if Coinbase had a Coinbase coin that you had to buy before you can get your crypto... that would be odd and affect the UX. Any Ethereum dApp can use ETH for transactions and charge a fee but then they wouldn't get the chance to dump their tokens onto retail investors and make an easy buck... so yeah, these are my views.
Thanks for taking the time to answer my rants though :)
Thanks for the rants! ;)