"Unit bias" and trading behaviour in the cryptocurrency market

in #cryptocurrency7 years ago (edited)

How can we take advantage of unit bias psychology?

Unit bias in cryptocurrency is the concept that buyers are more enticed to buy a whole unit of a given currency instead of a fractional quantity. For example, anyone now entering the cryptocurrency world could spend about $300 for one whole Litecoin, or spend the same amount of money for 0.018 Bitcoin.

Something about buying the whole, single unit of LTC feels better than buying a tiny portion of one Bitcoin. One could take this a step further, and buy about 100 Ripple for the same price. Feels better, right? Ripple is very appealing to new buyers because of this unit bias compared to Bitcoin. How about buying 30 000 Dogecoin for the same price? Now you're talking! Much win!

It is because of this natural way of thinking about value that we see people move toward exploring altcoins. Last January, Verge currency was worth about 0.00002 dollars per coin. It rose in value - get this - about 1 000 000%. That's one million percent. If you had bought $100 worth of Verge a single year ago, you would now have about $1 million USD. The price has dropped a bit since its peak, so yeah, you might only have about $750 000 now. Boo-hoo.

You could argue about the validity of these ridiculous valuation increases, but you would be missing the point. The point is not to stand by and bemoan the flaws of human psychology as traffic passes by - the point is to take advantage of human psychology.

Spend some time looking for coins that have relatively small values - less than a cent. Many of them are junk. But a few stand out with good potential. Then, take a look at their circulating and total supplies. If they have a huge supply, it will be more difficult for them to increase in value. SiaCoin is a good example here that is defying odds as it has an enormous supply, but also a very low price. Even so, this is the sort of coin people feel good buying because they can buy thousands of them for what feels like a bargain. The same is true of coins like Reddcoin, Bytecoin, and Electroneum , although their circulating supply is lower than Siacoin's, which makes them have greater potential, in my opinion.

And here is the key: It doesn't matter that "it's all relative", because it isn't all relative in the average human mind. The average new investor exploring these coins for the first time sees the potential to hit the jackpot and figures, why not give it a go and hit the next Verge?

So, pick a few low circulation, low value coins and give it a try. Take advantage of herd mentality and watch your fortunes grow - if you're lucky.

It bears mentioning that any one or all of these fledgling coins could fail miserably - so it is a much larger risk, of course. Don't put serious investment money into these coins. Only risk what you can afford to lose. Think of this as a night out at the slots in slow motion. The smart money, at some point, will return to solid, established projects that will move more organically and have solid development behind them.

*This is definitely not professional trading advice - more of a night out on the town - and it's just my opinion!

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One of the effective ways to forecast estimated price of a coin is considering circulating supply in market. Despite the common belief of high numbers may refer lower value, many coins proved exactly opposite such as Ripple (XRP), SiaCoin (SC) etc. All time high levels can hit anytime by manipulation or speculation.

Agreed - you can stand to gain more, on average, with coins that are of a lower circulation, but Cardano, SiaCoin, and Ripple have proven that a lower circulation doesn't necessarily matter so much. I do think it's worth having a few "long-shots" as part of a portfolio. I just wouldn't bet the farm on them.

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