DISCLAIMER: This is a re-post of an article that I wrote for Atomic Wallet Academy. The original article can be found here
A Cryptocurrency is a type of digital currency and payment system that doesn’t rely on the traditional payment networks we have become accustomed to. Cryptocurrencies are decentralized. They are not issued by a central authority, like a bank or a government.
Cryptocurrencies are based on blockchain technology – a network of computers completely independent from centralized control who keep a track record of all the transactions of the past and those that will be carried out in the future.
Investing in cryptocurrencies is becoming more and more popular every year. It is a global investment opportunity available to anyone in any part of the world. They are a highly profitable instrument, very volatile and they bear a certain risk factor.
Cryptocurrencies are becoming an acceptable means of payment worldwide. Blockchain technology is reliable, it cannot be counterfeited, manipulated or changed.
No other technology makes it possible to send money from one part of the world to the other without an intermediary to carry out the transaction. It is the most affordable means to send money from point A to point B known today.
You are in full control of your money! No questions are asked. All you need is a computer or a mobile phone and you can transact with whoever you want when you want it!
Speed is what makes cryptocurrencies different from traditional banking. While a bank transfer can sometimes take up to 2-3 days, a cryptocurrency transaction is settled in a few minutes. Some are confirmed within seconds but more about that later.
So, what else makes cryptocurrencies so valuable? Their supply is limited. A maximum supply means the maximum amount of coins that will ever exist for a certain cryptocurrency.
Let us think about this for a moment. How is the paper money we use every day created? It is simple. It gets printed by Central Banks and governments when they need it! Bitcoin doesn’t work that way. You cannot press a button and create more Bitcoins or add new sheets of paper to the printing press. Cryptocurrencies are scarce. The smaller the amount of an important asset there is in existence the more valuable it becomes.
Bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies are created by a method known as mining. Mining refers to solving complex math problems that produce new bitcoin. More information about mining is available here.
How Much Should I Invest in Cryptocurrencies?
Anyone who has access to a computer or a mobile phone can invest in cryptocurrencies. Everyone can afford them.
Depending on your budget and your goals you can invest as little as $1 or several $1000. There are no limitations to what you can do. The only limitations can be set by the exchange on which you are buying your cryptocurrencies. Especially to young people, cryptocurrencies are seen as the fastest way to obtain wealth.
Always remember to invest only what you can afford to lose and diversify your portfolio. “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket”.
Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain technology are still at its early stages and these assets will dominate the market in a few years. Our generation has been given a chance to invest in the future of the Internet. 30 years ago, during the .com era, many of us didn’t have a chance to participate. Will we make the right decision now?
List of Best Cryptocurrencies to Buy in 2020
Bitcoin is the first and the world’s biggest and most popular cryptocurrency on the market. It was created in 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto, an anonymous software developer whose identity has not been revealed to this day.
He had a vision of an independent payment method that could be transferred without using banks. A crypto portfolio without Bitcoin is hard to think of.
There are several reasons why Bitcoin has always been considered as a reasonable investment. Bitcoin is decentralized – there is no central institution controlling the supply of Bitcoin.
The supply of Bitcoin is limited. Fiat currencies can be printed whenever they are needed and they are unlimited in supply. Bitcoin has a maximum supply of 21 million Bitcoins and over 18 million has already been mined.
Bitcoin transactions are anonymous. Since Bitcoin is not governed by a central entity, users don’t have to identify themselves to be able to transact.
Irreversibility. Once confirmed, Bitcoin transactions can’t be reversed, changed or deleted.
The story of one investor who paid 10,000 Bitcoins for a pizza in 2010 is well known in crypto circles. An investment that would have been worth over $80 million today.
May 22 is celebrated as the yearly Bitcoin Pizza Day to remember the day when Laszlo Hanyecz spent 10,000 Bitcoins on pizza.
What does 2020 hold for Bitcoin? Bitcoin is still the best and safest cryptocurrency investment. The entire crypto market moves in parallel with Bitcoin.
In May 2020 an important event will take place known as Bitcoin Halving. A halving happens once every 4 years (every 210,000 blocks). It is expected that this event will boost Bitcoin's price by 10x or more like it did in the past.
On the day of the 'halving', the block reward will be reduced from 12.5 BTC to 6.25 BTC per block. In 2012 was the first halving. One year after the event the price of Bitcoin skyrocketed from $11 to $1,100$. After the second halving, the price of Bitcoin rose from $700 to over $20,000 at the end of 2017.
What can we expect after the 3rd halving? Many experts agree that after the next halving we can expect the price to go to $100,000 per BTC. Don’t miss your chance!
Ethereum is the 2nd largest cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization and on top of the list for daily traded volume.
Ethereum was created by Vitalik Buterin in 2014 and it is the largest platform for decentralized applications also known as DApps. Ethereum is the platform and Ether is the currency used on the Ethereum platform.
Ether was traded at the price of $0.40 back in 2015. It reached its all-time-high at the beginning of 2018 when 1 ETH was worth over $1,400. Ether is today worth 4,177% more than it was at the time of its launch.
Just like Bitcoin, the Ethereum platform is decentralized and it allows people to connect directly through a powerful supercomputer without the need for a central authority.
How does Ethereum work? Ethereum works thanks to Smart Contracts – a set of conditions and actions created by their developers and executed by the network taking into consideration a set of defined rules.
To understand Ethereum, take a look at the following YouTube video explaining all the basics.
Is Ethereum still a good investment in 2020? Yes, it is! It is because of the capabilities of its Smart Contracts that Ethereum is so popular and valuable.
Smart Contracts can be configured with certain conditions. Once those conditions have been met the Ethereum Network can facilitate agreed-upon actions that will help companies perform better and more efficient.
Ethereum transactions are very cheap and the confirmation time can be as fast as 15-20 seconds. This makes Ether currency a perfect instrument for the transfer of money.
Now is a great opportunity to stack up on Ethereum because in 2020 Ethereum 2.0 is being released! Ethereum 2.0 will improve security and enable even faster transactions.
EOS is an open-source blockchain development platform designed to be used for businesses around the world. The EOS network can process millions of transactions every second making it faster compared to giants such as Bitcoin or Ethereum.
EOS raised $4 Billion in their one year long ICO campaign, breaking all records to this day.
There are many benefits in using the EOS blockchain: It is one of the fastest cryptocurrencies today and is offering zero transaction fees. As a user, you can send money with EOS for free! The developers of EOS are aiming at building the fastest and easiest to use blockchain in the world.
Owning EOS tokens makes the users eligible to airdrops for new EOS-based projects in the future. EOS is rewarding its holders with new tokens.
EOS initially began as an ERC-20 token hosted on the Ethereum network, but since June 2018 it is using its native EOS network.
It is a dominant player in the DApps market. Among the top 30 DApps today, EOS is hosting 22 of them, dominating Ethereum in the process.
Right now, 2/3 best-ranked DApps according to https://dappradar.com/rankings are hosted on the EOS platform!
Those investing in EOS have reasons to be excited. PayPal co-founder and billionaire Peter Thiel is an investor and believer in EOS. Thiel is famous for picking out winners early on. His investment portfolio includes the likes of Facebook, SpaceX, and Airbnb.
EOS is currently trading at around $2.43.
The true value of EOS can also be seen from the next example. EOS is a US-based project and it is ranked #1 in China in a recently released year-end crypto rankings list that evaluated and ranked the top 35 cryptocurrencies.
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Many experts agree that the beginning of 2020 is a great opportunity to buy more EOS tokens. Predictions suggest that the prices are likely to re-test the $8-9 areas making EOS a profitable investment right now.
Litecoin is a fork of Bitcoin and a global decentralized open-source payment network.
It has an experienced development team working on it, headed by Charlie Lee who worked for Google and Coinbase.
Litecoin is a very innovative coin and it has introduced several improvements and innovations to blockchain technology that were later accepted and implemented by Bitcoin as well. Those include SegWit and Atomic Swaps.
Litecoin has recently celebrated its 8th birthday and is considered to be a very stable payment option.
In terms of daily volume, Litecoin is one of the most used cryptocurrencies because of its instant, near-zero cost transactions. This also makes Litecoin a great option to use to purchase other cryptocurrencies. It has over 400 trading pairs available on a long list of exchanges.
Just like with Bitcoin, Litecoin also goes through a halving event every four years. On 5 Aug 2019, the block rewards were reduced from 25 LTC to 12.5 LTC. The value of Litecoin has not yet profited from the halving event, but this is expected to happen in the future.
US-based provider of investment data Weiss Ratings has ranked Litecoin as excellent in regards to investment rewards and adoption.
Litecoin often called “Silver to Bitcoin’s Gold”, has successfully solved Bitcoin’s slower speed of confirming transactions. Litecoin blocks are produced once every 2.5 minutes compared to Bitcoin’s 10-minute block creation time.
The developers behind Litecoin have now focused their attention on privacy and are planning to introduce Confidential Transactions. If privacy matters to you, Litecoin is a coin that needs to become a part of your portfolio!
Tron is a blockchain-based decentralized platform that aims to build a free, global entertainment system allowing users to publish and store their content on the network for free, and being the real owners of their data.
The main problem today is that big corporations, such as Netflix or YouTube, own the content we create.
The goal of Tron is to bring closer content creators and consumers by eliminating middlemen resulting in cost reductions and more profit for content creators. Guaranteed with no censorship and third-party control.
Tron was founded in 2017 by the Tron Foundation and is headed by Justin Sun.
Tron has its own cryptocurrency called Tronix (TRX). The coins can be used by Tron subscribers to pay and access the content they like on the Tron network and award content creators.
Tron is becoming more and more popular every day, gaining huge interest from the public.
Tron has recently acquired BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer file sharing service with over 100 million users. Its native BitTorrent token will now run on the Tron Network giving a huge boost to Tron’s ecosystem.
Tron has its DApps. Most of them revolve around gaming and gambling because Tron is aiming at becoming the biggest entertainment platform.
A few days ago, Tron tickled the minds of their userbase by announcing that a new game is in development and being released around Christmas.
Tron has one of the biggest roadmaps I have ever seen. The last stage of development is planned for 2037.
The future of the Internet is decentralized and a decentralized entertainment platform is needed. Tron is a long-term investment that will eventually pay off.
Cosmos is a decentralized network of independent and parallel blockchains. It is an ecosystem of blockchains that work together.
Cosmos aims to make it possible for different blockchains to transact with each other creating an Internet of Blockchains.
By using Tendermint BFT and Cosmos SDK Cosmos makes it easy for developers to develop blockchains and make full use of all their powers.
More than 80 projects have chosen Cosmos SDK to build their blockchains.
The developers of Cosmos have noticed that many of the top blockchains of today are simply too slow and the transaction fees are too high. With their interconnected blockchains, they aim to solve that.
This is one of the rare projects that have managed to debut in the TOP 20 on CoinMarketCap and have remained there ever since.
Cosmos has already attracted several elite partners. Most notably, the Binance token emitting platform, Binance DEX, is built on the Cosmos ecosystem.
They held a highly successful ICO in 2017, raising over $17 million in just 28 minutes.
The Cosmos development team is very active on GitHub and one of the most active ones in the crypto industry. A lot of work is being done on building the protocol.
This is a serious project that investors should take note of in 2020. Cosmos has moved to its main net and been listed on reputable exchanges, such as Binance.
Binance supports the staking of Cosmos (ATOM) tokens.
Future projects include the release of a staking wallet for the ATOM tokens and the introduction of a decentralized exchange.
Tezos is a completely new blockchain project that is not based on any existing platforms. Just like Ethereum, it uses smart contracts. But, Tezos can process 40-50 transactions per second, more than double what Ethereum can.
Tezos cares for its community and userbase. Their stakeholders will be able to vote on innovations without doing hard forks which could result in a divided community.
All holders of Tezos tokens work together and vote on decisions to improve their network. The development team can’t control the decision making without support from the community.
Tezos is a TOP 10 ranked cryptocurrency on CoinMarketCap. It is listed on reputable exchanges, such as Binance, Kraken, and OKEx and does very well in terms of liquidity.
On 30 June 2018, Tezos moved to its main net and received a positive reaction from the market. The Tezos developers are aiming at building a far more superior blockchain compared to the competition. Compared to Bitcoin, Tezos requires much less mining power.
Tezos made headlines after it was announced that this cryptocurrency was added to the portfolio of Winklevoss Capital, an investment company founded by two US entrepreneurs known as the Winklevoss twins.
Cameron Winklevoss made a short tweet in July supporting the project by saying: “Love Tezos”.
2019 has been a very positive year for Tezos and investors are slowly realizing all the benefits this revolutionary project can bring them.
Tezos has signed partnerships with several important partners. It has become the first blockchain to update automatically without using a hard fork.
When it comes to the value of the coins, Tezos has witnessed significant growth increasing its value from $0.47 to the current $1.49. The future looks good for Tezos holders.
BAT is an open-source and blockchain-based digital advertising platform. It is an ERC-20 token based on the Ethereum blockchain.
With BAT, everyone profits. Advertisers award publishers with BAT tokens based on the attention their ads receive by users.
Users receive BAT tokens just by participating and viewing ads.
The current advertising industry faces many problems for users, publishers, and advertisers alike.
They violate the privacy of users, spread malware, and decrease mobile phone battery life.
Publishers can’t monetize their ads because platforms like Google and Facebook take most of the profits.
BAT introduces a transparent advertisement exchange that consists of two stages.
Stage 1 is a new browser – the Brave Browser. A privacy-focused browser that captures user attention and accurately rewards publishers. User attention is accurately and privately monitored and rewarded accordingly.
Not only that but Brave also blocks all ads and trackers that users don’t want to see, without exceptions. This makes the browser up to 3 times faster compared to other browsers.
Stage 2 is the Basic Attention Token that is used to obtain advertising services and exchanged between all participants of the system.
The BAT ICO made history back in 2017 when the token sale raised $35 Million in just 30 seconds!
The development team behind the project is highly qualified.
The founder of Brave is Brendan Eich, the creator of JavaScript, and co-founder of Mozilla Firefox. The other team members are equally impressive having previously worked for Mozilla, Tor, AOL, and Yahoo before switching to Brave.
Brave is already a popular browser boosting 280,000 content creators and publishers. Brands like The Washington Post, The Guardian or Wikipedia rely on the Brave Browser.
Publish0x shows how easy it is to earn BAT tokens. Publish0x is a blogging platform powered by cryptocurrencies.
Registered users can read quality content and earn BAT tokens in return. Users on Publish0x earn by blogging and tipping quality content.
Every time you tip an author, part of the tip (usually 20%) goes to your wallet. The BAT token is the most popular crypto on this up-and-coming platform.
The Basic Attention Token has a solid foundation.
It is based on a working product – the Brave Browser, and an experienced high-quality team with a proven track record.
As more and more people are starting to become concerned for their privacy it is expected that 2020 becomes the year of Basic Attention Token.
Binance Coin or, BNB, is the native token of the Binance blockchain. Binance is one of the leading cryptocurrency exchanges in the world. The more people trade on Binance, the better the value of the BNB tokens!
Holders of BNB can enjoy 25% discounted trading fees but it can also be used to pay for hotels and flight booking, the purchase of gift cards, and as a means to buy IEO tokens with.
In March 2019 Binance introduced a 2nd exchange – The Binance Decentralized Exchange (DEX) offering even more utility for the BNB tokens.
BNB has experienced impressive gains in 2019. The value of the token rose from $6 at the beginning of the year to $39 in July.
It is currently trading at around $14 per token and is a TOP 10 coin according to CoinMarketCap.
Binance plans to buy back and burn 50% of the total supply of BNB tokens. The burning is done quarterly and depends on the trading volume.
This process rewards the holders of the tokens because the value of the existing supply is boosted.
The last buyback and burning event took place during July/September 2019 when Binance burned an equivalent of almost $37 million worth of BNB tokens.
Investor and crypto enthusiast, Dallas Rushing makes a good point when he talks about BNB and what differentiates this project from many other projects. Binance uses its revenue to buy back BNB tokens, raising the price for all stakeholders. Similar projects don’t do that. They solely rely on buy and sell orders.
Another benefit of owning BNB tokens is in the possibility to take part in ICO and IEO investments on the Binance Launchpad. Investors can participate anonymously but they have to own BNB tokens to do so.
Even if BNB was meant to be a native currency of the Binance exchange its popularity resulted in BNB being listed on several other popular exchanges.
The full list of exchanges is can be found here https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/binance-coin/markets/
Binance Coin has received strong interest from institutional investors in recent weeks.
This asset is part of the portfolio of Swiss stock exchange SIX since October 2019.
According to the managing director of this institution, Binance Coin is “in a prime position to be one of the best performing large cap crypto assets of the next twelve months.”
The popularity of Binance exchange among investors together with the use cases of Binance Coin makes me confident to say that BNB looks like a sure winner in 2020. A coin that looks certain to go up.
doc.com is a healthcare service provider offering free medical assistance to all countries in Latin America (except Brazil), Spain, and the region of Florida in the United States.
Expansion plans to expand to the United Kingdom, other parts of the US, Africa, Asia, etc. are underway.
doc.com was initially named Docademic but in 2018 the company purchased the doc.com domain.
With the dedicated doc.com Health app users can receive medical assistance from doctors via a video call on their phone for free, 24 hours a day. The app is available for both Android and iPhone devices.
The service is free of charge and users get compensated with doc.com tokens after completing a call with a doctor. Three free video calls are available per month and in the future, doc.com is planning to release an additional service with unlimited free video calls.
doc.com has impacted over 275,000 lives. Their users receive free medical advice, follow-ups on current treatments and answers to health-related questions.
Doc.com Emotions is the 2nd app released by doc.com. An app offering free video calls with psychologists and free psychological therapy, 24 hours a day.
That is not all, doc.com is planning to release a 3rd application. An app for pets and animals that offers free medical advice by licensed veterinarians.
The investment firm Hitchens Harrison has invested $500 million in doc.com showing support to a company who is offering the world free healthcare services.
This is the biggest investment in a project in crypto history!
You might rightly ask yourself: What does doc.com get in return for offering a free service? The answer is healthcare data.
Patients receive compensation in doc.com tokens for the anonymous data they provide.
This data, together with analytics products, is shared with governments and the private healthcare industry. This allows them to monitor patients and react faster in case of health emergencies.
It makes absolute sense to store and share medical records with the help of blockchain technology. We have heard numerous cases of data breaches and since blockchains are un-hackable, and the data can’t be obtained without the corresponding private keys, doc.com is a gold mine waiting to be discovered.
The doc.com blockchain provides accessibility.
Medical records are scattered between different institutions, hospitals, doctors, and they are hard to connect. A medical examination by one doctor is not recorded in the system of a doctor from another institution or country.
Blockchain keeps all the needed data at the same place.
In 2020, doc.com is planning to switch to a new blockchain. It is called Lifechain, and it will revolutionize the way we access healthcare.
If you believe that free medical services such as doc.com have a future in the years to come make sure you take a close look at this project.
DISCLAIMER: This is a re-post of an article that I wrote for Atomic Wallet Academy. The original article can be found here