In this post, I will attempt, in the spirit of Scott Alexander’s forecasts, to predict with varying degrees of confidence the prices of a bunch of various cryptocurrencies and crypto assets at 12am+10 min on July 9, 2017, with short explanations and mentions of the sources of uncertainty. I will only attempt to do it for those assets in the top-100 valuations on Coinmarketcap on which I have done some research and about which I can say I have some understanding. Needless to say, this post should not be considered as anything remotely like a piece of professional investment advice. It is more of an amusing learning excercise at this point for me. But I of course will be happy if my predictions turn out to be broadly correct and even more happy if they help someone. [Disclosure: I’ have holdings of GNT, AMP and SWT.]

Bitcoin’s BTC: $3000 with 60% confidence. The situation with Bitcoin is currently influenced the most by the scaling debate and the threat of chain split posed by the competing proposals both of which are essentially hard forks, even though the UASF supporters pretend that it isn’t one. It is not difficult for merchants to switch from accepting Bitcoin to other cryptocurrencies, especially those whose codebase and money supply algorithm are similar to Bitcoin’s like Dash, so chain split fears may potentially fuel a rapid switch away from Bitcoin. This may result in a rapid loss of market value. But overall major changes are unlikely before July 9, even though the increasing general recognition of blockchain recognition may by inertia push Bitcoin substantially higher than $3000 given its network effects and stature. Hence, the low confidence rate.

Ethereum’s Ether: $300 with 80% confidence. Ethereum’s fortunes currently look much brighter but the fact that its token Ether has undergone such a rapid growth in the last several months makes it somewhat unlikely to experience further dramatic gains. At the same time, many immediately usable Ethereum-based DApp projects (for instance, Golem, Augur and Swarm City) are on the verge of releasing production-ready versions. They may ensure that there is no major downward price correction. Rapid price growth of Eth may occur if certain DApps become very popular, the Raiden implementation of lightning network is released and perceived as a game changer, Bitcoin flounders because of a chain split. The only major source of negative uncertainty is the potential of major exploits like those that allowed major DDOS attacks last autumn.

Dash’s DASH: $200 with 60% confidence. The prospects of Dash very much depend on what happens to Bitcoin’s scaling debate. News reports such as this suggest that there may be a sudden massive switch to Dash by Bitcoin-accepting merchants. Dash has certain major advantages over Bitcoin. It has built-in relative anonymity, flexible community that easily solved their own scaling issue, etc. A massive switch from Bitcoin to Dash would of course result in a rapid price growth. But such a switch is still unlikely before July 9. At the same time, worries around Bitcoin and some merchants switching to Dash may well push its price a bit higher.

Golem’s GNT: $2 with 90% confidence. The Golem team is on the verge of releasing its first product — Brass Golem, a DApp which will allow distributed CGI rendering. From what I have seen in the discussions on various forums, the software already does what it is supposed to do and the work being done is to make it better usable, so the only thing that could cripple Golem is if it turns out not to be successful economically, meaning it will not be able to reduce costs significantly compared to cloud computing. But in the short run, the release of the first truly big Ethereum app is almost certain to fuel a major price increase, perhaps even beyond $2.

ZCash’s ZEC: $300 with 80% confidence. The development community behind ZCash appears to have prioritized the unrivalled-anonymity-providing technology based on zero-knowledge proofs and other core tech compared to usability, and this may well have limited adoption. Major breakthroughs are unlikely in the coming month but ZCash may well grow slightly, especially if Ether continues to grow, given the fruitful collaboration and potential inter-operability between the two. The price of ZEC may, however, increase quite a bit above $300 if the general strong upward trend for crypto assets continues. But, in my view, this is unlikely. It may also fall a lot if the upward trend really is a bubble, as lots of commentators are claiming without much evidence.

Augur’s REP: $50 with 80% confidence. As mentioned above, the Augur team appear to be on the verge of releasing their decentralized prediction markets-enabling software on the Ethereum mainnet. However, in the case of decentralized prediction markets it is unlikely that they will immediately become hugely popular because they are not yet hugely popular in general. In addition to this, the way the REP token is planned to be used within the Augur ecosystem is somewhat less obvious than with projects like Golem, Swarm City or VDice. The former two employ tokens as a unique means of payment for the transactions they fuel. VDice’s VSL token is somewhat similar to a share of stock. REP, on the other hand, is a means that will fuel a somewhat less intuitive forecaster reputation mechanism.

Synereo’s AMP: $2 with 80% confidence. Currently, the Synereo team that was set back by a split with one of its leaders Greg Meredith over the long-term development vision, is finishing the development of a product called Qrator. This will be a browser plug-in which will allow users to amplify web content by as many real AMPs as they wish. There will also be a website on which they will be able to share the amplified links, and if other users amplify them, they will receive part of their AMPs. The rest will go to the content creators. I am bullish at least about the short-term prospects of Synereo because its tokens are still relatively cheap compared even to its competitor Basic Attention Token that is in the earlier stages of development. The potential flaws that may limit Synereo’s appeal are the use of the Bitcoin blockchain with its slow confirmation times and high fees via the Omni protocol and the uncertainty about the circulating supply.

WeTrust’s TRST: $0.70 with 60% confidence. WeTrust is definitely a cool project with a high potential but its technology (which already includes a working version of the ROSCA software) does not appear to be immediately usable because it requires some social engineering, not in the bad sense of the word but in the sense of people forming the existing lending circles attempting to use a sophisticated blockchain-based product. One can imagine that such people mostly live in developing countries and probably mostly are not sophisticated bleeding-edge technology users. However, TRST is relatively cheap compared to other tokens and can be carried substantially above and below $0.70 by the general crypto-market trends, hence the low confidence rate.

Swarm City’s SWT: $20 with 70% confidence. The Swarm City team has set June 15 as the date of release of its first product — Boardwalk. This will be a piece of software which will allow peer-to-peer transactions involving SWT. From their buzzing Slack and Github activity, it appears that they are on track to meeting this deadline. The coming release will not have a sophisticated ride-sharing functionality, even though it will allow ride-sharing but that is planned to be remedied in the future releases. SWT is still relatively cheap compared to other currencies, is almost certainly undervalued based on the bad reputation created by the founder of its predecessor Arcade City project who has fortunately been sidelined for some time through a brand fork, and will be immediately usable in a relatively intuitive way. This makes a big price increase very likely, potentially even beyond $20. The sources of negative uncertainty are the potential for bugs in the rapidly developed software and the potential difficulty for ordinary users to buy small amounts of SWT for regular transactions.