With 2017 now in the books, we can officially
look back and dub it the "year of the
cryptocurrency." Despite the stock market
historically taking its seat at the head of the
table in terms of wealth creation, it was
cryptocurrencies that delivered what could b
the single greatest year we've ever seen from
an asset class.
When the year began, the aggregate market
cap of all eryptocurrencies was just $17.7
billion. However, by late December, this figure
had topped $650 billion, representing a bette
than 3.500% increase in about a vear's time.
Bitcoin, the wor'd's most popular and valuable
virtual coin by market cap, is perceived to have
led the charge higher in cryptocurrencies. It is,
after all, the crypto coin most accepted by
merchants, and easily the most-traded virtual
currency of the nearly 1,400 that can be
purchased by investors.
However, truth be told, bitcoin was actually an
underperformer last year. It took a backseat to
many up-and-coming coins and blockchain
players -- blockchain is the infrastructure that
virtual coins are built on, and it is responsible
for logging all transaction data in a digital
ledger -- which wound up gaining a whole lot
more on a percentage basis. Heading into
2018, the story is no longer about just bitcoin.
Instead, it's about which cryptocurrency could
become the next bitcoin, or the next thing to be
better than bitcoin.
With this in mind, I'd suggest forgetting all
about the highly played-out bitcoin at this point
and consider following these 12
cryptocurrencies instead.
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- Ethereum
Ethereum is the second-largest cryptocurrency
in terms of market cap behind bitcoin, and
there's a very good reason to pay attention to it
rather than bitcoin: big businesses' attraction
to its blockchain.
The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, which was
formed early in 2017, currently has 200
organizations testing out a version of
Ethereum's blockchain in numerous different
industries, demonstrating that its blockchain
technology can transcend currency-only
applications, which is something bitcoin can't
do. In particular, the incorporation of smart
contract protocols into its blockchain (smart
contracts help to facilitate, verify, or negotiate
the enforcement of a contract) makes it a very
popular choice among enterprise clients.
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- Stellar
Stellar (formerly known as Stellar Lumens) has
been hovering between 10th and 20th in terms
of largest crypto market cap for a few weeks
now. Like Ethereum, Stellar's blockchain is its
major selling point, and it similarly
incorporates smart contract protocols.
However, Stellar has positioned itself to go
after corporations, and not just financial
service companies.
In October, Stellar announced a partnership
with IBM (NYSE:IBM) and KlickEx that'll see a
dozen banks in the South Pacific region
develop and deploy Stellar's blockchain
technology in order to handle the multiple
currency payments received from IBM's
customers. If successful, Stellar has the
capability to scale its blockchain to new
regions, which is great news seeing as how IBM generates tens of billions of dollars from
overseas clients.
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3. Ripple
Unlike Stellar and Ethereum, Ripple has a gung-
ho mission to become the go-to blockchain fo
big banks and financial institutions. Its quick
transaction-processing times are one reason it
was able to snag a partnership with American
Express (NYSE:AXP) and Banco Santander
(NYSE:SAN) in November. According to the
partnership, any non-card payments made via
American Express's FX International Payment
network to a U.K. Santander account will be
routed through Ripple's blockchain and
process instantly.
What's more, Ripple's coin, the XRP, could be
used as an intermediary in future cross-border
partnerships. As an example, if a company
paying in Japanese yen sent a payment to the
U.K., Ripple's blockchain could instantly
convert yen into XRP, then XRP into pounds,
cutting out the financial middleman.
- NEM
NEM and its coin XEM may not flow off the
tongue like bitcoin, but XEM ran circles around
bitcoin last year, with a gain of more than
30,000% at one point from Dec. 31, 2016,
through Christmas Day 2017. Like many of the
other names on this watchlist, blockchain is
the big reason it's been such a top performer.
NEM, rather than focusing solely on enterprise
clients, is all about peer-to-peer payments and
transfers, be they retail or enterprise. Being
that the NEM Foundation is based in
Singapore, it should come as no surprise that
ts biggest win in 2017 was a September
announcement of a partnership between NEM
and the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation
(MDEC). MDEC is a government-owned
institution that handles digital infrastructure,
security, and technology-related laws
advisement in Malaysia, meaning it could have
significant influence in getting XEM adopted in
Southeastern Asia.
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5. Litecoin
Sometimes called "bitcoin-Lite" since it forked
from bitcoin back in 2011, Litecoin is an
intriguing eryptocurrency to monitor since it
appears to hold a number of advantages ove
bitcoin.
Make no mistake about it, Litecoin is all about
becoming the next peer-to-peer payment
facilitator like bitcoin. However, it has a
founder that's fully dedicated to its
development, has a faster block-processing
rate that keeps miners intrigued (and
rewarded), has a more decentralized proof-of-
work algorithm than bitcoin, and perhaps most
importantly, it's implemented the SegWit
(Segregated Witness) upgrade to its
blockchain. This upgrade helps to vastly
improve blockchain capacity, while reducing
transaction settlement times and fees.
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6.COMODO
Komodo is a relatively new cryptocurrency to
hit center stage, but it brings a whole slew of
advancements that virtual coin users and
investors are bound to appreciate. Naturally, as
is the case with most of these
cryptocurrencies, the blockchain is once again
the star.
With Komodo's blockchain platform, you have
the option of choosing between transparent
anonymous transactions (you'll read about the
emergence of privacy coins in a moment), with
the technology being used to obfuscate the
source of those transactions evolving from
what cryptocurrency Zcash uses. Komodo also
has plans to launch 32 independent, fiat-
pegged cryptocurrencies, which may allow for
the easiest conversion between fiat and digital
currencies that we've ever seen.
7.IOTA
Blockchain has been a driving force for IOTA
as well, which has moved to as high as fourth
in terms of biggest cryptocurrencies by market
cap last year. The big catalyst was an
announcement in November from the IOTA
Foundation, a German nonprofit that oversees
the IOTA virtual currency, that it was releasing
its Data Marketplace for a two-month demo.
IOTA's Data Marketplace is a setup that'll allow
businesses to sell data in order to incentivize
data sharing, as opposed to having that data
go to waste. Further, this Marketplace is
"blockless," meaning transactions on the
network can be made for free. This helps to
resolve one of the biggest constrains of
blockchain technology (transaction fees), and
it also brings the potential for scalability to the
demo. IOTA has already teamed up with the
likes of Accenture and Deutsche Telekom, with
ambitions for additional big partners in the
future.
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8.MONERO
Privacy coins, or virtual currencies that beef up
protocols designed to protect the privacy and
anonymity of a sender (or receiver) of coins,
are suddenly all the rage since they speak to
the heart of a decentralized cryptocurrency. At
the top of that list very well could be Monero,
which has gravitated toward being a top-10
cryptocurrency by market cap of late.
What makes Monero so special is its use of
ring signatures via its open-sourced protocol
known as CryptoNote. Ring signatures act like
a group of signers in a joint bank account, but
in this instance, the actual signer remains
unknown. A one-time spend key, known as a
stealth address, is generated by a sender of
XMR (Monero's coin), with only the recipient of
those funds being able to detect and spend
those funds.
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9.VERGE
Verge, which was just a blip on the
cryptocurrency screen a year ago, exploded
higher by more than 1,500,000% at one point
last year -- and no, there aren't any missing
decimal points in there! It, too, is part of the
recent privacy coin craze, and it received a nice
boost of late following positive commentary
from John McAfee, the CEO of MGT
Investments and former figurehead by McAfee
antivirus software.
The secret sauce for Verge is its use of
multiple anonymity-centric networks like I2P
and Tor to obscure users' IP addresses and
ensure that transactions are untraceable.
Verge offers quick transaction settlement
times over its blockchain of around five
seconds, and it already offers multiple secure
mobile wallets, including the Tor Android
Wallet for mobile anonymity.
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10. Einsteinium
If you want something really unique, put
Einsteinium and its aptly dubbed EMC2 coin on
your radar. At one point, EMC2 had risen by
well over 200,000% during 2017, but it has
since pulled back a bit after a parabolic run.
The buzz about Einsteinium is its focus on
becoming a charitable fund for scientific,
technological, educational, and blockchain-
based studies. Every time a block reward is
paid out to miners for proofing transactions,
the Einsteiunium Foundation receives 2.5% of
that reward. Approximately 80% of the funds
received goes toward research, with the
remaining 20% used for marketing and
donations. The Einsteinium community gets to
vote every so often on what project they
believe should be funded next. And best of all,
mining EMC2 is relatively simple compared to
other cryptocurrencies, suggesting anyone
could potentially get involved.
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11.BINANCE COIN
advantage of the cryptocurrency craze?
Consider Binance Coin (BNB), which is the
official coin of the Binance cryptocurrency
marketplace where the trading of
cryptocurrencies (no fiat currencies) takes
place. Not only would an investor presumably
benefit from an increase in trading volume, but
transaction fees on Binance that are paid in
BNB as opposed to bitcoin receive a big
discount of up to 50% in the year of use, as
well as smaller staggered discounts through
the first four years.
Furthermore, Binance recently announced
plans to buy back up to 100 million BNB in the
first quarter of 2018. When a publicly traded
company buys back its own stock, it often
inflates the value of the remaining shares by
making existing shares scarcer. That same
ideal could hold true with Binance Coin if up to
100 million BNB are permanently taken out of
circulation.
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12.STEEM DOLLARS
Last, but not least, if you want something really
off the cuff, consider Steem Dollars. Steem
Dollars are one of three virtual coins attached
to the Steemit social network, which rewards
content creators when their work gets upvoted,
as well as those folks who do the upvoting of
others' work.
Steem Dollars aren't something you can buy on
any cryptocurrency exchange. In fact, they
can't be traded on any of them. You first have
to create popular content on Steemit, and are
then rewarded with 50% of your "pay" being in
Steem Dollars. What's really neat about Steem
Dollars is that they're theoretically pegged to
the U.S. dollar to somewhat reduce downside
volatility -- but they earn a handsome 10%
interest rate per year. Are you earning a 10%
interest rate right now on your cash? Probably
not! At any time, you can choose to convert
your Steem Dollars to Steem, and then cash
out those Steem coins for actual U.S. dollars..png)
Upvoted u.