Is the Crowd Machine the Future of Apps?
The Crowd Machine (CMCT) is one of the most intriguing blockchain platforms out there because it has attracted high-powered corporate customers.
American healthcare giant Anthem (NYSE: ANTM), Finish engineering and service company KONE Oyi (HEL: KNEBV), human consulting company Aon Hewitt (NYSE: AON) and the Pacific Western Bank; or PacWest Bancorp (NASDAQ: PACW), are supposedly using Crowd Machine’s technology. Strangely enough those big names are not the most interesting aspect of the Crowd Machine.
If the Crowd Machine’s claims are true, the group behind it has two potentially billion or trillion dollar pieces of technology. Those technologies are an advanced distributed computer and an app development engine.
The Crowd Machine’s Trillion Dollar Technology
A traditional computer; like the ones in your PC or smartphone, operates on just one device. A distributed computer’s operations are dispersed over hundreds, or thousands of machines.
Distributed computers are nothing new, the internet and World Wide Web can be thought of as distributed computers. More importantly, so can Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) which reported revenues of $60.50 billion in 1st quarter 2018 and Google the flagship of the Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL) which reported revenues of $31.14 billion in 1st Quarter 2018. Likewise Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) can be viewed as a distributed computer for video and PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL) as a distributed computer for money.
The Crowd Machine is one of several distributed computers designed to operate through the blockchain. Others include Golem (GNT) and Einsteinium (EMC2). The ever-popular Ethereum (ETH) and its many imitators such as NEO (NEO) can also be thought of as distributed computers.
Like Golem and Einsteinium the Crowd Machine is envisioned as a vast decentralized machine operating on millions of devices including computers and smartphones. Anybody would be able to make extra cash by running Crowd Machine on her or his smartphone, X-Box, or PC. Entrepreneurs might make extra money by setting up banks of computers that would serve as do-it-yourself data centers.
The goal of Crowd Machine is to build a blockchain infrastructure that would replace Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft’s Azure. The AWS generated revenues of $5.4 billion in 1st Quarter 2018, Statista estimated.
The Crowd Machine’s Trillion Dollar App Creator
The potential trillion-dollar application at the Crowd Machine is not the distributed computer but what the distributed computer will do.
The Crowd Machine is envisioned as a do it yourself app maker. Anybody, anywhere, would be able to make their own apps with Crowd Machine. If you had an idea for an app you would just go to Crowd Machine, build it and put it up for sale. No designer, engineer, or tech needed.
Apps can be extremely lucrative; the Apple (NASDAQ: APP) generated $38 billion in revenues in 2018, Forbes contributor Chuck Jones estimated. App developers made $26.5 billion from the App store and Apple itself raked in $11.5 billion.
Not surprisingly, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) bought the largest “independent app store” GitHub for $7.5 billion on 4 June 2018. GitHub consists of 85 million repositories of software (apps) that 1.8 million organization and 28 million software developers contribute to.
“Embedded within the computer is an app development engine that requires no coding, enabling anyone to create decentralized apps (DAaps) and smart contracts without limitation,” The Crowd Machine website boasts. The idea is that anybody can build apps without writing code or paying money to Amazon or Microsoft.
Is the Crowd Machine for Real
Like almost everybody other group of blockchain developers, the Crowd Machine developers are making some claims that sound well; impossible.
The most questionable are getting apps to market 45 times faster and app installation at the push of a button. Such feats would be impossible with present day versions of the blockchain.
Ethereum is only capable of processing 20 transactions a second, and Bitcoin (BTC) is only possible of processing seven transactions a second, our friends at Blockgeeks pointed out. This is the infamous blockchain scalability problem. In contrast Visa’s (NYSE: V) ecosystem can process up to 1,667 transactions a second.
Has the Crowd Machine Solved the Blockchain Scalability Problem?
Any system capable of deploying apps at the speed Crowd Machine brags about would have to process between 500 and 1,000 transactions a second. Present day versions of the blockchain simply are not big enough to do that.
To work as advertised Crowd Machine will either have to build a totally new blockchain or a super-fast sidechain. A sidechain is a shortcut around the encrypted blockhain architecture that enables much higher speeds.
A good analogy for the sidechain is roads. The blockchain is a two-lane highway that can easily get congested. The sidechain is a four or five lane freeway that allows traffic to move at far higher speeds with fewer limitations. Either way, the Crowd Machine would have solved the blockchain scalability problem which would also be worth a billion dollars.
Another Problem for Crowd Machine Electricity
Even if it has solved the scalability problem, the Crowd Machine faces another problem that might throttle its plans: electricity. Devices running distributed computers like Crowd Machine will need electricity.
The last time I looked utilities did not give electricity for free. Distributing computing like cryptocurrency mining might use a lot of electricity. Building apps like generating cryptocurrency will require a lot of complex number crunching which will burn electricity.
Cryptocurrency mining is already creating concerns about electricity shortages. It has even been banned in one American city, Plattsburgh, New York, for that reason. Distributing computing is likely to run into similar problems.
This might create an opportunity for entrepreneurs who set up banks of computers; sort of do-it-yourself datacenters, in places with cheap electricity. Persons with Off-the-Grid generating systems like solar panels, small-scale hydro generators, or wind turbines might do the same.
A long-term opportunity would be for entrepreneurs in developing countries that have plenty of sunlight to set up solar panels to power cryptocurrency mining and distributed computing. This might give people a source of revenue that does not depend on foreign aid or charity.
How to Cash in on Distributed Computing
Investors that want to cash in on distributed computing will be better served by buying Nvidia stock (NASDAQ: NVDA) than CMCT tokens. NVDIA makes lots of money by manufacturing the GPUs that distributed computers and cryptocurrency mining run on.
Though, the CMCT Token is not a bad cryptocurrency. It is part of Bancor’s liquidity network, so it can be quickly converted into other altcoins. Crowd Machine is also an ERC20 (Ethereum-compatible) cryptocurrency.
The CMCT Token was realistically valued at a Coin Price of 3.27¢ on 27 June 2018. Its’ Market Capitalization of $14.621 billion and 24-Hour Market Volume of $1.069 million were also very realistic. There was a circulating supply of 447.440 million and a Total Supply of two trillion Crowd Machine Tokens on 25 June 2018.
The Crowd Machine is certainly a blockchain platform to watch because its developers are playing around with some potentially extremely disruptive tech. Crowd Machine is not a platform to invest in because of the unrealistic claims being made by its promoters.