Imagine having a tool that helps one predict whether an asset is undervalued or overvalued. The price to earnings ratio is an incredibly powerful tool that is used for valuing the worth of a stock. If the P/E of a company’s stock is 50, it means that investors are willing to pay $50 for every $1 earnings of the company.
However, with crypto, there cannot be a proper P/E ratio, as it is a commodity. A lot of people use the market capitalization to gauge the worth of a cryptocurrency. This is a flawed approach because mcap can be gamed, and is usually very common in the crypto spectrum. A token can be created with a circulating supply of 10 billion and a few coins sold at $1 means the market cap is $10 billion — but the coin could only have a trading volume of $1000. Because of the flaws in the market cap approach, there needed to be some other technique to help traders and investors to accurately assess the health of blockchain networks.
Use of on-chain metrics is a great tool to gauge the worth of a crypto project. One of the first widely used, on-chain metrics that was developed for cryptocurrencies was the Network Value to Transaction (NVT) ratio, popularised by CoinMetrics. By comparing the value of the network with the volume of transactions recorded on the blockchain, we can identify when a cryptocurrency is overvalued. When the value of the network is not justified by the volume of transactions, the NVT ratio is relatively high. When considering the transaction volume, if the network value is unusually low then it may suggest that a higher valuation is justified.
Two important on-chain metrics to watch are: the number of active addresses and the number of transactions which are two proxies for the demand for (and usage of) a blockchain network. We can examine the length of time an address has not moved the crypto using the on-chain metrics. If a rising number of investors are HODLing, then we can presume that circulating supply is lower, which should increase the price if demand is constant and also points to confidence in the asset’s future performance. Another interesting metric that can be used to gauge the long -term aspect of a token is the amount of value staked to support the network. It is also known as Total Value Locked or TVL, and can be used to deduce whether people support the project for the long-term.
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