Metaverse is a cryptocurrency that has been around for a long time, but it is on a very tough road at the moment. So, what does 2018 hold for Metaverse? Should ETP holders look into the coming months with great expectations?

ETP is currently ranked as number 225 on CoinMarketCap, and it has a price of 0,85 USD at the moment. The all-time high price of ETP is approximately 6 USD, meaning that ETP has taken a big fall from its great days. We do not need to go back more than 3 months in time to January 5th when the price of one ETP was 5 USD. But, here we are just about to finish the first quarter of 2018, and we all wonder what the future holds for us. So, I have tried to gather some information about ETP, and maybe this information will give us a better foundation for understanding what 2018 might have in store for ETP and ETP holders.

The general atmosphere among ETP holders

I have said it before, most people who bring their money into the crypto-world, do so because they want to make money. They have hopes that their money will multiply themselves, and as a result, the lucky person will soon drive a Lamborghini on the moon. But, if you check out the general atmosphere among ETP holders, you will quickly catch some other vibes. The Metaverse team has been good at staying quiet, which means that followers and fans know little about what is going on around the project.

There was recently an AMA with Eric Gu (Metaverse CEO) on the Metaverse Reddit. The number of questions asked proves clearly that the ETP community is quite little (few questions), but it should also mean that Eric Gu should have been able to answer most questions asked. Unfortunately, that did not happen, but with quite a big delay only a few questions were answered. That was a pity, but what was even sadder was that the answers given by Eric Gu didn’t manage to set the ETP community on fire either.

Metaverse and Dapps

Lots of people invested in ETP as we were “promised” that lots of Dapps were to be built using the platform. Since then not much has happened, and in one of Eric Gu’s answers in the AMA he said as follows:

“Last month we had a pretty big project called CSD. It is a financial application from Malaysia. This token actually got listed on KEX.com already. KEX.com also listed ETP. We have projects that get on to the Metaverse platform. I know we didn’t do a very good job of telling you guys the good news, we apologize for this, but yes we have a lot of Dapps planned this month and next month. I will say mainly financial related Dapps, and a major gaming related Dapp as well. One more is philanthropy related project. It is coming.”

Something has got to be wrong here. If Metaverse sees that their followers are eager for news, how come they miss sharing the good stuff when they occur? They have lots of Dapps coming this month and the next month of which we know nothing, and no information has been given so far. So, stuff is happening behind the scene. But, will they tell us the good news the next time? Will good news about some financial application used in Malaysia impact the total value of the Metaverse token?

Conclusion: We are promised quite a lot of Dapps on the Metaverse platform in the coming month, but we do not really know much more about it besides that.

Metaverse and partners

There has been some news now and then about Metaverse partnering up with other blockchain companies. It was in November 2017 that an article was released with information about a partnership between Aion and ETP. I hope I am wrong, but the entire goal of Aion is to help different blockchains communicate with one another. The goal of Aion is to help a token merge from being an ERC20 token and to turn into an independently running platform. This is getting more and more important, and for that reason (among others), Aion was also featured by PBC recently as one of the top investments in the crypto-market recently.

But, will the Aion partnership give anything to the ETP token holders, or will it only create a foundation that makes it possible for information kept on the Metaverse blockchain to be moved to other chains, and the same way back? That means, it is a foundation, but it will not really influence ETP in itself greatly (yet)?

The cooperation with CPChain sounds much more interesting to me, and that might actually bring value to the Metaverse token. If you read the article you will see that they actually are speaking of a real “in-use” cooperation, where “Metaverse will provide CPChain with efficient, convenient data digitization and asset transfer capabilities, increasing transaction security and individual privacy.”

Conclusion: There are some partners, and there are clearly things happening and conversations held that we do not know of. But, it would be wise of the Metaverse team to step out of the shadows, because few people want to cooperate with a company working in the shadow, and instead, they will cooperate and work with Qtum, Icon, and other similar platforms.

Metaverse and exchanges

At the moment you can buy Metaverse at Bitfinex, RightBTC, HitBTC, Open Ledger DEX, and some other exchanges. Bitfinex is by far the largest exchange, but they now require all new users to deposit at least 10,000 USD of value before they can start trading, making sure all shrimp traders stay far away. That is a tragedy, as most new traders will stay far away from the exchange and sign up for other exchanges as well. They can use RightBTC instead, which has a fairly good volume, or maybe SHitBTC, but the latter has terrible deposit and withdrawal fees, making it a poor option. During the recent AMA, Eric Gu said: “It is not a secret that you need coins to get listed on Exchanges. For the past months, ETP got listed on 4-5 different Exchanges. I will provide a list later-on, but you can also find them on our official website if you like.”

Well, the new exchanges haven’t made much of a difference and haven’t brought a lot of volume to Metaverse. They would be in desperate need to get on exchanges like Binance or Bittrex, which would increase the volume drastically and make it much easier for new users to invest in the project. There was a lot of discussion in October 2017 about whether Metaverse could have been added to Kucoin, but supposedly asked for 5 BTC from Kucoin in order to let that happen. There hasn’t been any official comment from Metaverse on this matter, so we actually know very little about what really happened.

Eric Gu said the following in an answer to another question during the recent AMA: “Also, we will be listed on many new exchanges very soon. Metaverse Foundation will probably invest into some of the licensed exchange directly. So we will get listed on those exchanges.”

Conclusion: There might be some new exchanges coming, but if those are similar to the recent exchanges, they will not impact anything. There are way too many decentralized exchanges online used by nearly nobody, and half of them will die in the coming years. For ETP to be impacted, large exchanges like Bittrex, Binance, Poloniex, Kraken, or maybe Kucoin would be needed.

Coming up in 2018

One of the most promising answers during the recent AMA with Eric Gu was his answer about activity in 2018. He wrote: “I think 2018 will be a big year for blockchain and for Metaverse. Last year, we only have a big Metaverse market like China, and this year we are looking at Japanese market, Middle East market and South East market. So, we have lots to do in terms of applications. Meanwhile, my CTO Chenhao and I will add more functionalities at lower infrastructure layer. It is going to be a grand year 2018 for Metaverse.”

Eric Gu is not like Justin Sun (Tron CEO), pumping the value of his own coin in all directions. That is probably for the greater good of the coin, and when he says that he believes that 2018 is going to be a fantastic year for Metaverse, I somehow want to believe him. Recently one of the ETP lead engineers (named HAO CHEN) spent some time at the ETP Discord channel to speak with followers. This was a very positive experience for the listeners, and there they also mentioned a possible rebranding which might carry the name “Entropy.” A rebranding would probably have a positive impact, at least if it is followed up with better communication (something that has been promised by Eric Gu as well). Metaverse also had a blockchain meetup in their Shanghai office, and at that meeting, several of the big leaders were present (including Eric Gu). If Metaverse can continue on this path and meet up with common people and share information in a better way, that will for sure impact ETP in a positive way.

Should you invest in ETP right now?

There are more than thousand cryptocurrencies to choose from at the moment. Why should you invest in ETP? One of the major reasons is probably that the current value is 8 times smaller than its all-time high. So, if the ball gets started, it might grow rapidly. But, if you are looking for a project that has lots of solid partners, good communication and products that will clearly help the world (in the near future), then I would not invest in ETP. Projects like Ethos (with their Universal Wallet), Vechain (with their mainnet that will be launched and a product already in use), Substratum (with their platform fighting for an uncensored Internet), and ICON with their mainnet on which we are promised lots of fantastic Dapps and more already.

Conclusion: If I were to invest 10,000 USD in one, two, three projects at the moment, I would for sure place my money somewhere else than in the Metaverse token. But, if I were to place my money in thirty projects, ETP might get to be one of the lucky thirty!

But who cares, in crypto, anything can happen!

What I am about to write now is real stupidity, but let us face it. In the crypto-world, anything can happen. One of my personal favorite projects is VeChain, and after they released information about cooperation with DNV GL, BMW, InfoCorp and several other companies, their value still went downwards. And then you have the example of Dentacoin (DCN) which had a 1000% increase in 4 days at the start of 2018 (without any special news). In the crypto-world, anything can happen, and if Bitcoin decides to go on a new bull run, the value of ETP will jump up as well, with or without news and good communication from the Metaverse team.