Update (January 7, 2019): Since publication of this article, the Cryptyk public sale is live until February 2019. Visit the Cryptyk site for more information.
While today’s tech giants — Google, Amazon, and Facebook — realized the value of big data long ago, it seems that the majority of society has only just begun to wake up to the reality of our modern digital world.
Big data is the strongest force driving innovation in machine learning and general artificial intelligence – unquestionably the most important field of our time. (Yes, even more important than blockchain.)
At the same time, however, the lack of control and security each of us has with respect to our personal data is alarming. Hackers have been exploiting security flaws in centralized databases at an increasing rate, leaving just about all of us vulnerable to identity theft, fraud, and various other cyber crimes.
As much as we might want it to, technological progress isn’t going to slow down. The amount of data that needs to be securely stored isn’t going to be diminished anytime soon either. As a result of those two truths, there is an incredible need for innovative data storage solutions to hit the market, and soon.
Cryptyk is a startup that’s uniquely positioned to meet that need and completely change the enterprise security paradigm, giving it one of the most enticing value propositions of any blockchain project in recent memory.
This article will go into more depth on that value proposition, explaining the Cryptyk business model and why CTK tokens are one of the best investment opportunities available to the public in the growing cyber security industry.
Who Will Use Cryptyk’s CTK Tokens?
Cryptyk employs a hybrid blockchain solution in order to provide users with a decentralized, enterprise-class cloud storage and sharing platform that’s far more secure than existing solutions such as Google Drive, Amazon S3, Apple iCloud, and Dropbox.
At the heart of the platform is the CTK token — a utility token whose value is directly determined by customer adoption and use of Cryptyk products. In other words, the more useful Cryptyk’s platform and security services are for customers, the more valuable CTK tokens will be.
Before getting to the actual use cases, it’s helpful to have an idea of the target demographic for high-security cloud storage and how Cryptyk plans to reach them. The three types of customers that will most impact future demand for CTK are large enterprise customers, small-medium businesses (SMBs), and individual public customers.
To meet the needs of each group, Cryptyk offers a product suite with three tiers – Lite, Pro, and Enterprise.
The Lite and Pro versions will be great for spreading adoption of the Cryptyk platform, but the Enterprise package is where the real opportunity lies.
Large businesses — specifically those in financial services, banking, investment, legal, and insurance — store humongous amounts of confidential data for which security is paramount. Enterprise offers the full suite of next-generation security features from Cryptyk’s platform, including data leak prevention, geofencing, predictive AI threat anticipation, and file tracking, all of which are geared towards meeting specific enterprise needs.
And so, enterprises that want to significantly reduce their risk of a data breach will very likely become Cryptyk’s biggest users.
(Note for technical readers: Cryptyk node setup reduces the relative attack surface to less than 4% BEFORE they wrap it in immutable blockchain auditing. You can find the calculations in the project’s technical whitepaper.)
Once an enterprise customer is acquired, every customer of that enterprise will be introduced to Cryptyk organically when they access their data stored on the VAULT blockchain. That means that enterprise customers provide a means for achieving viral growth with individuals and small-medium businesses, in addition to the revenue streams they contribute to directly.
Needless to say, this new cyber security economy is equipped with a built-in growth hacking mechanism that would make even the best marketing professionals envious.
Cryptyk’s Token Ecosystem
Now that we’ve established who will buy Cryptyk products and how they will be exposed to the platform, it’s time to look into the actual use cases for CTK tokens.
As far as end customers are concerned, this part is actually quite simple. CTK tokens will be the de-facto means of paying for Cryptyk’s Pro and Enterprise security and storage products shown in the section above. (Note: Customers can purchase products with USD, but it is automatically converted into CTK tokens at the current exchange rate.)
Total CTK token supply will be capped at 750 million tokens, making demand the main factor that determines token value. As more and more customers join the Cryptyk platform and pay for their subscriptions with CTK tokens, the increasing demand will bring the token value right up along with it.
This is the fundamental difference between utility tokens and securities: for a utility token, demand grows as product revenue grows, while demand is mostly a reflection of market sentiment in the case of securities.
As stated in their business whitepaper:
The CTK economy has been structured such that product utility and customer participation will be more significant to CTK value than speculative market effects. Hence investing in the CTK utility token offers more stable long-term growth, less price volatility and more immediate returns on investment.
Looking Long-Term — Should You HODL CTK?
Considering that CTK’s value depends on the success of the Cryptyk platform, analyzing whether or not CTK is a good investment is practically the same as analyzing whether Cryptyk’s products are useful and likely to generate substantial revenue.
When it comes to platform utility, Cryptyk appears to have several significant advantages over their competition. Their combination of cloud storage and cutting-edge cyber security makes them a one-stop shop for businesses of all sizes that need to store confidential data.
Furthermore, the veteran Cryptyk team developed a working beta of the technology over two years before they even thought of launching an ICO. They tested it against 50 international hackers and industry specialists last year.
The one hacker team that managed to get a virus on the distributed storage platform did so before the blockchain auditing component was added, and they still found that the virus was frozen in separate encrypted pieces and could not execute a single line of code. You can read more about how this was accomplished in this article.
To give you an idea of how well their hybrid blockchain stacks up to the competition, it’s worth noting that Cryptyk’s solution reduces the potential attack surface for hackers to less than 0.01% of that of a centralized network — a number which blows away even the other blockchain storage platforms such as Siacoin, Storj, and Filecoin.
While we’re on the topic of those other blockchain file storage platforms, it’s also worth comparing their latency to that of Cryptyk. And that comparison is favorable to Cryptyk too, as the other platforms mentioned all have large access latency — commonly in the range of 30-60 seconds — whereas Cryptyk’s platforms exhibits access latency under 200 milliseconds.
Importantly, that figure is comparable to centralized cloud storage platforms, meaning that Cryptyk can compete to offer real-time, enterprise-wide collaboration on applications that other blockchain platforms simply cannot.
Then there’s the matter of costliness. All of Cryptyk’s technological advantages will be for naught if the product line isn’t cost-efficient for customers. But as it turns out, this is another positive point for Cryptk. Based on market research discussed in the project’s business whitepaper, the Cryptyk all-in-one solution is typically under 50% of the total cost a consumer would pay for an equivalent multi-product solution.
To emphasize: Cryptyk is the first single-vendor solution to all security threats, no other add-ons or extra services are required.
Not only that, but customers also have the ability to increase cost savings over time by investing in CTK tokens early on and holding them, driving up the token’s value while the price of Cryptyk products remains fixed in fiat currency.
Cryptyk’s early alliance partners foresee purchasing several months of subscriptions for each of their employees, and seeing their entire security budget returned to them as the value of the CTK increases with every new subscription. Again, this effectively makes their satisfied customers their greatest evangelists.
All things considered, Cryptyk’s platform is engineered to be the leading cloud storage platform for any consumers who value security and performance.
The final feature of the platform that makes CTK such a high-potential investment is its viral network effects. There’s the ability to convert the customers of Cryptyk’s enterprise customers directly into Cryptyk customers. But there are also network effects enabled by the CTK token itself — investor adoption via conversion of customers, and customer adoption via conversion of investors.
In other words, Cryptyk users are incentivized to invest in CTK tokens, while CTK token holders are incentivized to use Cryptyk’s cloud storage and security products and recommend them to their peers in the enterprise market.
Conclusion
There are a lot of upsides to investing in utility tokens. The key to successful long-term investing is finding the companies who are developing legitimately useful products.
For forward-thinking investors who recognize the trends in cloud storage and in cyber security, Cryptyk is a project worth taking a chance on.
You can find more information about Cryptyk and token sale details on the project’s official website.
