I definitely think we're in a huge bull market right now. Everyone is excited about cryptocurrencies and the future of decentralized assets again.
But all good things come to an end, we will face another pull back and a lot of psychological suffering in the months (years?) to come.
Looking at the vast amount of altcoins/tokens out there it's almost impossible to give each one time to properly research. That's why I have a fairly simple method to verify whether a coin is worth the time to research... before I understand how it works or how it will achieve its goal, I try to understand a simple question:
What problem does it solve?
So without further ado, here are the top 70 altcoins by marketcap, summarized by the problem they're trying to solve.
I might have missed the mark on a couple of the altcoins, if you think I misjudged the problem they're aiming to solve leave a comment with a one or two line summary of the problem and I'll review it!
Bitcoin
Problem it is aiming to solve: The world economy is too connected, and long term is unstable.
Bitcoin is a long-term investment vehicle separate from fiat based instruments; it's a disconnected USD hedge.
Ethereum
Problem it is aiming to solve: Shortest term: the need for a platform to issue ICO tokens (and sell them with smart contracts); mid term: legal contracts are inefficient; long term: AI overlords
Ripple
Problem it is aiming to solve: The banking system is disjointed and contains thousands of ledger systems spread across the world, it'd be better if they all were on the same ledger system; Market makers park insane amounts of capital to facilitate payments where on a more efficient system they wouldn't have to.
Connecting all payment systems on one ledger, providing a blockchain system for banks to use.
Litecoin
Problem: Originally ASIC miners pushing out GPU miners from Bitcoin, recently, all the drama in Bitcoin is making people look for a backup Bitcoin.
Ethereum Classic
Problem: Ethereum shouldn't modify the network to refund losses to those who create faulty code. Code is law.
NEM
Problem: Creating a decentralized coin is not enough, there needs to be development of a suite of tools around it.
IOTA
Problem: There needs to be a way for participating devices on the internet of things to communicate with each other, without fees.
Dash
Problem: Digital currencies should be consumer friendly, and there needs to be a process built into the network to allow it to fund both marketing and development of consumer friendly products.
BitShares
Problem: Assets currently trade on privatized inefficient platforms, assets should trade on a ledger together; more recently, Ethereum is too slow to handle ICO fundraising and a faster platform (BitShares) is needed.
Originally created as a platform to create digital assets to track investments (like gold and silver), offers a decentralized exchange and a platform to issue new assets on.
Stratis
Problem: Companies need a firm to help them create private blockchain for their usages... I really don't get how the token fits into a private firm developing blockchain solutions.
Private blockchain development firm that randomly has an altcoin as well, apparently firms maybe will use this altcoin to start a private blockchain on their network?
Monero
Problem: Payments on a decentralized network should be anonymized.
Zcash
Problem: Payments on a decentralized network should be anonymized.
Waves
Problem: ICOs on Ethereum are slow, they should happen on a faster, easier platform, with a decentralized exchange.
Golem
Problem: People should be able to rent out their idle computer time for any variety of tasks.
Decentralized super computer... Can't rent out your computing power yet. Still in alpha.
Bytecoin
Problem: Payments on a decentralized network should be anonymized.
Steem
Problem: Content creators should be paid in a decentralized currency for their content posted to social media.
Siacoin
Problem: Centralized (and then distributed) computing (mainly storage) platforms are overly expensive.
End to end encrypted decentralized private cloud.
Iconomi
Problem: Investors want to diversify into altcoins but it would take too much time to invest and secure dozens of different altcoins.
Tokens which derive dividends in ETH from ICONOMI the business, which is aiming to be like an index fund for digital assets.
BitConnect
Problem: Fools are easily detached from their money.
Loan your money in this newest and greatest ponzi scheme.
Dogecoin
Problem: Bitcoin just doesn't have enough memes.
What happens when your dreams become memes. (One of the earlier 'joke' currencies, has a great community behind it)
Stellar Lumens
Problem: Same as Ripple, early more of a focus on the underbanked.
An offshoot of Ripple, aiming to connect banks, payments, and the underbanked for little cost.
Lisk
Problem: It is too difficult to create new blockchain applications.
Blockchain application (sidechain) platform, allows you to create sidechains and build other products on the platform.
Augur
Problem: Centralized betting platforms are centralized, expensive, and open to manipulation.
Decentralized prediction market, bet with real money on outcomes.
AntShares
Problem: Same sort of problems that Ethereum is trying to solve.
Chinese blockchain project, aiming to provide a smart contracts platform: "China's Ethereum" - Rebranding as Neo.
Ardor
Problem: It is too difficult to create new blockchain applications.
Sidechain platform, calls them 'child chains' also build on Nxt.
GameCredits
Problem: In-game currency should be transferable and all games should use the same currency.
An altcoin that will be used by games online?
Factom
Problem: Storage of critical items should be decentralized onto a blockchain ledger, especially to keep indisputable evidence of an audit trail.
Also a decentralized storage provider, but focused more on creating an audit trail for digital documents.
Gnosis
Problem: Centralized betting platforms are centralized, expensive, and open to manipulation.
Decentralized prediction market, bet with real money on outcomes.
MaidSafeCoin
Problem: Storage of critical items should be decentralized onto a blockchain ledger.
End to end encrypted decentralized private cloud.
Decred
Problem: It is too hard to meaningfully solve problems facing Bitcoin, governance of a network should be built into the network.
Decred is an altcoin which aims to solve the governance issue plaguing Bitcoin.
Nxt
Problem: It is too difficult to create new blockchain applications, new blockchains will solve problems and there need to be tools to create these chains.
Komodo
Problem: Payments on a decentralized network should be anonymized. Also blockchain apps/smart contracts should be more private.
DigiByte
Problem: Bitcoin's development is too slow? I can't really find much of a direction for DigiByte.
Byteball
Problem: Lots of transactions and interactions occur on mobile and in chatrooms, payments and smart contracts should exist in those conversations through chat bots.
DigixDAO
Problem: Purchasing custodial gold requires too much trust and would be more efficient on a blockchain.
Basic Attention Token
Problem: The entire advertising industry is plagued by fraud and no one profits except the ad publishers (who are starting to hurt too).
BAT enables users to also profit from their time spent viewing ads.
Veritaseum
Problem: P2P digital currencies are cheaper than conventional products. What I don't get is how Veritaseum is doing anything better than Bitcoin already has done, or smart contracts on Ethereum are doing...
They claim fully autonomous contracts that will allow people to purchase stocks, mutual funds etc... But who the heck owns the actual real world asset.
FirstBlood
Problem: eSports platforms are centralized and inefficient.
MobileGo
Problem: Mobile app platforms are centralized and don't reward their developers enough.
Connected to GameCredits I guess?
Tether
Problem: There needs to be a decentralized form of USD to allow quicker crypto-trading.
Numeraire
Problem: Stock market is inefficient in creating a machine learning hedge fund, a decentralized effort with anonymized data would produce better outcomes.
SingularDTV
Problem: Artists and content creators should be able to directly deliver their content in a P2P marketplace.
SysCoin
Problem: There should be more apps on the blockchain for people to use, like a decentralized marketplace.
BitcoinDark
This coin rebranded to Komodo.
PIVX
Problem: Payments on a decentralized network should be anonymized.
Aragon
Problem: Companies should register on a decentralized ledger, a DAO which has a court system built in.
MCAP
Problem: It is too hard to invest in different ICOs + it's too expensive to invest in cryptocurrency mining on your own.
Emercoin
Problem: Blockchain platforms need to create features for transactions to occur for as many different customers as possible.
*Emercoin seems to offer something like a dozen different products. I didn't really have time to dig into each of them and the problem they each solve, but one of them was a decentralized torrent tracker which sounds pretty cool.
Ubiq
Problem: Ethereum smart contracts aren't good enough, Ethereum's network isn't stable, etc.
Peercoin
Problem: PoW isn't a good system for coins built to last, PoS is better.
Peerplays
Problem: Centralized betting platforms are centralized, expensive, and open to manipulation.
Ark
Problem: Blockchains are too hard to create, also consumers want interconnected blockchains.
Lykke
Problem: There is no easy way for traders to hold currencies and trade them on one screen.
Lykke the company issued colored coins representing their company, which provides a multi-asset trading application and exchange.
Round
Problem: eSports platforms are centralized and inefficient.
Storjcoin X
Problem: Centralized cloud storage platforms are overly expensive.
End to end encrypted decentralized private cloud.
ReddCoin
Problem: You should be be able to send digital currency over social media platforms.
iExec RLC
Problem: Centralized (and then distributed) computing (mainly storage) platforms are overly expensive.
Asch
Problem: It is too difficult to create new blockchain applications.
Chinese Blockchain application (sidechain) platform, allows you to create sidechains and build other products on the platform.
Melon
Problem: There are no tools for consumers to easily invest into digital assets or funds with digital assets.
'decentralized fund management'
Wings
Problem: It is too hard to create and manage DAOs or ICOs/crowdsales for DAOs.
'a platform for creating Decentralized Autonomous Organizations.'
Quantum-Resistant Ledger
Problem: Bitcoin will be weak to quantum attacks in the future.
Nexus
Problem: Why aren't digital currencies in space yet?
Edgeless
Problem: Casinos take an 'edge' and shouldn't exist.
Namecoin
Problem: Domain names are issued by a centralized authority and this causes censorship.
Counterparty
Problem: Bitcoin is limited with what it can do, you should be able to issue assets on top of it.
Counterparty allows you to issue assets and smart contracts on top of Bitcoin.
Synereo
Problem: Content creators should be paid out with a P2P currency paid by their readers/audience.
Verge
Problem: Payments on a decentralized network should be anonymized.
Omni
Problem: Bitcoin is limited with what it can do, you should be able to issue assets on top of it.
Asset issuance on top of Bitcoin.
PRX
Problem it is aiming to solve: Nothing.
End note:
I might have missed the mark on a couple of the altcoins, if you think I misjudged the problem they're aiming to solve leave a comment with a one or two line summary of the problem and I'll review it!
Nothing in this article should be considered advice of any nature. Do your own research on whatever you buy. This is not financial nor investment advice. All opinions are my own, these are stated as opinions, not facts.
CREDIT GOES TO AUTHOR