STORJ as an investment for non-node operators?

Hello, I made an initial investment in SJCX/STORJ long time back. I have held STORJ with me since then GBP 1K worth. I have had good returns on the project. I tried being a host but the economics do not work out for me given I do not have a lot of storage space. I am thinking of getting out of STORJ and into other coins with higher probability of price appreciation as I am holding it purely for investment purposes. Also understand that the project itself is a utility token. Does anyone have a view on STORJ price or why should I carry on holding it for investment purposes? It is just locking in cash, cant do anything with them for the moment.

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Wrong, you can. You can use Storj to pay for cloud services in Tardigrade. Thatā€™s what the token exists for :wink:
In my opinion, any crypto project thatā€™s not a utility token, will fail, sooner or later.

Well itā€™s one of the very few tokens that is tied to a production ready service backed by strict SLAs and a business model that makes profit on every transaction for basically all parties involved. That said, holding storj tokens is not an investment in storj and stability of the token is actually good for all parties involved as well. I do see the value going up if storj manages to scale the customer base. But Iā€™m not expecting it to spike. Iā€™m also not an expert in this, so take what I say with a grain of salt. For what itā€™s worth, Iā€™ve spent my storj tokens on HDD space as I expect to make more off that than on token appreciation.

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Thank you all. I havent thought about spending the token because since I see it as an investment i.e. better than fiat. But from what I gather you guys dont :slight_smile:

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Well keep in mind that youā€™re asking on a forum that is frequented mostly by node operators and customers. People usually arenā€™t here for the investment side of things.

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The same thoughts I have too. I invested in Storj Token due to I thought there is a real world product behind. However the token always go down.

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Yes - which forum shall I go to for investment advice on storj? Could not find any.

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Iā€™m not sure that you will find anywhere that focuses on storj ā€˜coinā€™ as an investment opportunity. The coins role is that of transferring of funds between Storj and third parties, scarcity* and or ā€˜assetā€™ appreciation are not really part of the business model.

Just consider the fact that currently the only business user of Storj coins is basically Storj to make payments and maybe purchase back from the market to again be used to make payments. The tardigrade side of the business will accept Storj coins, but for most customers the use of credit cards is more likely to be the best option.

What use/value would these coins have if Storj stopped operating or moved away from them as a solution. Another issue is that if Storj stopped operating the people tasked with closing down the business are also tasked with getting the best value for Storjā€™s remaining assets - if the Storj coin has any value on the open market it will be in their best interest to create the remaining unissued and sell them into the market at the best possible price. - So resulting in a large increase in supply and no business use for the coins.

  • the only time that scarcity may play a part is if vast numbers of coins are ā€˜lostā€™ due to storage node operates not converting their payments back to ā€˜realā€™ money. With the total possible supply being so high this could take rather a long time.

Ok - so what you are saying is that STORJ tokens are going to get redudndant. They were used to create a business and given that is done and that credit cards will become mainstream - STORJ is of no other use.

You are right, and gives me more fodder to get out of STORJ.

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There are a couple of things in that explanation I donā€™t necessarily agree with. If you pay for tardigrade with Storj, you get a decent discount. So there is a pretty good reason to go that route. And sure, currently only Storj Labs provides a service you can pay for with Storj. But the plan is to in the future also have third party satellite operators who could use the token as well. So while it is currently pretty tied to the fate of Storj Labs, in the future that may be less so. And the more customers will come on board, the more demand there will be for the token. All that said, value generation on the platform is not about the token. So while I expect that the value might go up with interest in the platform, that is not the primary goal.

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Large scale users of Tardigrade have access to ā€œdiscounts based on bulk pricingā€ where the price difference between cash and coin is most likely compressed. At the same time, few businesses are going to introduce crypto coins to their business processes if they can at all help it and those who do will purchase coins and pass them directly on to Tardigrade and so they will be available for reuse. So while all node operators are paid with coin only a percentage of those storing data via Tardigrade will be using coins. Neither of these coin users has any reason to hold onto coins, beyond the issue of small node operators receiving micropayments that make no financial sense to convert to another coin or currency.

In many ways, the issue for the foreseeable future is not one of demand, but supply. Storj has a lot of coins at its disposal that can be released onto the market as and when it sees fit. In a stable functioning market, this makes Storj the final arbiter of ā€˜valueā€™ until they run out of ā€˜coinsā€™. In an unstable market, you pay your money and take your chances.

I agree with most of your message, but this part isnā€™t true. The vast majority of coins are in locked tranches. So they canā€™t just dump these tokens on the market.

There is a lot of information on that here.

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ā€œThese tokens have been split into eight equal sized tranches, which are currently locked, with expiration dates over the eight successive quartersā€. So over 2 years they could release another 245m coins, into a market place that has a total size of 425M.

I think this gives them enough flexibility to manage the market for some time as that is an average of just over 10m coins a month.

It is all structure clearly and cleanly with re-lock rules and notification processes - all of which allows for the running of an ordered market. So any ā€˜investmentā€™ potential is under the control of Storj and dependent on the status of Storj.

I have done quite well with investing in the stock market as well as occasional options trading. I try to invest or trade in sectors I am familiar with, for me luckily that is technology.

When it comes to crypto I resisted trading or investing due to my real lack of understanding those markets. Due to the rampant speculation in crypto and ERC-20, I think there is little basis for the value to price in most cases. As far as I am concerned, crypto and ERC-20 are purely speculative and full of risk.

When it comes to Storj - as long as I have the potential for a reasonable return on my SNO investment AND as long as I can exchange Storj tokens for other currencies then I can evaluate the prospects.

Usually in a mature market you look at three factors to determine whether you can invest in something:

  1. Business viability - the organizationā€™s ability to execute on a viable business plan
  2. User desirability - the demand by potential customers
  3. Technical feasibility - is the product functional

However having all three is no guarantee that capital investment will pay off - and more so in immature markets like crypto/ERC-20.

When I look at other similar storage competitors (Storj, SIA, FileCoin, InterNXT, Blockstack and iExec) most of them have terrible track records as an investment, except for Filecoin which seems purely speculative as the technical support seems like a train wreck. FIL is a Silicon Valley darling right now, but suitable only for trading in my opinion.

Frankly this post has inspired me to put together a rig for each storage concept that provides revenue to small scale storage providers simply so I can better understand that market.

As far as the question about where to go for advice, certainly not to forums that have incentive to ā€˜pump and dumpā€™ coins. As I said I think the market is too volatile for certainty around long term investments. I have bought into various ICOs and coins, but I consider that a huge gamble. For a real investment, I look to sources such as CrunchBase to get the facts about organizations, competitors, market cap, press releases and news, as well as investors.

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Given where STORJ is - I could not help but come back to this forum. I am still invested in STORJ as I could not liquidate due to various reasons (got busy etc.)
What is your guys view? Why did the price move up? Has your view on STORJ changed?

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Fast forward to one year later, I hope you decided to hang on to your STORJ. It had a nice spike in value after Coinbase picked it up for trading this month, up over 350%. Best of luck!

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The STORJ token is an utility token, this is the only purpose and it should not be treated as an investment.

As a reminder, we donā€™t participate in trading competitions, airdrops, or conversations that could be interpreted as speculation about the price of STORJ token. As you may know, Storj Labs aims to be leaders in compliance and governance, and our current policy and approach is to avoid these types of activities.

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I have not traded any of the Storj I have earned as a SNO, and I am glad I have held onto it.

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Wellā€¦ I meanā€¦ Then it would be worth nothing. Storj Labs doesnā€™t speculate on the token or provide any kind of advice, which is wise. But we wouldnā€™t lock all the tokens up in time based vaults if we werenā€™t concerned about its value.

Whether or not someone wants to invest in it is up to them. For that matter, anything is an investment if you treat it that way. I could buy a bunch of bricks and hope the price of bricks goes up. The important thing is that as a Storj Employee, we donā€™t provide guidance on it unless it comes from the legal department.

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Iā€™m certain that this is the wrong place to ask this question. I didnā€™t really see an appropriate place so please move it or delete it or whatever if it is. Iā€™m very new to crypto currency in general, but I hear a lot of people say to invest in a token/coin that has utility. That seems like solid advice. I think Storj is a very innovative and great idea. Thatā€™s why Iā€™m getting involved. The utility of the token, as far as I can tell, is to benefit Storj, the company. They charge the customer fiat, which for the time being is ā€œreal moneyā€ and reward the SNO with tokensā€¦ that they created. This is great because it allows them to give the end user a huge discount. Holding Storj coin isnā€™t equivalent to a relevant stake in the company though, so isnā€™t it basically like Chuck E. Cheese tickets for adults? Why would the value of the coin/token itself increase in value? Unless there is a mass adoption of Storj token to be used as a currency, then the limited supply may give it value, but thatā€™s completely removed from its utility. I hope this doesnā€™t come off as negative towards anybody. Iā€™m just trying to wrap my head around crypto still. Forgive my ignorance.