---
title: "Notes on Nano"
description: |
  A short description of the post.
author:
  - name: Anson Biggs
    url: https://ansonbiggs.com
date: 11-27-2021
output:
  distill::distill_article:
    self_contained: false
---

# The Current State of Crypto

In 2021 news about cryptocurrency has been dominated by *meme coins*. It is without a doubt that cryptos 2021 bull run has been thanks to the hype around coins with zero utility besides the ability to rapidly shoot up in value. The hype surrounding coins with actual utlity has been disappointingly low in 2021. 

The current narrative of the largest coins is that bitcoin is going to change financial infrastructure and keep governments from taking our freedom. Ethereum is going to be the backbone for everything from the internet, to art, to the mortgage on your house. The rest of the top 10 (and most of the top 100) coins are either smart contract platforms with little community gunning for Ethereum's spot or meme coins promising valuations that challenge the wealth of the worlds economy. 

## Return of the Utility

The coin I want to talk about is nano ($xno). As of writing it is ranked #169 by market capitalization. Nano does one thing and executes on it perfectly: being a currency. 

![Market Caps of Common Coins](caps.svg)

In order to be used for transactions a currency needs to be exchanged in seconds. Above is all the coins listed on Kraken along with the confirmation time. Confirmation time is the amount of time that Kraken recommends waiting before you can be sure that a transaction has been cemented by the blockchain and can not be reversed. Their times are a bit conservative but considering they use the same time for all sizes of transactions I think the values are accurate. To be fair, most of the coins on this list were never designed with buying coffee in mind but I think the comparison is still important since it is commonly believed that the only thing holding bitcoin and its derivates back from being used everywhere is hitting a critical mass of adoption among retail. There is some progress being made but Bitcon today is far from being capable for use as a currency. 

![Market Caps of Fast Coins](fast.svg)

Here are all of the coins that are capable of settling in less than 1 second which is about on par with a credit card. Solana stands out the most since it is the only smart contract on the list and has the highest market cap. Solana has a ton of potential but I don't believe that a coin with a smart contract platform can compete long term with a coin specifically deisigned to be a currency. The DeFi and Parachain coins are more governance tokens than actual cryptocurrencies so they aren't designed with the scale required for use as a currency. That leaves Ripple and Nano which have wildly different market caps. Ripple is quite [controversial]() since it is centralized to the point that I would argue its closer to Visa than Bitcoin. 