Let's do Zcash and Monero's investment thesis now, since they're extremely similar, but also have a couple of interesting differences.
Please read this article first, if you haven't already, or this won't make sense:
https://inleo.io/@thedessertlinux/stop-hoarding-gas-tokens-crypto-investing-for-the-modern-age-8ga
Start with Monero:
🪙GAS TOKEN: XMR
Monero has one token, so its gas token is XMR. If you want to use Monero at all, you'll need a little extra in order to send it.
You should buy Monero as a gas token if you need to send units of XMR around, or, if you anticipate a supply shock (which I wouldn't in the near future, since fees are pretty low and use cases remain niche).
🪙INVESTMENT TOKEN: Mining/N/A
There is no investment token built into the Monero ecosystem, so the only way to directly profit from its increased use is by mining. There may or may not be any ASICs for mining right now, so in the meantime, computing power/hashrate acts as a stand-in for an investment token.
You should invest in relevant computing power if you believe the Monero network will be used significantly and generate decent fees in the future.
🪙PRODUCT TOKEN: XMR
The product token is XMR itself, or the currency/base token. It's useful as a private money, for exchanging and storing value privately, particularly for illegal/underground things.
You should acquire XMR as a product token if you want to privately buy and sell things that use it as money.
Monero's investment thesis:
Monero's primary investment thesis is simple: use as private money. If it gains significant adoption as such, it will go up in value, though likely not in a spike, but rather a slow, continual growth.
Most of this would probably not be for demand for XMR as a gas token to power transactions, as fees will likely be low for some time, but from the product use case: private money. An individual will need much more XMR on hand to be available to spend privately, than they will likely need XMR as gas to send these payments.
By focusing hard on the cypherpunk and illicit target markets, Monero acts as if it has no competition here (even though it does), which gives its unit of account utility. Unless other competitors manage to significantly eat into its niche, it will likely continue a slow but steady ascent in the future.
ZCASH
🪙GAS TOKEN: ZEC
Very similar to with Monero, ZEC lets you send private money. For gas purposes you'd want ZEC to pay for sending ZEC transactions.
However, unlike Monero, Zcash has another use case: sending other, non-ZEC things. Right now this is mainly encrypted memos, but in the future could include Zcash Shielded Assets (ZSAs), which could be all kinds of things: stablecoins, Bitcoin-denominated tokens, and much more.
The future market for ZEC as a gas token is therefore much more comprehensive and dynamic, and you could want to buy ZEC as a gas token to send many different things privately.
🪙INVESTMENT TOKEN: Mining/ZEC?
Similar to Monero, the primary investment token for Zcash today would be mining/ASICs. However, if a future move happens to proof-of-stake or a hybridized system, then ZEC becomes an investment token as well.
In that case, you might buy ZEC in order to stake it to receive profits from network revenue.
🪙PRODUCT TOKEN: ZEC/Memos/ZSAs
Finally, right now there's two main product tokens on Zcash: ZEC as a private money, and encrypted memos. When ZSAs come out, those will be additional product tokens available for Zcash users.
Users of ZEC as money would obviously buy ZEC to use it in trade, but the rest of its user base would buy the various supported tokens, or write encrypted memos.
Zcash's investment thesis:
Similar to Monero, Zcash's original investment thesis is in being used as a private money, enough to where people need significant enough balances of ZEC to have on-hand for their private transaction needs.
However, penetration into markets that would demand ZEC and price goods and services in it isn't nearly that successful. As such, right now I may be bearish on how the purely private money investment thesis plays out for Zcash.
That being said, Zcash's ability to do other things privately is much more attractive. Thousands (if not millions) of encrypted memos, token transfers, and more could raise total fee revenue far and away higher than purely ZEC-as-money use cases.
Combined with a staked element, this would give a real reason for the price of ZEC to go up: people scrambling to buy and stake ZEC to get a piece of that fee revenue from (mostly) encrypted memos and ZSAs.
In conclusion Monero probably has a much more straightforward, though slow and steady, prospect of going up, while Zcash is in a weaker position regarding this main value proposition, but PoS, ZSAs, and encrypted memos could cause a much more dramatic price increase. For that, watch the progress and adoption of Zcash's non-ZEC use cases.
My opinion/observations only. As always, none of this should be considered investment advice.
Posted Using INLEO
Congratulations @thedessertlinux! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain And have been rewarded with New badge(s)
Your next target is to reach 9000 upvotes.
You can view your badges on your board and compare yourself to others in the Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOP