I like the word digital-asset, It’s both simple and descriptive. It lays a stake in the ground that crypto or digital currencies merit the distinction of a separate asset class. Although I believe these tokens are indeed a separate asset class, they exhibit features of other assets—assets in the realm of technology, energy , base metals, stocks and currencies.
However, this burgeoning asset class is not uniform—it encompasses many types of technology and features tokens of different merit. Some coins or tokens provide access to their network and are commonly named utility coins. There are also coins/tokens that facilitate transactions and payments through their digital networks which we call crypto currency.
Another type of crypto-asset is the security token. Security tokens are the most similar to stocks because they usually feature a cash flow component. And to a lesser extent, there are tokens which represent a particular asset like a commodity as well as rewards tokens that promote use of a particular business or platform.
HOW DO WE VALUE CRYPTO?
So how do you peg a value to a crypto currency or "coin over internet protocol" (COIP) and it's potential for widespread use? To value crypto currency, we can look to the economic theory on the velocity of money to help understand the adoption and potential growth. In other words we can seek to determine how many people are using a particular coin as a form of barter. For instance, Venuzuela which experiences hyper inflation, has seen a growth of digital currency use which includes BTC, Monero and Zcash. Velocity is an important concept of economics where measuring the flow of money and can help determine inflation or economic growth and in the case of new crypto currencies a signal of acceptance. When considering the potential value of digital currencies, velocity might be even more important because of the inelastic supply of coins, as opposed to fiat which in theory can continue to print money. This gets into the quantity theory of money where monetarists believe velocity should be stable and money supply can be fluctuated—but that’s a different discussion.
THE VELOCITY OF MONEY
So what does velocity look like for a currency? The formula for velocity is such ; V= PQ/M where PQ is nominal GDP and M is the total amount of money in circulation. So how can we find GDP of a crypto currency? I would argue that total transactions seems to be the most innate number to use for this equation. We can replace money in circulation with the total supply of coins or as others some would argue from the float. So the new equation might look like V= TT/ICO where TT is total transactions and ICO is the total number of coins.
RELATIVE VALUE
After solving for velocity we now have a comparable way of finding relative value within digital currencies. However a vital component for a currency is a relative stability of the unit in order to transact or barter without huge fluctuations. We can measure this by using the volatility of the coin as measured by the standard deviations of the daily returns over a year multiplied by the square root of 250 (crypto doesn't seem to take weekends off so 365 days likely apply). We can therefore make a constant comparable number(lets call it a "Token Viability Ratio") between crypto currencies by dividing velocity by volatility, in essence having a number that measures usage and stability. I would note that for a utility or protocol coins there is sound reasoning that velocity would diminish as people would hold on to these coins to access growing networks. I would encourage reading Union Square Ventures paper by Joel Monegro titled "Fat Protocols" about this subject. ( https://www.usv.com/blog/fat-protocols )
CAN PAST PERFORMANCE PREDICT FUTURE RESULTS?
My thought is that perhaps as currency coins gain traction, one could argue that the numerator (velocity) increases while the denominator (volatility) of the underlying coin will decrease. To put this into daily context, transactions are growing while the underlying price remains somewhat stable. I think this concept will be interesting to look at not only with new crypto currency coins but may very well show a distinction between fiat currencies and their digital cousins as more sovereigns embrace a digital currency.
* note : This article is meant as a knowledge loop and I always encourage feedback of any kind.