In the first of this series, InvestItIn.com focuses on a masternode coin to give you the inside track on the scorers and scammers. First up is decentralized marketplace platform Syscoin.

Syscoin is the third largest coin (in terms of market cap) operating a masternode and one of the few blockchain systems that serves a viable, working product (in this case Blockmarket) a fully decentralized marketplace for exchanging goods. With many masternodes offering little more than exaggerated ROIs and producing millions of coins of little real-world utility, Syscoin’s business model is refreshingly practical. It has, however, had a bumpy journey. It first emerged in 2014 as the lovechild of a Bitcoin fork. It remained a chip off the old blockchain, facilitating merge mining – the possibly satanic act of mining two currencies using the same algorithm – and developed its first desktop app last year, currently running version 3.0 with its marketplace up and running.

For the first three years of its existence, Syscoin’s token, the SYS, rarely reached over the $0.01 mark, but in recent months prices have increased, boosted by its high placing in Richtopia’s Top 100 Blockchain Companies to Watch and its listing on Binance. The price of what UK’s Telegraph newspaper dubbed “Bitcoin’s smarter, cheaper little brother” started to swell and was up to $0.60 by March. While it hasn’t reached these heights since (it currently trades for just under $0.20) there is considerable hype around the project still and it could be the blockchain project that crosses over into the mainstream in late 2018.

Yes, but will it make you any money? Well, possibly. As we are on the topic of masternodes here, the ROI is 11.39%, which is only meaningful if the coin holds its value. A full masternode will set you back around $17,000 at time of writing (July 2018), which may be out of reach to most investors, but pools are in the works so it will be possible to have a share in a masternode soon.

Investitin caught up with Sysoin’s Marketing Director Brad Hammerstron to see if he could live up to his extraordinarily manly name and shed more light on the benefits of investing in the product.

Syscoin appears to be gaining attention after a long time existing under the radar. With lots of blockchain projects struggling, what does Syscoin offer to investors that other coins lack?

Syscoin has many advantages over other projects. Development is not only driven by a decentralized governance and proposal system which pays for marketing and development but also by Blockchain Foundry Inc. which is traded on the Canadian Stock Exchange under the symbol BCFN. BCFN develops third-party applications on top of the Syscoin platform and many features that make their way to the Syscoin platform are real-world requirements from their customers.

Syscoin is a complete blockchain application development platform with faster and cheaper transactions than Ethereum, there is also no need to learn a new language as all features are accessible through an API which allows developers to use environments they are used to.
Syscoin has a proven track record since 2014 and is one of the most trusted and respected teams in the ecosystem. Syscoin has existing products and real-world applications instead of unicorns.

Will Proof of Work consensus coins, like Bitcoin, die over the coming years?

No, but trusted unique hardware consensus like Intel SGX might make an impact.

Are there disadvantages to a decentralized marketplace?

Different countries have different laws, but the blockchain is equal access and global. Managing legal requirements and taxes may become an issue in the future.

Why should a customer care if the marketplace is on the blockchain and decentralized?

A decentralized system eliminates the middleman, corporate gouging and the abuse of merchants and manufacturers. The customer can benefit from cheaper prices and manufacturers can control resellers and pricing while benefiting from a peer-based marketing network. Customers are also protected against data harvesting and security issues inherent to centralized systems.

Currently, a Syscoin masternode costs over $17,000. What would you say to someone to convince them that it is worth this outlay?

Masternodes get paid to support the network and can vote on improvement proposals. The financial rewards are obvious. When we introduced masternodes it was part of a two-part plan: to introduce improvement proposals and instant transactions through a DAG on the masternode layer, then to host decentralized data, file storage, fraud proofs, virtual machine and additional logic on that layer.

Does Syscoin have a plan in place for when all the coins are mined? How will masternodes/miners be rewarded?

Yes, as mining rewards decrease, transaction fees will replace token generation.

2018 has been a tough year for cryptocurrencies. What do you think the future holds for cryptos generally?

Like any new industry, there are wildly pendular swings at the beginning before everything evens out. We’ve seen this in the short term with Bitcoin, in the long term with the internet and even longer with the discovery of electricity. This industry will take 10-20 more years to mature. It is inevitable that bad apples fall from the tree. Syscoin is uniquely positioned to survive any purge and continue strong for 10-20 years if not more.

With thanks to Brad Hammerstron.