Makering it through the Trough

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Eric Turner - December 4, 2018

Over 90% of small cap cryptoassets are now down 90% or more from their all time high. It is a stark contrast to last year when a 10x seemed like the norm and you had once in a life time events like Verge [TBI Note: Dogecoin Dark!!!] returning 1,280,244% for the year.

One of our favorite custom screens on OnChainFx has become the “max pain” dashboard created by Ryan Sean Adams. It tracks the basics of how far a token has fallen from its all time high, a “breakeven” multiple, and some basic price and return data. We check this out often, not just to alleviate our pain of bitcoin’s mere 80% downdraft (good relative performance!), but to wade through the wreckage for signs of life and projects that will come out the other side of the bear market.

One of the things that struck me when poking around today, was the relatively strong performance of the Maker token, which has held up well despite the crypto carnage.

For the unfamiliar, MakerDAO is a “stablecoin” that allows users to lock up collateral (Ether) in exchange for a fixed price currency (Dai). The Maker token serves both a governance function - vote on the management of the ecosystem - and a financial function - stake tokens to earn a share of fees paid by Dai borrowers (stablecoin users) in return for serving as a backstop to Dai’s dollar peg.