These are just some of the cryptoassets, from impressive blockchain projects, which in my opinion are auspicious. I have used the following ideas to rate them as good investments for myself personally:
Network — The size of the network. Basically, are there relatively many people using the platform from the side of computation and from the users’ side. I also look at the non-technical side of the network; social media interactions and following.
Trading Volume/Liquidity– If average trading volume of the asset >= $1 million per trading session (24-hr period) across all major markets. This is an indication of relatively good liquidity in the market. Although these coins trade way above that number.
Technology — This entails the nature of the distributed ledger technology underpinning the platform, all cases are blockchain in my selection. This also includes the consensus algorithm implementation of the network.
Scalability — Scalability is mostly dependent on the Technology argument and can be tied to the consensus protocol or generally the nature of the blockchain. In other words, can the network cater for the growing demand/transactions in the medium to long-term? Some of us already know that Bitcoin and Ethereum are facing scaling problems but I have included them on the basis of having faith in their respective scaling solutions currently under development.
Purpose — This is basically the mission and vision of the project. There are many tokens out there which are just tokens (vapourware if you may). So a good project should have a compelling reason for its existence. If a cryptoasset generally solves a significant problem or just creates a new market — I take it to consideration.
Development team and transparency — A project needs to have a transparent group of developers or “executives” who are backed by their seeming ability to get the job done. I even look at the history of the developers in some cases. The project needs to have a face to whom we can consistently forward our concerns & get a timely response. I hate mysterious projects!
These are just some of the ideas I am governed by to inform my investing decisions. I also use a lot of sentiment before investing — a project should also resonate with me to a personal level.
In the most part, this is a publication to help the newbies navigate and learn more about alternative cryptos to Bitcoin. That is why I shared the websites where you can find the respective assets’ whitepapers to facilitate you in DOING YOUR OWN RESEARCH. I know I sound like a broken record but hey! Ok there they are!
NB: numerical data as of 1/23/2018 (~20:00 UTC+02:00)
Bitcoin (BTC)
Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency and worldwide payment system. It is the first decentralized digital currency, as the system works without a central bank or single administrator (Wikipedia).
Price: $11239.20
Market Cap: $189 billion
Total Supply: 21 million BTC
Circulating Supply: 16 million BTC
Consensus Algorithm: Proof-of-Work
Buy: Luno
Ethereum (ETH)
Ethereum is a decentralized platform for applications that run exactly as programmed without any chance of fraud, censorship or third-party interference (ethereum.org).
Price: $1009.54
Market Cap: $98 billion
Circulating Supply: 97 million ETH
Consensus Algorithm: Proof-of-Work (not for long)
Website: http://ethereum.org
Buy: Luno
Ripple (XRP)
According to wikipedia; Ripple is a real-time gross settlement system, currency exchange and remittance network by Ripple. Also called the Ripple Transaction Protocol (RTXP) or Ripple Protocol, it is built upon a distributed open source Internet protocol, consensus ledger and native cryptocurrency called XRP (ripples).
Price $1.38
Market Cap: $53 billion
Total Supply: 99 billion XRP
Circulating Supply: 38 billion XRP
Consensus Protocol: Ripple Protocol
Website: http://ripple.com
Buy: Bittrex
Cardano (ADA)
Cardano is a decentralized public blockchain and cryptocurrency project and is fully open source. Cardano is developing a smart contracts platform which seeks to deliver more advanced features than protocol previously developed. It is the first blockchain platform to evolve out of a scientific philosophy and research-first driven approach (cardanohub.org).
Price: $0.58
Market Cap: $15 billion
Total Supply: 31 billion ADA
Circulating Supply: 25 billion ADA
Consensus Protocol: Ouroboros Proof of Stake
Website: http://cardanohub.org
Buy: Bittrex
Stellar Lumens (XLM)
Stellar is a distributed, hybrid blockchain that is fully open-source. It is infrastructure that exists to facilitate cross-asset transfers of value, including payments (stellar.org).
Price: $0.50
Market Cap: $9 billion
Total Supply: 103 billion XLM
Circulating Supply: 17 billion XLM
Consensus Algorithm: Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP)
Website: http://stellar.org
Buy: Bittrex
Neo (NEO)
NEO is a blockchain project “that utilizes blockchain technology and digital identity to digitize assets, to automate the management of digital assets using smart contracts, and to realize a ‘smart economy’ with a distributed network.”
Price: $125.43
Market Cap: $8 billion
Total Supply: 100 million NEO
Circulating Supply: 65 million NEO
Consensus Algorithm: Delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerance (dBFT)
Website: http://neo.org
Buy: Bittrex
Tron (TRX)
Accoring to tron.network, Tron is a blockchain-based decentralized protocol that aims to construct a worldwide free content entertainment system with the blockchain and distributed storage technology. The technology allows each user to freely publish, store and own data, and in the decentralized autonomous form, decides the distribution, the subscription and push of contents and enables content creators by releasing, circulating and dealing with digital assets, thus forming a decentralized content entertainment ecosystem.
Price: $0.07
Market Cap: $4 billion
Total Supply: 100 billion TRX
Circulating Supply: 65 billion TRX
Website: http://tron.network
Buy: Binance
Lisk (LSK)
Lisk is a public blockchain platform that provides decentralized blockchain apps. It was forked from Crypti by Mark Kordek and Oliver Beddows in early 2016. Furthermore, the idea behind Lisk is that every Blockchain App is on its own sidechain from the main blockchain therefore solving the problem of scalability experienced by renowned blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum (Wikipedia).
Price: $22.96
Market Cap: $2 billion
Circulating Supply: 117 million LSK
Consensus Algorithm: Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS)
Website: http://lisk.io
Buy: Bittrex
Loopring (LRC)
Loopring is an open, multilateral token exchange protocol, for decentralized ex-change on the Ethereum blockchain. Loopring is intended to serve as a common building block with open standards, driving interoperability among decentralized applications (DAPPs) that incorporate exchange functionality. Trades are executed by a system of Ethereum smart contracts that are publicly accessible, free to use, and that any dApp can hook into. Loopring Decentralized Token Exchange Protocol (2017)
Price: $1.09
Market Cap: $612 million
Total Supply: 1.3 billion LRC
Circulating Supply: 561 million LRC
Website: http://loopring.org
Buy: Binance