Number 5 : Bitcoin
Why is bitcoin not number one on this list? For starters, its market dominance has been at its lowest and it is only going lower. It is clunky and slow and the fees even though diminishing as of late is still high. Scaling solution doesn’t directly solve this problem either. Lightning network, segwit and atomic swaps are far from truly being implemented. The community is divided and it is difficult to gain immediate consensus since the development is so decentralized.
All that being said, you won’t find another Bitcoin fork on our list. This is because Bitcoin is popular not just because new investors think of it as a store of value but because institutional investors, crypto whales and day traders all use BTC as a standard denomination for cryptocurrency trading. For any cryptocurrency emphasis on currency to replace it and create a flippening it would first need to be used as a trading pair for by exchanges exclusively while offering more trading pairs in BTC. Despite there being many good currencies in the crypto space such as Nano and Litecoin it will take some time before another coin takes over the king. So why is Bitcoin on this list at all then? Bitcoin has been around for 9 years right now and that time it survived one of the most catastrophic mismanagement of funds since Charles Ponzi in the form of Mount gox. It survived hard forks, FUD attempts, market manipulation, government regulation and if you believe the media bitcoin dies about twice a week. It’s also the only cryptocurrency that most regular people outside of crypto know about.
Be honest with yourself before you took an interest in cryptocurrencies did you know about any other crypto outside of bitcoin, maybe Ethereum or dogecoin but for most people, they have no idea what nano or Litecoin or many other cryptocurrencies are. Media blitzkrieg and first mover advantage means new money will always be pouring into bitcoin as long as cryptocurrency is seen as a viable investment, additionally, no other cryptocurrencies have futures contracts, bitcoins long-term gameplan might look bleak when faced with competition from its younger shinier and sexier competitors. However, 2018 is not going to be the year it dies.
No one knows whether it will be pumped to $100.000 or $1.000.000 in the future but bitcoin still has a lot of life left in it. Your bitcoins might not double in value but expect stable organic growth in 2018 for the time being Bitcoin is here to stay.
Number 4 : Omisego
Next, up on our list, we have Omisego, the Omisego platform is just getting started and it still has a long way to go but right now is one of the most interesting cryptocurrencies. They don’t just have a great business bottle they also have a great vision for the future of payments, we love the fact that they’re targeting southeast-Asia’s financial system which is practically screaming out for a better solution. When you factor in the McDonalds partnerships, their four years of proven experience in the payment industry, their solid developing team and marketing skills this feels like a crypto to hold in 2018. That being said Omisego is a sleeping giant in some respects so it may take some time before it truly takes off and it’ll just have some slow organic go through 2018 but it is not a bad thing, in fact, it is a great time.
Number 3 : Waltonchain
At number three on our list we have Waltonchain, Waltonchain just won the 2018 outstanding blockchain award at the first summit forum of blockchain in southeast Asia they just had an event where they signed 8 strategic partnerships and they are also revealing details related to rebranding. In time they will announce their blockchain release as well as details on rewards for master nodes which we believe will be around 20% given that it takes 5000 WTC (Waltonchain) to run a master node you’re effectively receiving nearly $40k in Walton through dividends at today’s prices and prices we think will go up this year so it even gets better. Walton is spending a lot of time in 2018 building up partnerships and working on their tech. It’ll be a slow growth year with a couple breakouts here and there. But essentially based on their roadmap 2019 will be an explosive year for Walton as they start to roll out their RFID solution. With their announced partnership with China, mobile Walton chain is entangled in the middle of a network of world-leading IOT corporations and endless Opportunites for adoption globally in countless different industries. Waltonchain is positioning themselves to be the single connector of the entire internet of things initiative put forward by the china mobile iot alliance for many many different reasons Waltonchain is one of our favorite coins to be held in 2018 and we really think you should give this on a look over.
Number 2 : NEO
Next up we have NEO, so the world is changing, cryptocurrencies are no longer just currencies but something smarter and the Chinese Ethereum is one of the most undervalued products in the market right now. Right from its inception as Antshares NEO was hailed as the next big dApp and sparked contracts platform it’s tech is already being used and neo is gaining weight as a major industry player, the fact that they have Chinese government partnerships as well as major business partnerships is what will keep it growing in 2018 you’ll find exchanges, especially Asian ones such as Binance and Kucoin, start to list neo as a major trading pair fully expect the volume price and use of the neo token to go up.
The fact is China is one of the leaders in cryptocurrency in innovation and in investment so it makes sense neo will be used to prop up the smart contract tech that most new coins will be built on as for these reasons we dont believe china is going to ban cryptocurrencies because china is not going to shoot themselves in the foot. They are going to enforce and regulate but they’re not going to ban it is how things are done in China. Look at how they enforced the internet, the great chinese firewall. They didn’t ban the internet they’ve just done things their way, so we fully anticipate that this is going to continue with cryptocurrencies this trend.
Number 1 : Ethereum
All hail the king, one might make the argument that Ethereum has changed cryptocurrency more in three years than bitcoin has done in 9. Since its launch, Vitalik Butarin has managed to drive the Ethereum project to second place on the global market cap with the Ethereum enterpise alliance. There’s a really good chance if bitcoin falls from its number-one spot it will be replaced by Ethereum. Holding Ethereum is like holding the ultimate blue chip stock, it is a big project run by extremely talented developers who have delivered a product that is already changing the world. Most new coins that are coming out today are ERC20 tokens running of the Ethereums blockchain.
The Ethereum network currently processes more than one million transactions per day which are larger than every other cryptocurrency combined. There is network congestion and fees have been slowly rising but the length and breadth of applications for this blockchain are immense. From crypto kitties to decentralized exchanges to insurance contracts. Ethereum enables it all. Ethereum is a long-term hold, the dividends will really start to pay off when sharding is implemented which is purported to be sometime in early 2018. Coins like bitcoin and ripple have a limited use case when compared to Ethereum which is poised to become the backbone of every smart contract transaction in the world. Once that happens Ethereum has won the cryptocurrency game for the foreseeable future.
That was our list, some may wonder why we haven’t included and privacy or exchange coins. These are great coins don’t get me wrong at all. However, we don’t feel comfortable recommending as completely bulletproof gainers given these are coins that all takes is one critical flaw for them to be completely eviscerated. The privacy coin and the exchange space are incredibly competitive. If a privacy coin is found to be hackable or not truly sending anonymous transactions. Or if an exchange gets hacked like mt. Gox that could be the end of them and suddenly you’re out of a lot of money. So that’s why we stuck to currencies, utility coins and platforms for this article.