A massive bubble? A fad? A fraud? Whichever way cynics want to call Bitcoin, their bullish rally continues to confuse detractors and enrich their supporters.
2017 has been a good year for Bitcoin. Although the technology is relatively new, digital currencies are already making waves in multiple industries. The increase of the demand has increased the prices significantly and many obtained good benefits when investing in Bitcoin and other cryptoactives. But, you wonder what is the next cryptocurrency to invest in 2018 besides Bitcoin? Here, we have selected the 7 best promising cryptocurrencies to invest in 2018.
Although he is still extremely optimistic about what awaits Bitcoin, George Tung, co-founder of Cryptos R Us and a veteran of the investment in cryptocurrencies, says there are still plenty of profit opportunities in lesser-known currencies. "Will we see another currency with a market limit that exceeds bitcoin? Yes, I think it's definitely possible within the next three or five years. "
Hitesh Malviya, the cryptographic consultant behind ItsBlockchain.com, says that bitcoin is obviously the ideal place during bullish bursts like the one we're seeing right now, but, in the long run, big cryptos profits are found elsewhere .
"The altcoins industry is new and will take at least a few years to become the mainstream," adding that "we can see many alternative currencies that increase up to 10 times their value, such as Bitcoin during this year."
But with more than 1,300 alternative coins to choose from, it is not an easy task to discover potential winners. Tung uses four basic principles to determine which altcoins deserve more attention:
Study the team behind it. "Where do they come from? Have you been involved with another cryptocurrency before? Are they backed by someone, and what kind of experience do they bring? the altcoins that have done better and have the highest market capitalizations are those that have the most capable teams. "
Take a look at why. "How useful is this? Are you trying to solve a problem that does not need a solution? Some alternative currencies that come to market are simply ridiculous. "
Determine in which phase the project is located. "I look at the altcoin road map and see how far they are from achieving the proposed goals. Do they have a test network (test-net) or a beta? Are new functions being released? Is there a likelihood that soft or hard forks will occur? "
Evaluate the assessment. "Given that alternative currencies tend to exaggerate their future success to increase their initial value, I look at the current market assessment and see if they are well valued. Many altcoins are simply too expensive and I tend to stay away from them. "
THE BEST CRYPTOMONDS TO INVEST IN 2018
With this in mind, here is a summary of seven cryptocurrencies that analysts have said is worth observing in 2018. Like Bitcoin, all cryptocurrencies are subject to extreme volatility and risk, so if you intend to invest , it is worth doing with due diligence, and learn more about each one.
Litecoin (LTC)
Litecoin has been described as the real alternative to bitcoin.
Market capitalization (12/14/17): $ 15,670,603,761
Price (12/14/17): $ 286.61
Who created it ?: Former Google employee (and now a notable star in the cryptocurrency universe) Charlie Lee
Created by Lee in 2011, it was announced as an alternative to bitcoin. Lee essentially set out to reduce the time required to confirm new transactions and modify the way bitcoin was mined to ensure anyone could participate. "My vision is that people would use Litecoin every day to buy things. It would just be the payment method of choice, "Lee said once.
Litecoin is also designed to produce more coins: it has a limit of 84 million coins, compared to 21 million bitcoins. Around 54 million coins are currently in circulation, compared to the current 16.7 million Bitcoin circulating units.
Official Site: https://litecoin.org/es/
Monero (XMR)
The appeal of Monero ?: Anonymity.
Capitalization of the market (12/14/17): $ 4,748,175,394
Price (12/14/17): $ 307.44
Who created it ?: Like Bitcoin, the creator of Monero is anonymous.
The main attraction of Monero cryptocurrency is anonymity. With Monero, the details of each transaction, including the sender, the recipient and the size, are recorded in a public ledger, but are obfuscated, to make them impossible to track. With Monero in theory there is no way for anyone else to connect the points between the sender, the receiver or the size of the transaction.
Does it sound like an attractive currency for cybercriminals? It is. The hackers behind the global WannaCry ransomware incident, which infected 230,000 computers with Microsoft Windows, demanded payments in Monero.
That said, there are many more registered cases of hackers that demand Bitcoin, and Monero supporters say that cases of increased use of the currency are not illegal. They would appeal, they say, to companies that want to move money without their competitors knowing, or to anyone who simply does not want their balance and transactions published, like someone doing business in a foreign country who does not want to become a target.
Monero said recently that 45 musicians, including Lana Del Ray, Sia and Dolly Parton, will accept Monero as a means of payment. Many will even offer discounts to those who pay with it.
There are approximately 15.5 million XMR in circulation and, unlike Bitcoin and Litecoin, Monero does not have a fixed supply of coins.
Official Site: https://getmonero.org/
Neo
The "Ethereum of China"
Market capitalization: $ 3,029,058,500
Price (12/14/17): $ 46.60
Who created it ?: Da Hongfei, CEO of Onchain and blockchain evangelist in China, together with his co-founder Erik Zhang
Tung predicts that Neo, nicknamed the "Ethereum of China," will explode if China eases its stance on ICOs and bitcoin. Ethereum is n. ° 2 behind the bitcoin in terms of market capitalization at $ 61 billion. So, obviously, Neo has a long way to go.
Founder Da Hongfei recently participated in CNBC to allay fears that cryptos will overheat. "I would say there is a bubble in this industry, but I would say it's fine," he said. "Any technology that is so disruptive, will definitely generate bubbles, as happened with the train or the car." Neo has been around since 2014, when it was called "Antshares". Yes, it has been changed to refer to Matrix.
The current NEO supply is currently at 65 million, out of a total of 100 million coins.
Official Site: https://neo.org/
Cardano (Ada)
The first blockchain backed by a "scientific philosophy"
Market capitalization: $ 4,435,810,644
Price (12/14/17): $ 0.171088
Who created it ?: Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK)
Tung believes that "this new generation platform has the right equipment, dedication and money to create a real contender for Ethereum."
Cardano blocks chain just launched a few months ago and exploded on the scene with huge gains in its currency, called Ada, in November to enter the top 10 cryptocurrencies in terms of market capitalization. At the last minute, he had slipped to position 13.
The project began in 2015 and was called the first blockchain network supported by a "scientific philosophy" and built by leading academics and engineers through peer-reviewed research.
Cardano, while still relatively unknown, is apparently important in private transactions and responds to the needs of regulators, which prepares him for mass adoption. Its CEO, Charles Hoskinson, says that Cardano addresses issues of "sustainability, interoperability and scalability" so that the cryptocurrency can go from being a "fun novelty" to something that can be used by billions of people and interact with legacy financial systems . Cardano is still in its early stages (what the team calls its "start-up era"), and the next phase of its roadmap will be launched sometime in the second quarter of 2018. That means its framework remains developed, and it can take time for it to become the smart contract platform that its leaders imagine.
About 26 billion of a maximum of 45 billion Ada coins are currently in circulation.
Official Site: https://www.cardanohub.org/
Ripple (XRP)
“Un cruce entre Western Union y un cambio de divisas, sin los altos honorarios”
Capitalización del mercado: $27.047.825.889
Precio (12/14/17): $0.698204
¿Quién lo creó?: El desarrollador web Ryan Fugger, el empresario Chris Larsen y el programador Jed McCaleb
Los antiguos desarrolladores de bitcoin lanzaron la empresa de software Ripple en 2012 y su moneda digital, XRP, es vista por algunos como el sucesor lógico de bitcoin.
The New York Times una vez describió a Ripple como “un cruce entre Western Union y un cambio de divisas, sin los altos honorarios” porque no solo es una moneda, sino también un sistema en el que cualquier moneda, incluido el bitcoin, puede negociarse. “Ripple conecta bancos, proveedores de pagos, intercambios de activos digitales y empresas a través de RippleNet para proporcionar una experiencia sin restricciones para enviar dinero a nivel mundial”, explicaron sus creadores.
Ripple ha licenciado su tecnología blockchain a más de 100 bancos. Y un nuevo fondo de cobertura anunció recientemente que estaría denominado en XRP. Recientemente, su CEO le dijo a Fortune: “No somos contrarios a los bancos, no somos antigubernamentales, no somos una moneda anti fiduciaria”.
El suministro circulante de XRP actualmente es de aproximadamente 38.7 billones de un suministro máximo de 100 billones … que es MUCHO más que el resto de los criptomonedas en esta lista.
Sitio Oficial: https://ripple.com/
Iota (MIOTA)
Without commercial, mining or block rates.
Market capitalization: $ 10,973,529,967
Price (12/14/17): $ 3.95
Who created it ?: David Sønstebø, Sergey Ivancheglo, Dominik Schiener, and Dr. Serguei Popov, a team of entrepreneurs, mathematicians and developers
The great attraction of lota is that it does not have commercial, mining or block rates. For each transaction you make, your processing power is used to validate two other transactions, making each Iota owner also a "miner" of Iota.
Basically, Iota focuses on becoming the backbone of secure machine-to-machine payments in the Internet of Things economy and is unique in that it is hailed as the first cryptocurrency created without the use of a chain of blocks. Instead, it is based on a distributed accounting architecture called "The Tangle," an innovation that is credited with enabling Iota to achieve three major encryption milestones: zero cost transactions, off-line transactions and infinite scalability.
The news of his latest partnership with Microsoft has just given him a big boost and brought him to the first level of the most valuable crypto-active.
The maximum supply of MIOTA is just under 2.8 billion, and the full maximum supply is currently in circulation.
Official Site: https://iota.org/
Bitcoin Cash
Transactions with lower rates and faster confirmations
Capitalization: $ 30,489,677,562
Price (12/14/17): $ 1,808.89
Who created it ?: Bitcoin Cash was created by a team of people who forked the bitcoin blockchain. Now it is controlled by multiple independent developer teams.
Bitcoin Cash is one of the newest of cryptocurrencies, developed in August 2017 as a bitcoin hard fork. What is that? Essentially a new version of bitcoin that is incompatible with the original bitcoin.
Bitcoin Cash was created because some users were frustrated by high rates and slow processing times. Because Bitcoin Cash has a larger block size limit, its creators say that the cryptocurrency has more capacity to handle transactions with lower rates and faster confirmations. However, on the other side of that reasoning are Bitcoin loyalists who believe that increasing the size of the blocks jeopardizes the decentralized nature of the cryptocurrency. The philosophical division between bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash was rightly described by Forbes as "Cypherpunk vs. Silicon Valley. "
The biggest challenge facing Bitcoin Cash right now is adoption: to be valuable, you must convince companies to accept both bitcoin and the rival payment network. It also needs to convince the miners to participate in the transaction compensation process.
In mid-November, Bitcoin Cash briefly outperformed Ethereum's market capitalization to become the second most valuable cryptocurrency. Since then he has returned to third place. Its current supply is currently 16.8 million, out of a maximum supply of 21 million.
Official Site: https://www.bitcoincash.org/
Bonus: Ethereum
Ethereum allows developers to build decentralized applications and make use of smart contracts
Capitalization: $ 66,637,853,931
Price (12/14/17): $ 691.73
Who created it ?: Vitalik Buterin
Ethereum is another popular cryptocurrency investor solution today and will continue in 2018. Designed by a programmer named Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum works in a completely different way from Bitcoin. Although it can do many of the same things that Bitcoin can do, its main objective is to act as a platform to create decentralized applications.
The biggest difference between Bitcoin and Ethereum is the use of blockchains. While the Bitcoin Blockchain registers contracts, showing how digital funds have moved from one place to another, Etherum has expanded this concept. The Ethereum blockchain uses a much more complex scripting language, and its intelligent contracts can form complex applications that have a wide range of potential uses.
The developers have recently begun to realize the potential that Ethereum can offer, building projects on the cryptocurrency. Some people have even used Ethereum to raise millions of dollars through mass sales known as ICO, and the trend is still strong today. This makes Ethereum a powerful option for those who invest in finance. However, the popularity of the currency means that the price has skyrocketed.
Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum, recently launched an implementation guide that reveals that the network's developers will start with a "hybrid" system that will merge bitcoin-style work test mining with its highly anticipated and still experimental participation test called Casper.
Official Site: https://www.ethereum.org/
How to invest in cryptocurrencies?
Investing in cryptoactives can be risky, but if you are sure of the advantages offered by this platform, have read the technical documentation, and are inspired by the founders of the project, then this is what you should do:
Buy something from Bitcoin or Ether
Many of the potentially successful cryptoactives do not have a payment mechanism that allows direct exchange for fiat money, in fact, a large percentage of tokens must be exchanged initially by Bitcoins or Ether. Therefore, your first step will be to acquire one of these 2 cryptocurrencies through an online broker. Coinbase is one of the best sites to buy your first Bitcoins, they have a solid reputation in the market, advanced security measures to protect your funds, and allow you to make payments by credit card and bank transfer. In addition, the site has other popular buying options, such as Ethereum, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash.
Open an account on an exchange platform
Once you have purchased your first Bitcoins, you must open an account in a cryptocurrency exchange platform such as Bittrex, Poloniex or Binance. Binance is our favorite exchange, since it allows us to exchange BTC and Ether for promising cryptoactives such as Ripple, Stellar Lumens or Cardano, among others. Binance is currently one of the most successful exchanges on the market, with advanced security measures, a large number of cryptoactives to choose from, and its transaction rates are quite low. To start trading in Binance, you must transfer some balance in Bitcoin or Ether from your Coinbase wallet to the address to receive deposits from your Binance account. Once this is done, you can start trading in the exchange, for which you are offered 2 options: a basic mode that is ideal for beginners, and an advanced mode that has more negotiation tools.