So what is the real value of a CAT?
Let's take good critical a look at this question!
The Cat Appreciation Token wasn't really designed with its trading-value in mind. CAT was intended as a novelty, with a mostly symbolic value and a bit of utility attached. Under these premises I like to just say:
But of course, CAT is a token after all, you can trade it on steem-engine, and @catnet has even been selling tokens to users directly and on the open market. So it does probably make sense to talk a bit more about the actual pricing of this CAT.
What brings Value to a Token?
Ultimately, like with anything else that gets exchanged in a monetary way, it's often explained as a bit of a mix of supply and demand, but in the end it's mostly a question of "faith", whether people believe it's valuable, to themselves directly, or, which is unfortunately all too common these days, just because they've seen it go up in price.
But, especially with all these crypto tokens, you shouldn't just go with blind faith. Always take a good look at the fundamentals of the token you're considering to buy and do some due diligence on what you will decide to put your faith in.
The Price of a CAT
As the token-issuer, @catnet has a huge influence on the market and I've always been transparent about not interfering with organic trading activity in any way while using the stake in the token supply, to maintain a maximum price for the tokens.
The price-cap is currently fixed at 0.010 STEEM per CAT.
I've limited any unreasonable speculation with CAT by maintaining sell-walls on the open market and additionally offering tokens at this fixed price-cap in direct sales.
This works primarily to avoide any uncontrolled market craziness but it also creates a nice alley for fund-raising. I've been 100% committed from the start to keep all funds raised through this price-capping action within the @catnet project itself and to use it as a means to grow more value behind the symbolic utility of the token.
There's certainly better ways to get rich quick, and we're not really maximizing sales this way either, but the primary focus here will never be on bringing in the money.
This strategy should instead allow CAT to grow in a fairly organic and hopefully sustainable manner. Some speculators might be making a quick buck here and there, but thanks to the CATnip auto-staking feature they won't be able to benefit much from the actual value building "behind" the tokens.
Some Token Fundamentals
One of the first things to check, you should really do that with any token you put your eyes on, is the global properties of the token itself. On steem-engine, these properties are easily accessible for everyone, for any token. The key information here is the token supply and the issuer information.
- The total supply describes the number of all tokens ever created so far.
- The circulating supply shows how much of these tokens are still in existence, it will only be lower than the total if some tokens have been "burned", taken out of circulation by sending them to @null.
- The maximum supply is the forever fixed maximum number of tokens that can be created.
- The token Issuer can, at any time, create more tokens up to the limit set by the maximum supply.
The Market-Cap and actual CAT-pricing
The so called market-capitalization of a token is the number of tokens in circulation multiplied by their price. It describes the combined value of all existing tokens at their current pricing. This can be used as a good indicator if a token is over- or under-priced.
When setting the price-limit for CAT this concept was used to determine a reasonably "fair" value for the token.
Fair Value?!
Sounds like white-washing, I know, but I think I'm actually just a bad salesman. Hear me out:
CAT was introduced through an unannounced airdrop. A little over 1.3 million CAT were sent to almost 1000 steemians. The distribution was strictly based on the kitten-bots subjective "debt" to their countless cuddly friends whom they've exchanged affections with for almost two years already. At the same time 100.000 CAT were put on the market at 0.001 STEEM each.
At this point the initial market-cap for CAT would have been limited to 7000 STEEM and all the CAT in the hands of users would not be worth more than 1300 STEEM combined. That's actually already quite a lot considering the three kitten bots "behind" this token were equipped with only little more than 100 SP each and delivering accordingly dusty cuddles, you might even be inclined to say: almost worthless cuddles. But this was set to be a maximum limit for the price and the goal was after all to also help the kittens grow a little.
Then: The first sell-wall was gone in less than 24 hours!
Over half of the initial token sale was bought up by a cat-affectionate speculater who has already dumped their bags again in the meantime and ever since the new price-limit has been set to 0.010 STEEM. A sell-wall with over 82.000 CAT remaining is being maintained on the marketplace but tokens are currently trading much lower than that.
So Where's the Value now?
Again, CAT is absolutely priceless. The value of the Cat Appreciation Token isn't in the price for a CAT. The real value comes from its utility as a symbolic token. The primary function of holding CAT is to bring the kitten-bots to deliver cuddles for you.
The funds raised so far have allowed the kitten bots to receive a bit of power-up and @catnet has additionally acquired significant voting power for the coming 6 months.
With the PAW-TRAILS update in operation CATnip hodlers should actually see some of their cuddles returning real STEEM rewards to them.
More fun things to do, like the CALL-A-KITTEN service, will be added in the future. Your CAT stake will be good for more than one thing, eventually. Also, any income with the program, posting-rewards and token-sales, will be used to further grow the project.
The kittens still have a mind of their own and each of them can't deliver much more than 10 cuddles per day currently. There's also already roughly 1.5 million CAT owned by more than 900 users, all attracting kitten-attention with their CATnip, so there are natural limits to all of this.
The more CATnip you have, though, the more likely it is to get a kitten's attention. You can check the CAT RICHLIST to get a sense of how much CATnip your neighbours might be growing. Making it into the top 100 CAT hodlers should almost guarantee several kitten cuddles every week, but of course...
DICLAIMER: Keep in mind, the kittens do have additional criteria when sending their cuddles your way. If you're self-voting all day, if the kittens think you're a bad hooman or if you never put out any cuddle-able content, then you won't see them very often, no matter how much CATnip you're growing. A CAT does never come with any guarantees!
I could go on and on about all this and there are plenty more aspects, possibly even open questions that I didn't get to address without making this even longer and losing the attention of everyone who barely made it this far.
If you've actually made it this far, and you've read all of the above, first of all: Thank you so much for your time and attention! And that also means you probably do care about this project at least a little - I'm even more grateful for that!
I would appreciate any and all open questions, your honest feedback, possibly even blunt criticism.
A lot of tokens out there have strange fundamentals and empty promises. I hope to make CAT something better, and better and better as this project continues to grow. Your thoughts can help me do that.
I'll distribute 1000 CAT among all thoughtful comments below this post.
edit: 5 users have left meaningful comments and received 200 CAT each.
a CAT is absolutely priceless
meow!
I don't really have any criticism. I'm happy so far with the way the project is going. For sure, I'm not going to sell any CAT. If I can be a whale in only one token, I'm glad it's CAT. :-)
And I am really glad to have a CAT whale like yourself around, spreading CAT far and wide :D
Also, let's be honest, you've contributed the lion's share of all "under-the-counter" investments into @catnet, too! The whole dust-proofing and everything definitely wouldn't have been possible yet without your encouraging and generous support!
What is the difference between "cat" and "cats make kittens"?
Hey there @ironshield, thanks for asking!
The Cat Appreciation Token - CAT - is not in any way related to "cats make kittens".
I made a post about that, PSA: CAT is not CATS, not too long ago after those CATS appeared on the steem-engine market. The possibility to confuse one with the other is quite unfortunate.
Uhm... Now I am confused again. The CATs I bought will not attract the kittens to cuddle?
🤔
Posted using Partiko Android
hehe... I'm sorry this is all so confusing @wakeupkitty...
No... the CAT in your wallet will absolutely start attracting the kitten-bots (@steemkitten, @cuddlekitten and @steemeow) to come and give you cuddles.
"Cats Make Kittens" is an entirely different project. They released the CATS (with an S) token a few weeks ago and it's unfortunately named in a very similar manner. You can buy very expensive CATS which will produce KITTENS that can be turned into CATS again, in the meantime you get upvotes from a NEOXAG-rich auto-voter for holding CATS, too. It's totally unrelated to this Cat Appreciation Token - CAT - and much more triangular in its architectural style, but that's just my opinion.
I immediately wrote a PSA about this when I noticed a new and very similarly named feline token on steem-engine because I knew this was going to get people confused.
@catnet It is more clear now. I will see if I need to change some text to explain this to others.
Thanks for stopping by and commenting. I wish you a great Tuesday. 💕
I have really appreciated seeing the kittens regularly again, they left me alone for a long time. I have sent CATs to a few people but I'm hodling my hoard :)
I'm glad you're enjoying the frequent cuddly visits and I am especially happy those will likely be worth more than their symbolic value now, too :D
How you sent CATs to people? In a reply or?
Posted using Partiko Android
I use the Send Tokens function in SteemEngine
Thank you I will figure out where to find that option. Seldom use steem-engine and want to lnow how to buy too.
Thanks for answering. I wish you a great Tuesday. 💕
How can a cuddle ever be worthless???
What are you even saying???
Posted using Partiko Android
No no no... I would never say such a thing, I was merely suggesting that you, and I don't mean you personally but more like the reader in general might be inclined to think dusty cuddles are worthless.
All cuddles are of course just as priceless, actually, even more priceless than CAT!
I am so happy with my CATs thanks for dropping them. I am looking forward to how it will develop in the future (giving a CAT instead a BEER would be nice too). I believe I understand the biggest part of it. Will reread it again and see if I can promote it a bit.
Have a happy Sunday 👍💕
Posted using Partiko Android
Heya, thank You!
A tipping feature has been requested multiple times already so I'll definitely start working on that soon. I won't make it like it works with BEER where you can print new BEER with a comment, that's being abused too much and will just end up with new tokens being excessively created by those who max out the system... but an on-chain CAT-tipping feature would be very nice to have!
@catnet I'll wait and see how it works out. As long as I can understand it, I am happy.
Happy day ❤️
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