Will Fantom (FTM) Make Money?

Smart contract platform Fantom (FTM) is getting a lot of attention these days. CoinMarketCap estimates FTM was the second most-trending cryptocurrency on 8 September 2021.

So what is Fantom and does it live up to the hype? Fantom is a fast, high-throughout smart contract blockchain platform for digital assets and dApps. That means they claim Fantom can run enormous numbers of NFTs, stablecoins, and other decentralized applications (dApps) fast.

For example, the Fantom Foundation claims Fantom can process transactions instantly. In fact, they claim Fantom can process a transaction in a second. In contrast, Paxful estimates it can take from five minutes to one hour to process a Bitcoin (BTC) transaction. Similarly, Coinlist alleges it can take from five minutes to four hours for its wallet to process Ethereum (ETH) transactions.

Fantom is Fast and Scalable

Hence, Fantom claims to have removed to one of the big limitations to cryptocurrency. I think few customers will use a financial app that takes several minutes or longer to process a payment. For example, no gamer wants to wait an hour to pay for the digital weapon he just bought.

The Fantom platform can process transactions fast because it is scalable. They claim Fantom can process thousands of transactions in a second because they can scale the platform to thousands of nodes.

In contrast, The Street estimates Ethereum could process 20 TPS on 15 July 2021. Although Ethereum 2.0 could be faster when it goes live.

However, it appears most of Fantom’s capacity is not being used. On 6 September 2021, FTMscan estimated that Fantom was processing 14.8 transactions per second (TPS) and 52.95 transactions a minute.

Moreover, the Fantom Foundation claims it can reduce transaction processing costs to a fraction of a cent. High processing fees are another drawback to cryptocurrency payment. For example, the average Ethereum (ETH) processing fee was $2.15 on 27 June 2021. Moreover, Decrypt estimates ETH processing fees shot up to $69.92 on 12 May 2021.

Hence, it is possible cryptocurrency processing fees can exceed the cost of the payment.

What is Fantom?

The key to Fantom (FTM) is a (decentralized finance) DeFi suite. They claim the Fantom DeFi suite allows users to create (Mint), trade, lend, and borrow synthetic  investments and tokens from a digital wallet.

The Fantom DeFi Suite capabilities include liquid staking that allows users to use staked FTM as a collateral for DeFi. The fMint allows users or create or mint synthetic assets including cryptocurrencies, fiat currencies, stablecoins, and commodities.

The fLend allows people to borrow against digital assets and to make loans based on ditial assets. The fTrade allows Fantom users to trade Fantom-based digital assets without leaving their wallets.

Developers can build apps on Fantom, using Solidity, Remix, Truffle, and MetaMask. In addition, Fantom is Ethereum compatible. You can deploy and Ethereum dApps on Fantom using the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).

EVM compatibility is important because Ethereum is the world’s most popular blockchain. Investopedia estimates there were over 200,000 ERC-20 compatible or Ethereum compatible tokens in existence in October 2019.  

Fantom Staking

Fantom integrates the industry-leading oracle providers: Chainlink and Band Protocol. Chainlink and Band Protocol offer flexible access to price feeds. Users can add The Graph’s (GRT) subgraphs to Fantom through Fantom’s Web3JS APIs. This allows users to build wallets, explorers, and data analysis tools on Fantom.

Fantom users can earn rewards by staking their FTM. Staking the FTM ahelps secure the netowrk. Fantom claims users can early an annual percentage yield (APY) of 13% by staking. They also claim users can earn a stake-as-you-go yield of 4%. Fantom was offering a current annual percentage rate of 12.21% on 6 September 2021.

Fantom stakers can chose the rewards the rewards they want. In addition, Fantom lets stakers compound the rewards every few hours to increase returns. Fantom stakers get access to a synthetic asset they call sFTM. You can use sFTM for lending, borrowing, trading, and minting synthetic assets in the Fantom DeFi ecosystem.

Fantom Solutions

Fantom tools include Fantom Wallets, the FTMscan, and a Fantom Opera Explorer. The Fantom Wallets are compatible with the Ledger Nano cryptocurrency wallet.

Potential Fantom solutions could include financial markets for digital, clearing and settlement solutions for large financial institutions, such as investment banks. In addition, they claim you could build a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) on the Fantom blockchain. Other theoretical Fantom solutions could include decentralized finance, tokenized real estate, smart healthcare, and supply chain management.

Interestingly, they offer Fantom Enterprise Solutions. Proposed Fantom Enterprise Solutions include pharmaceutical supply chains.

What Value does Fantom (FTM) Have?

Fantom (FTM) is no relation to the minor Marvel Comics superhero Fantomex. However, Fantom offers some value.

On 9 September 2021, CoinMarketCap listed Fantom as the 39th largest cryptocurrency. In addition, CoinMarketCap gave Fantom (FTM) a Coin Price of $1.69, a Market Cap of $4.299 billion, a Fully Diluted Market Cap of $5.64 billion and a 24-Hour Market Cap of $1.913 billion on the same day. They based those numbers on a Circulating Supply of 2.55 billion FTM, a Maximum Supply of 3.175 billion FTM and a Total Supply of 2.545 billion FTM.

In contrast, Coinbase gave Fantom a Coin Price of $1.68, a Market Cap of $4.6 billion, and a 24-Hour Market Volume of $2.1 billion on the same day. They based those numbers on a Circulating Supply of 2.5 billion FTM.

In conclusion, I think Fantom (FTM) is a good cryptocurrency with an enormous potential. I believe this because I think they built Fantom with uses that could make money in the real world in mind.

In particular, I think Fantom’s potential as a Central Bank Digital Currency and the Enterprise Solutions could generate enormous amounts of money. For example, a small country’s central bank could use Fantom to build a digital currency. For example, Bolivia’s Central Bank could use Fantom to create a digital boliviano.

I think Fantom is a cryptocurrency every speculator needs to keep under observation.

 Originally published at https://marketmadhouse.com on September 8, 2021.