Educational Post: What Is Tokenomics and Why Does It Matter? | APEX WHALE LIBRARY
Educational Post:
What Is Tokenomics and Why Does It Matter?
Tokenomics is a term that captures a token’s economics. It describes the factors that impact a token’s use and value, including but not limited to the token’s creation and distribution, supply and demand, incentive mechanisms, and token burn schedules. For crypto projects, well-designed tokenomics is critical to success. Assessing a project’s tokenomics before deciding to participate is essential for investors and stakeholders.
Let’s look at bitcoin as an example. The total supply of bitcoin is pre-programmed to be 21 million coins. The way bitcoins are created and entered into circulation is by mining. Miners are given some bitcoins as a reward when a block is mined every 10 minutes or so.
The reward, also called block subsidy, is halved every 210,000 blocks. By this schedule, a halving takes place every four years. Since January 3, 2009, when the first block, or the genesis block, was created on the Bitcoin network, the block subsidy has been halved three times from 50 BTC to 25 BTC, 12.5 BTC, and 6.25 BTC currently.
Based on these rules, it’s easy to calculate that around 328,500 bitcoins will be mined in 2022 by dividing the total number of minutes of the year by 10 (because a block is mined every 10 minutes) and then multiplying by 6.25 (because each block gives out 6.25 BTC as rewards). Therefore, the number of bitcoins mined each year can be predicted, and the last bitcoin is expected to be mined around the year 2140.
Key elements of Tokenomics
As a catch-all term for a wide range of factors influencing a cryptocurrency’s value, “tokenomics” refers first and foremost to the structure of a cryptocurrency’s economy as designed by its creators. Here are some of the most important factors to consider when looking at a cryptocurrency’s tokenomics.
Token supply
Supply and demand are the primary factors impacting the price of any good or service. The same goes for crypto. There are several critical metrics measuring a token’s supply.
Token Utility
Token utility refers to the use cases designed for a token. For example, BNB’s utility includes powering the BNB Chain, paying transaction fees and enjoying trading fee discounts on the BNB Chain, and serving as community utility token on the BNB Chain ecosystem. Users can also stake BNB with various products within the ecosystem to earn additional income.
Analysing token distribution
Aside from supply and demand, it’s essential to look at how tokens are distributed. Large institutions and individual investors behave differently. Knowing what types of entities hold a token will give you insight into how they are likely to trade their tokens, which will in turn impact the token’s value.
Tokenomics is a fundamental concept to understand if you want to get into crypto. It’s a term capturing the major factors affecting the value of a token. It’s important to note that no single factor provides a magical key. Your assessment should be based on as many factors as possible and analyzed as a whole. Tokenomics can be combined with other fundamental analysis tools to make an informed judgment on a project’s future prospects and its token’s price.
