Status the Social Media Cryptocurrency
Status (SNT) is a social-media oriented cryptocurrency. In a similarity to Brave and the Basic Attention Token (BAT), Status’s creators are betting average people will pay for privacy.
To explain, Status is building a platform; the Status Network, that could enable secure messages, secure browsing, and secure financial transactions. The Status team claims its “generated cryptographic keypair” and password protection will ensure privacy and security.
Amenities the Status platform could theoretically offer include; a “secure identity,” peer-to-peer (P2P) severless messaging, default end-to-end encryption, perfect foreward secrecy, and serverless account creation.
For instance, you could create new accounts with nothing but an email address or a phone number with Status. In addition, Status claims it can protect your email from phishing attacks with a three-word randomly generated signing phrase.
Status is a Data Collection Mechanism
They designed the Status cryptocurrency (SNT) to power and incentivize participation in the Status Network.
One reason Status is encouraging participation is that it conducts research on “cryptoeconomic models” and P2P technologies. Thus; in another similarity to BAT and Brave. Thus they designed Status is a data collection mechanism.
One tool Status plans to use for data collection is the Teller Network. The Teller Network is a decentralized application (DApp) that helps Status Stakeholders locate businesses and individuals who accept Status (SNT). A DApp is a digital robot that operates in the blockchain.
Another data collection tool at Status is the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) addresses or domain names. ENS tries to human-readable names for the blockchain. Essentially an ENS address is a domain name in the Ethereum Blockchain.
How the Status Network Collects Data
Status is offering several interesting DApps including Tribute-to Talk an economics based anti-spam filter. In addition, there is the status DApp Directory that allows stakeholders to find new DApps fast.
Importantly, Status Stakeholders can build customized data-collection tools with the Acquisition Engine. The Acquisition Engine analyzes social-media data to identify behaviors that can drive social media adoption.
One purpose of the Acquisition Engine is to create cryptoeconomic research to see how real people use cryptocurrency and the blockchain. Therefore, the greatest source of theoretical value at Status is the cryptoceconomic data.
I think this cryptoeconomic data could theoretically be worth millions or billions of dollars at some point.
The Data is the Value at Status
I think Status and Brave are attempts to use blockchain to harvest the 21st Century world’s most valuable commodity data.
“Data is the new oil. It’s valuable, but if unrefined it cannot really be used. It has to be changed into gas, plastic, chemicals, etc to create a valuable entity that drives profitable activity; so it must data be broken down, analyzed for it to have value.” — Clive Humby. Humby is a mathematician and Chief Data Scientist at the Starcount Data Consultancy in London.
What Humby means is that data is the raw material that powers today’s economy. For instance, artificial intelligence and algorithms cannot operate without data. Modern industries that run on data include; software, e-commerce, advertising, finance, Fintech, entertainment, logistics, travel, and intelligence.
Moreover, data is supercharging many industries including manufacturing, retail, freight, and energy. For example, a manufacturer can use data to create AIs or DApps that operate its robots or machines.
How Status Plans to use the Oil of the 21st Century
Notably, Walmart (NYSE: WMT) has turned one of its stores into a data collection machine they call the Intelligent Retail Lab. I think the goal of the Intelligent Retail Lab is to create AIs that can manage Walmart stores.
Thus one goal of Status and Brave harvest data is to get the raw material to build DApps. The hope is to make money by selling those DApps or their services. Predictably, several platforms including LiquidApps (DAPP) and NEO (NEO) are trying to build DApp factories.
In contrast, Status is trying to operate as an oil refinery for data. To explain, a refinery makes money by turning oil into something useful; such as gasoline, or kerosene. Status hopes to make money by turning data into something marketable DApps.
What Value does Status (SNT) have?
I think Status’s has little actual value because there is no proof ordinary people are using anything Status has created. In addition, there is no evidence anybody is paying money for Status’s tools and DApps.
There are tens of thousands of Ethereum platforms and ERC20 tokens out there. However, there are serious questions about the scalability of the Ethereum blockchain and its ability to serve a mass market.
For instance, many experts think Ethereum’s blockchain lacks the capacity to process more than a few transactions per second (TPS). Hence, an Ethereum platform could crash if it tried to process over 15 TPS.
Mr. Market; however, thinks Status (SNT) has more value. For example, CoinMarketCap named Status the 91st most valuable cryptocurrency on 20 November 2019. CoinMarketCap gave Status a Market Cap of $42.747 million, and a 24-Hour-Market Volume of $200,329 on the same day.
However, CoinMarketCap gave Status a Coin Price of 1.3₵ on that day. CoinMarketCap bases those prices on a Circulating Supply of 3.4705 million SNT and a Total Supply of 6.8705 million SNT.
Brave Vs. Status
In contrast, CoinMarketCap gave Brave’s Basic Attention (BAT) a Coin Price of 24₵, a Market Capitalization of $325.299 million, and a 24-Hour Market Volume of $64.512 million on 20 November 2019. The BAT was CoinMarketCap’s 30th most cryptocurrency on that day.
Importantly, real people in the real world are using Brave and Brave is harvesting data from millions of ordinary people. For instance, Brave claims to have 8.7 million active users, Wired reports.
Additionally, publishers including National Public Radio, Jeff Bezos’ The Washington Post, and Wikipedia are working with Brave. Temkin Group estimates that Brave paid $4.5 million worth of BAT to creators so far, Wired notes.
Status is a Great Idea for a Cryptocurrency
In detail, Brave tries to make money by analyzing users’ browsing habits. Likewise, Status hopes to make money by making analyzing users’ social media and browsing habits. The difference is that there is no evidence Status is analyzing anybody’s social media or browser usage.
The ultimate hope at Brave and Status is to monetize data by creating data-backed cryptocurrencies. The problem is that neither Brave nor Status has harvested enough data to make money. But Brave is testing mass market data harvesting on the blockchain in a small scale.
In conclusion, I think Status is a great idea for a cryptocurrency and a blockchain platform. However, there is no evidence Status is working in the world. Therefore, speculators need to avoid Status until its builders demonstrate they can harvest data and make money from that data.