We have been extremely bullish on Blockmate Ventures Inc. (MATE.V) (MATEF). The stock's pullback back under $0.10 after running to $0.13 from $0.03 represents an ideal level to buy while others chase expensive pumps like Bluesky Digital Assets Corp. (BTC.CN) (BTCWF). As we have explained before, MATE offers the superior business model and is unambiguously cheaper as it is trading at half the price it should be based on its majority stake in Hivello. If you like our picks you can follow this blog by clicking the follow button on the top of the left hand panel. We have 1016 followers on here as well as 120 followers on our Canadian blog. You can also follow us on X @StockTradePicks which has over 5,000 followers.
For those who aren't familiar with DePin, it can be summed up as allowing others to use your computer's resources for a larger project or purpose. Some examples include data storage, using your IP address as a VPN or using your computing power to develop and test out AI models. Hivello has started with its marketing campaign and we decided to download and use the public beta to see for ourselves how it works. After one day of use, these are the earnings generated so far:
A couple of pennies plus 350 points which are to convert into HVLO tokens. That's the wild card until we know the conversion rate of points into HVLO and demand for the HVLO token once it starts trading. Our goal is to accumulate a good amount of these tokens, just in case. We will continue to try this out to see how earnings improve as our network remains online long enough to start to generate traffic from the more lucrative coins:
The main issue for us was proving out that this platform was functional, and it is. That's already more than what most penny stock vaporware can say. We are experimenting primarily with an old laptop purchased in 2014 and out of commission since 2019 which would otherwise be too slow and frustrating to be functional for anything else. Laptops are not built for crypto mining, especially not useless junk from 2014. The fact that it hasn't conked out yet is already a good sign. This is where we think Hivello has a moat. The idea of bringing DePin mining to the masses with an easy to use and self-managed platform. For instance, it isn't that difficult to set up a Mysterium node by yourself. However, that old laptop would not be able to handle the multiple nodes and platforms needed to duplicate what Hivello offers. It downloaded and operated Hivello with no issue. There must be hundreds of thousands of old and outdated computers hung onto by people which can now be put to good use. Even if it's only $20 per month net of higher utility costs, it'll be worth it to a good amount of people. Especially those in low income regions of the world or where it's difficult or preferable to get your hands on US Dollars.
No matter how much Mysterium tries to portray itself as a kind of heroic VPN service that allows citizen journalists from North Korea a place to get their voice out, the reality is the platform is being used to do some amount of illegal activity. Read the Reddit forum to get a sense of the issues, but it's not that hard to imagine what type of web searches might be run on an advanced VPN service that makes the end user difficult to trace. If you don't want cops knocking on your door, you absolutely cannot let public networks from myst.exe through your firewall. As Mysterium has tried to crack down on the bad behavior, now it looks like demand is sporadic from the private networks. The MYST token has tanked in value since inception and people are now complaining they are making hardly any money with inconsistent traffic. For someone who created their own Mysterium node, that's going to be a problem. They have to manage the new reality and in the meantime their earnings go down and their computer resources are used inefficiently until they find an alternate DePin:
The point of having passive income through DePin mining is kind of self-defeating if you have to manage it all the time. If someone who was ahead of the curve on DePin mining to the point that they set up their own node and they post on Reddit about it is having issues, imagine the thousands of people who aren't ahead of this curve who would be that much more frustrated, cynical or confused about it. That is Hivello's target market. If something like Mysterium falls off a cliff, the AI in the Hivello system will adjust the DePin mining targets to optimize the user's earning potential based on the computing resources they have and current demand for their resources. Right now with six of them available on Hivello, it isn't that much of an advantage. But once Hivello gets dozens then hundreds of these DePin tokens on its platform, we can't imagine anyone being able to manually duplicate what Hivello can do for them. Every user is going to have a different maximum earnings potential based on their individual location and computer resources. It's not like someone can go on YouTube and find "How to maximize earnings with DePin" follow the instructions and get the best result. Even experienced miners will be willing to share some of the revenue with Hivello in exchange for a system that allows them to operate to maximum efficiency. If they are currently earning $1,000 a month but can use Hivello to increase that to $1,100 a month net of Hivello's take, they'll do it.
This is where we think our reviews help as well. Hivello/Blockmate Chairman Domenic Carosa is touting the benefits of Hivello as "AirBnB for your computer" and he's going to continue with a positive message. Crypto mining has pitfalls and risks. Risks of depreciating your machine from overuse and risks of bad actors using your computing resources to mask their activity at your expense. As different tokens deal with these bad actors like a whack-a-mole game, the lucrative nature of mining their tokens will ebb and flow and miners will have to adjust. Hivello can manage that adjustment for you.
Now that we did a product review, we can talk about the near-term potential of the stock. We previously estimated a price target of $0.50 on MATE and still think that is a realistic near term target. But after getting familiar with the platform and its potential, the sky is much higher than that. MATE's value proposition can be broken into two components:
1. The value of the Hivello token (55% owned by MATE)
2. The earnings power of the Hivello platform.
The current capital raise is being undertaken at a $30 million valuation and the token FDV is proposed to be at $45 million. After accounting for the 55% ownership stake and USD to CAD conversion, MATE would have $0.20 to $0.30 per share of value just from its ownership stake in Hivello. The beautiful part to the investment thesis is that it's already covered off on the balance sheet side of things while the revenue potential works its way out. Eventually the tokens will be earned by people who are on the Hivello network, but that process only occurs by generating revenue for Hivello.
There are three main components to figuring out Hivello's revenue potential:
1. Active users on the platform
2. Revenue per user
3. Percent of revenue share taken by Hivello
The first component is the biggest driver of extremely high potential here. The company has stated that there were 30,000 people on the waitlist for the beta launch. More than 50,000 were watching the AMA with Domenic Carosa yesterday. This was all before any serious attempt at marketing. As long as the system can handle it, there is not going to be an issue onboarding a ton of people. The message is simple and compelling to people new to crypto and active miners. Earn extra money from sharing computer resources and mining crypto on an easy-to-use platform for the new people. For the experienced ones, the pitch will be the aforementioned AI-generated peak earnings potential and ability to handle a bunch of DePin tokens on one platform.
Revenue per user is another wild card, but with a more defined ceiling. Carosa stated yesterday in the AMA that the upper limit of earnings potential with a GPU and the latest equipment should be $200 to $300 per month per device/location. $20 to $30 on the lower end with older equipment. Based on our early stage use, the system is functional but so far not driving anywhere near the rates needed to hit the lower target. We are on pace for about $1 a month so far. If people don't see earnings potential that is material to them, they won't last long on Hivello. The ability to download and use Hivello is a great advantage to shareholders. This is a level of due diligence rarely given to investors. If the platform does result in the returns promised by Carosa, investors who use it will be the first to know.
The revenue share rate will be at least 10% given that the investor presentation states that Hivello users can stake the Hivello tokens for up to 90% of the rewards. We will make a relatively conservative assumption of 15%.
Assuming the average user earns $50 gross a month and a revenue share is 15%, Hivello's ARPU would be $7.50. The total addressable market is a big question. There is an estimated 560 million people who own some form of crypto. An estimated one million have mined Bitcoin. While it's unknown how many people have mined DePin. All of these numbers will only increase with time. With think one billion is a reasonable estimate of an addressable market when considering the amount of people who own crypto and the populations of places like Africa and India which stand to benefit a disproportionately high amount from being able to earn a few dollars a month while having decent internet access.
Out of one billion people, should Hivello attain 1% penetration, or 10 million, that would be $75 million in monthly revenue, or $900 million a year. It's of course much easier said than done, which is why we are keeping our much more reasonable $0.50 target on MATE for now. But it's an illustration of the potential here. It's a lot easier to convince people to make money off of a free platform like Hivello in a relatively hands-off way than it is to acquire users who have to pay for a platform (or even join for free but don't make any money). That's why 10 million might not be nearly as far-fetched as it seems. As long as people find Hivello worth it - so the monthly payout has to be high enough to keep their interest.
This billion dollar idea is on its way to becoming a billion dollar execution. So far Hivello is active and functional. That is a significant first step. If the company is able to do the following, the stock and the platform will be a success:
- Have a successful token launch and ensure that HVLO's valuation remains strong.
- Ensure that Hivello can handle increased traffic from a growing user base.
- Effective marketing of Hivello, while also relying heavily on word of mouth.
- Increase the variety of DePin tokens available on the platform.
- Make sure users reach the estimated $20 to $300 per month in revenue.
- Ensure its AI models result in optimal use of each user's spare computing resources.
Disclosure: We are long MATE.V