What is MoneyByte (MON)? Is MON a Good Investment?

Cryptocurrency has been almost 14 years at this point. In that time we have seen the rise and fall of many cryptocurrencies attempting to usurp Bitcoin as the de facto decentralized digital currency. 

Sadly for all those cryptocurrencies, no project has usurped Bitcoin since Bitcoin’s launch in 2009. One project attempting to become decentralized digital money is MoneyByte. This article will explain everything you need to know about MoneyByte including whether or not it’s a good investment and if it can really usurp Bitcoin. 

What is MoneyByte?

MoneyByte is digital money that uses blockchain technology to power transactions. It uses a proof of stake consensus to validate transactions. The project was launched in 2019 and had some level of success before it appears that the founders basically abandoned the project. 

The project took a shift from becoming digital money to more of an investment program with a collateral loan scheme and staking rewards driving most of the growth of the project. 

That’s an odd business model for a project that claims it’s attempting to become a digital currency. Does Bitcoin offer collateral loans or staking? 

Anyway, there really is not much information about the technical aspects of this project other than that it’s a proof of stake blockchain. There are 79 masternodes on the blockchain and stakers can earn up to 9% per year on staked MON. 

There are some major issues with MoneyByte and the general idea of the project that we will cover in the next section. 

The Problems with MoneyByte (MON)

MoneyByte has some issues ranging from bad UI on the website to poorly defined goals. This section will cover all the problems in detail. 

The Project is Not Popular

The first problem we have with MoneyByte is that it's a small, unpopular project. Popular might not even be the best word because that implies people don’t like it. 

The bigger problem is that no one even knows about MoneyByte!

It has a market cap of $147,000, which is microscopic in the world of cryptocurrency. For reference, Bitcoin’s market cap at the time of writing is 326 billion USD. 

Now, a small market cap is to be expected from a newer project, but $147,000 is a tiny market cap. MoneyByte is not a new project, either. It was launched in September 2019. 

How can MoneyByte become a digital currency when people don’t even know it exists? 

One of the major requirements of a currency is acceptability. No one will accept a currency they have never heard of before. 

The Website is Horrible

The above image is the landing page for MoneyByte’s official website. 

That is an absolutely horrific design. Why does it have so many buttons on the front page?

The numbers at the bottom also make the page look very messy. 

This problem might sound inconsequential, but with projects like this the website is the first thing that people see when they research it. And seeing that does not instill much confidence in new users. 

We also don’t like that the whitepaper is placed at the very bottom of the website. For a small project like this, a link to the whitepaper should clearly be visible above the fold on the landing page. 

The Project Seems Dead

We will not say that this project is entirely dead because the official Twitter account is still active. But we would not consider this a highly active community nor a project. 

It’s also important to note that the website lists the Twitter profile for one of the founders, Willem de Boer. All of his tweets for the past few months have been related to soccer and in Dutch. He had crypto related tweets earlier in the year, but none of them mentioned MoneyByte and only a handful (replies to other tweets) were in English. 

We are not doubting that he’s a cofounder. But is he even active on the project anymore? 

It’s strange for a cofounder to make no mention of a project they run on their Twitter account.

They Won’t Become a Digital Currency

There is a 0% chance that MoneyByte ever becomes a digital currency (ie. something that people use for transactions). It’s an extremely small cryptocurrency and has made practically no progress at becoming a popular cryptocurrency in over three years of existence. 

They are not going to suddenly become popular if they have not already done so in three years. This is a lot different than Bitcoin becoming popular because Bitcoin had no competition for the first few years of its existence. 

More importantly, the project does not even appear to be trying to become a digital currency. It’s basically a small-scale staking project. Everyone is investing in this project to earn more staking rewards. 

Is MoneyByte (MON) a Good Investment?

No, we would not consider MoneyByte a good investment for a handful of different reasons. The biggest reason being that the project has been around over three years and has a market cap of $147,000. 

To put it simply, the project is not going to suddenly become popular. 

We also would not recommend staking MON simply because it has such a small market cap that it’s very easy for the price to be manipulated. Especially because the trading volume of the project is usually $0 per day. 

To summarize, avoid MoneyByte – it’s not a very good investment. 

Final Thoughts

To wrap things up, there have been many attempts to overtake Bitcoin as a decentralized digital currency. No project has really come close to beating Bitcoin in terms of popularity. MoneyByte has not come even remotely close to overtaking Bitcoin, so it’s definitely a project to avoid as an investment. It’s not even a good low market cap investment.