As the crypto world explodes, many investors are looking specifically to solutions with scale and speed. Crypto-enthustiast Chris MacDonald and The Motley Fool's Eric Bleeker, in this clip from "The Crypto Show" on Backstage Pass, recorded on Nov. 10, discuss how Amp (AMP +0.00%) may be a top cryptocurrency to watch for those investors.
Eric Bleeker: Let's look at Amp. This is 2.5 billion in market cap, it's the 70th largest crypto.
It provides lightning-fast transaction times and it's accepted at 41,336 locations. That sounds impressive, but that's like being accepted at Subway or something [laughs] so you know, it's still early innings in that regard. Let's dive in. Why is Amp interesting?
Chris MacDonald: Yeah, that's a really good intro. I think it's important to keep things in context for sure.
Amp is one that I just started looking at it's created by Flexa. It's an open-source Ethereum (ETH +1.66%) based protocol. The advantage with Amp is it provides lightning-fast transaction times. The big pain point with a lot of crypto users is when you're trying to transfer money over any blockchain really you're going to see two things.
One is there's going to be some fee involved, and in the case of anything based on top of Ethereum, like you touched on before, there is gas fees that can be pretty significant. The same thing goes for transferring via Bitcoin (BTC +1.22%) and the speed as well. How long it takes to get a transaction. If you pay the higher gas fees to get what they call a faster quick transfer, it could still take a few minutes. When you're looking at paying less fees it could take half an hour, an hour, or even longer depending on how many transactions are going through the network.
But Amp has stepped in to solve this issue, and this platform does this by requiring collateral from those parties initiating the transfer. Essentially, based on that, a smart contract will execute given enough collateral. If for some reason the transaction fails, the merchant will be rewarded or compensated in AMP tokens.
What that means for the commerce utility or the commerce use-case behind crypto is it makes these transactions more secure for merchants. They can know that they're going to get the money that's owed to them, similar to processing a credit card transaction or something of that sort, and instantaneous payments are a way of life that we just take for granted, but in the crypto world, that's not really how it works right now. Amp solves that, and it's a pioneer in that regard.
There are some other networks that are doing similar things, but Amp's non-inflationary token as well. I know we touched on that a little bit during the show. There's a fixed supply. From a macro perspective, it's definitely an interesting token to look at from that angle, and as you mentioned, there are a number of partnerships that the company has worked with to grow at current network across a number of real businesses.
There's a real use-case, like you said before, we look at cryptocurrencies with utility, and Amp is one that's definitely creating utility for its users.
Bleeker: I know people are going to get tired of me asking this but 1-10, what is your interest stand after some of the initial research?
MacDonald: Definitely higher, I would put it probably near a seven or an eight for now. I think the speed aspect for me is a big deal. When you compare the various blockchain networks protocols against each other, there's just a real compelling reason to consider Amp.
