Dear Friends,
Wow! What a day! After a cyberattack last night, we’re seeing a barrage of criticism on the Web, especially from disappointed Bitcoin and Ripple fans.
Understood! Many see strictly our letter grades and not our logic behind them. Others misunderstand our primary goal: To help investors reduce risk and find the coins with the most upside potential. That means we not only consider fundamentals like adoption and history, but also investor risk-and- reward metrics based on price action.
Some prime examples:
Why don’t we give Bitcoin an A? Actually, thanks to Bitcoins strong adoption, brand, and security, it does merit an A … but only on our Fundamental Index.
Problem: That’s just one of our four major metrics. Meanwhile, Bitcoin falls short in two other important areas: Our Risk Index, reflecting extreme price volatility and our Technology Index, reflecting Bitcoin’s weaknesses in governance, energy consumption and scalability. As soon as the metrics on these improve, an upgrade for Bitcoin is likely.
Why doesn’t Ripple get a higher grade? Like Bitcoin, it gets an A for fundamentals, but it scores poorly on our Risk Index due to repeated price crashes. Its Technology Index gets clipped due to heavy centralization and control by its creators.
How come Dogecoin is rated on par with the likes of Ripple? This is indeed surprising. But the numbers are the numbers, and they include surprising facts: Dogecoin’s usage is greater than that of Bitcoin Cash. Its usage is also greater than that of Dash and ZCash combined. Of course, that alone is not enough to bump it up above a C. But it certainly does pull it up from the D range.
Thank you very much for your input! We take it very seriously. After all, ratings are not a science. They are, and always will be, a work in progress.
The Weiss Ratings Team