You Down With ONT?
The altcoin Ontology (ONT) is having an eventful year. Even by the regular and more turbulent standards of the cryptocurrency world (compared to traditional investments), anyone looking to learn about a wild ride throughout the first half of 2018 would do well to speak to an ONT owner.
At its simplest, ONT is best understood as a crypto comprised of two parts. A high-performance public blockchain, and also a trust network. In launching a crypto with this combination, its Chinese founders Da HongFei and Erik Zhang seek to bring about a technological solution that provides ‘the best of both worlds.’
A solution that will assist proprietary enterprise platforms to shift to a distributed ledger model, without the security risks of an open-sourced network like Ethereum, that many in the potential market remain reluctant to take on.
The ONT team envisions this tech could make the transmission of medical records from one provider to another more seamless as ONT fills the trust gap that has been a roadblock. The foundation of a promising crypto exists, so how has it performed since launch?
The Altcoin Factor
First launching onto the market in early March, it was trading at $1.58USD, before soaring to $10.60 in early May, and since then gradually coasting down to now be hovering around $3.30. It may be tempting in light of this to suggest ONT merely is another victim of a classic pump and dump exercise, to be dismissed forever after.
Broader market factors surely remain in play. If it can be said 2017 was the year of Bitcoin – and the hype surrounding it rising to such an extent it was compared to the infamous Tulip Boom of the 1600’s – then so too was it plain many crypto enthusiasts would look to an altcoin in 2018.
Bitcoin dropped from its record high of over $19,000 in mid-December to a more modest price of around $11,000 at time of writing. Longtime crypto investors now look to a market for prospective buys with amateur and casual buyers hot on their tails. Cryptos are now certified hot properties and will continue to catch the eye of casual pundits. This is true of Bitcoin and altcoins.
Many traders look back on the Bitcoin highs with the benefit of hindsight in declaring it was not going to last. It doing so overlooks the prospect the same occurrence may be happening once again. This time within the altcoin market, as a mix of professional opportunism and amateur inexperience comes to the fore.
Digital Wild West
The prospect of a pump and dump always remains in play, but so too the ease in which a crypto can be dismissed as old news when in fact it’s been overvalued, and now finds a more stable price point. Many who may lament the volatility of certain cryptos would also critique their falling prices from evidently unsustainable record highs.
They can’t have it both ways; it’s either the digital Wild West, forever volatile or is set to stabilize. If cryptos are to be genuinely sustainable, then it requires sustainable values. Every form of investment from property to stocks to cryptos can be subject to some manipulation, and the mob’s rush.
Recent weeks have seen some wonder whether ONT’s story is essentially done, but the team has also announced some new partnerships recently. The future of ONT is far from clear, but anyone writing it off altogether may want to keep one foot on the brake before they drive off into the sunset.
