It’s very hard to answer this type of question, because there are many technical and economical factors involved. As a tech guy, i know next to nothing about markets and the economics of cryptocurrencies, so i’ll base my guess mostly on tech aspects.
There are a few obvious candidates:
Bitcoin
Litecoin
Ether
Those 3 are already “big” so if nothing really catastrophic occurs with any of them, they will keep being big.
The newcomers:
Dash
Ripple
Zcash
Decred
Dash is well established but has some HUGE flaws in terms of long term stability. First of all, it’s development is very centralized in the figure of Evan Duffield. So if something happens to him, it might catastrophic for DASH. Then there are the masternodes, that are not yet and well accepted technology as far as security goes. If something goes wrong with them the coin loses most if not all of it’s appeal and value (technically speaking, of course).
Ripple is something to watch. It is an attempt to bring the old economy into the crypto world, and is doing great as far, but have not yet convinced the world of it’s value. The centralized (hierarchical actually) structure of it’s blockchain might represent a flaw in the eyes of hardcore crypto fans and experts, but is a “plus” for banks and big corporations who would want someone to blame.
Zcash was a marketing stunt, but it is holding it’s ground for now. Technically, it’s not innovative, but it has surely got a big share of attention and might become big despite it’s lack of innovation.
Decred is the underdog here. I’m personally a great fan of this coin. Technically, it has some good innovations, and is written in a “fashionable” programing language (golang), which attracts new developers and new ideas. It’s governance model using voting by stakeholders inside the blockchain, might solve the deadlocks bitcoin is facing without having to centralize decisions as in ETH or DASH. Development is very active and a full automated system based on smart contracts is being developed to take care of the development funds (other coins that have such funds, like dash, have it managed in a centralized way by a small group of people).
Of course there might be many more cryptos out there that i never heard of and a re technically better than those. So keep an eye open for innovation and development stability. I think this is the key for the success of a cryptocurrency.
Girino Vey.
Whats your own opinion?