The 2016 economic report “On the Value of Virtual Currencies” commissioned by the Bank of Canada, found three contributing components dictating a cryptocurrency’s exchange rate: The actual use of virtual currency to execute real payments. The decision of forward-looking investors to buy virtual currency (thereby effectively regulating its supply). The elements that jointly drive future consumer adoption and merchant acceptance of virtual currency. XAC Attention Addresses Attention Addresses are linked to AMARK consumer data and have specific rules enforced by the XAC protocol. There are two key functions of attention addresses: XAC-LOCK XAC-Lock is a feature that encourages continued consumer engagement with AMARK. The XAC sent to Attention Addresses is initially locked and becomes available after a maturation period. The XAC attention awards paid to consumers continually matures into availability as new XAC is earned from ongoing attention marketing. This process encourages engagement with AMARK as attention wallets will rarely have a zero XAC balance, giving consumers a consistent flow of value to spend within the ecosystem. XAC-BURN XAC-Burn is enforced at the protocol level. All transfers to Attention Addresses require 5% of the XAC transferred to be burned. The XAC -Burn feature is designed to align interests between merchants and consumers in the AMARK ecosystem. Anytime merchants use the AMARK platform for marketing, they are supporting the value of the XAC currency as protocol rules enforces a 5% burn. As such, merchants are effectively scaling the supply of XAC to match the demand from the ecosystem. This supply-side scaling mechanism will offset new coins introduced through block rewards and pressure the price of XAC to an equilibrium reflective of demand from the ecosystem.
Factom is the first usable blockchain technology to solve real-world business problems by providing an unalterable record-keeping system. By creating a data layer on top of the Bitcoin blockchain, Factom’s distributed ledger technology secures millions of real-time records in the blockchain with a single hash using cryptographic isolation. Businesses and governments alike can use Factom to document their information so that it cannot be modified, deleted or backdated. Factom’s technology decentralizes record keeping by ensuring that the integrity of stored data remains intact, providing complete transparency, while at the same time maintaining user privacy in an increasingly digital world. The Factom project began in 2014 which puts it on the older end of the blockchain spectrum. The team has made steady progress since then. They released the first version of Factom in early 2015 and had their token sale in the middle of that year. In August of 2015, they were accepted into the Plug and Play FinTech accelerator and were chosen as one of Austin’s A-List start-ups in May 2016. Based out of Austin, TX, the core team has multiple members with several years of experience in the blockchain space. Peter Kirby, Factom Co-founder and CEO, and Abhi Dobhal, VP Product Management, previously worked together at CoinTerra, Inc – a producer of ASIC miners for Bitcoin. The price of a Factoid is directly tied to the amount of network usage. As more businesses join the network, it will become more costly to submit Entries which will, in turn, affect the Factoid price. Once the number of Factoids being burned outpaces the 73,000 that are created each month, the currency will become deflationary. This may drive the price up even further.