After gaining some recognition on Wall Street, cryptocurrencies have attracted the interest of asset rating agencies.
Last week, Florida-based Weiss Ratings released a report that assigned grades to dozens of cryptocurrencies based on a number of metrics, like risk, technological innovation, and other fundamentals.
There were a couple of surprises to the report. One of them was that none of the cryptocurrencies rated received an “A.” Another surprise was that Ethereum received a higher grade than Bitcoin and Ripple.
| Cryptocurrency/Fund/Index | %7d | %YTD |
| Bitcoin (BTC) | -3.96 | -20 |
| Ethereum (ETH) | +0.71 | +28 |
| Ripple (XRP) | -21.67 | -45 |
| Litecoin (LTC) | -7.95 | -20 |
| SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) | 1.5 | 3.17 |
Source: Coinmarketcap.com Friday, January 26, 2018, 11.30 a.m.
[Ed note: Investing in cryptocoins or tokens is highly speculative and the market is largely unregulated. Anyone considering it should be prepared to lose their entire investment. Disclosure: I don’t own any cryptocoins or tokens.]
How trustworthy are Weiss ratings? Investment and cryptocurrency experts are divided.
“Very trustworthy,” says David Drake, a crypto asset expert. “It is the first step for more ratings to come out on cryptocurrencies.”
“The mere fact that futures exchanges and rating services have finally legitimized investment in cryptocurrencies after nine years of their existence is a strong sign of trend maturation,” adds Elliot Prechter, head of computer analysis at Elliot Wave. “It is reminiscent of the timing of gold legalization, which occurred at an interim peak in gold that saw it fall in half thereafter.”
“Weiss has been around for a while and appears to be respected,” says Al Zdenek, president of Taust Sollus Wealth Management. “From their past history, they appear to tend to come out with new rankings or ratings in different areas of the markets first. The current ranking of cryptocurrencies seems to be the latest one.”
Still, Zdenek is skeptical of Weiss ratings. “With the cryptocurrency industry being so young and with so many companies vying for space, I am not sure what it means to rank these companies,” he notes. “The speed of change in this space renders any ranking irrelevant after a few weeks. I would caution investors or followers of this rating to be very careful if you are basing investing on it. In any new industry, there tends to be many that enter but few survive. It would not surprise me if Bitcoin was not even being ranked in future years. Remember Wang Computers?”
You certainly don’t want to remember Wang — if you purchased its shares at all-time highs.
And you won’t want to remember Bitcoin, Ethereum and Ripple in a couple of years from now if big banks and big governments crush them.
