Cryptocurrencies are the new trend in the world of currency trading. If you aren’t yet familiar with them, they are basically digital currencies that run on a decentralized network, free from any kind of centralized authority or control. The most popular ones include Bitcoin, Ripple, Litecoin, and Ethereum.
Here, we will discuss some notable cryptocurrencies that have recently joined the league of popular cryptos that might be worth investing in.
Tether
Tether (USDT) is a cryptocurrency token claimed by its creators to be backed by one dollar for each token issued. This claim is widely doubted, and the speculation about Tether as a tool for market manipulation was even confirmed recently. However, it seems that Tether has been working under the law just fine so far. The Crypto coin is ranked 21 by market cap size ($2B) and daily volume of $345Mn. As mentioned earlier, the value of Tether is pegged to the US dollar, which makes it pretty stable despite the volatility associated with cryptocurrencies. Several crypto traders have found this a valuable quality Tether.
Aside from holding this crypto, traders can earn Tether overtime, multiply Tether holdings or earn interest in their Tether holdings using various platforms. More traders are attracted to this earning prospect because of its easy process, low risk, and reliable passive income option. A useful piece of advice to keep in mind is that interest rate and duration of active operation are two important things that you must consider when choosing a platform to earn interest on Tether.
Ethereum
Ethereum is the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap size ($443 billion) with Bitcoin being #1, Litecoin #3, and Ripple #4 (#2 if you count their coins separately). The Ethereum project was bootstrapped via an ether presale in August 2014 by fans all around the world. It is developed by the Ethereum Foundation, a Swiss non-profit, with contributions from great minds across the globe. Ethereum enables Smart Contracts and Distributed Applications (ĐApps) to be built and run without any downtime, fraud, control, or interference from a third party. The cryptocurrency of this project is called Ether, and it fuels the network so that developers can create their own tokens which can be used as a currency on the network. Some interesting ICOs have been conducted using Ethereum’s digital ledger technology such as DigixDAO, Golem Network, and Iconomi! There are currently around 117.66 million ethers in circulation, with a particular price point of $717 per coin (Jan 2018).
Ripple
Ripple is unlike most cryptocurrencies because its primary focus isn’t necessarily its coin (known as XRP). Rather, Ripple has created a distributed exchange for fiat currencies and alike. They say they want to enable a “frictionless experience” to allow anybody from any bank, company, or country to be able to easily exchange assets from one currency to another. They also have their own native token, known as XRP, which can be used as a bridge for foreign exchanges between different currencies.
The trick with Ripple is that the reason why it has value is that there were 100 billion coins created during its inception and shared amongst many stakeholders — namely: The creators of Ripple Labs (~20Billion). It’s meant to facilitate international payments between banks. If you think about it – if all 7 billion people in the world each had a couple of bucks worth of Ripple ($XRP), that would make it extremely valuable due to the sheer amount held. So, if a bank wants to do a transaction with another bank in France, it needs some way of ensuring that it is actually who they claim they are and that the assets can be trusted. Because Ripple ($XRP) has the support of many financial institutions, this makes it such that when they go on the network and transfer $XRP (or whatever currency), they know that these tokens aren’t counterfeit and they’re not going to lose their money — providing trust.
Monero
Monero was launched back in 2014 under the name BitMonero got shortened to Monero soon after launch due to a community-driven consensus. The Crypto coin is based upon an open-source technology that gives you 100% privacy when making transactions. All purchases are obfuscated to third parties, including vendors! What’s interesting about this technology is that it also uses cryptography to facilitate secure payments between two parties without the need for a “trusted” third party. This provides a secure platform for businesses to build upon, and they can transact in complete privacy. Monero is currently ranked 9th by market cap size ($5B) which translates into $431 per coin (Jan 2018).
IOTA
IOTA was designed specifically for machines rather than people. It has no transaction fees (though there is also no scaling limit like Bitcoin) and each unit of transfer will simply represent 1 IOTA moving from one place to another.
IOTA has its own Tangle, which is a type of DLT much like blockchain but with no blocks, chains, or miners. Each transaction that occurs must first validate two previous transactions, which are randomly selected for it to do so. Thus, there can be no block size issue, as each user’s action essentially fills the role of future transactions’ validators. The IOTA tangle ledger is able to settle transactions with zero fees, so devices can trade exact amounts of resources on-demand, as well as store data from sensors and dataloggers securely and verified on the ledger. The more activity on the ledger, the faster it gets.
EOS
EOS takes things a step further than Ethereum by creating an operating system for decentralized applications. By using EOS, developers can create commercial-grade distributed applications on the blockchain without having to worry about common problems like scalability or security.
It makes use of parallelization of tasks across multiple CPUs and/or clusters so that many processes can happen in parallel. This allows for horizontally scalable yet more efficient computing. When it comes to RAM usage, the ram is only used when there is a need to store something within the blockchain itself which means users aren’t paying for unnecessary storage — unlike Ethereum where every single transaction has to be stored forever on the full blockchain even if it’s just tiny pieces of data being moved around.
Bitcoin
The most popular and well-known cryptocurrency should not be left out of the list. Bitcoin is not controlled by a central authority. The supply of Bitcoins slowly grows via the process called mining, where transactions for various goods and services are verified and added to the public ledger, known as the blockchain. Mining cannot be easily forged because every transaction is cryptographically secured and entered chronologically into this public ledger. Although its price dipped to $46,444.71 last year from a surge of more than $60,000.00, it still has an excellent year-to-date gain exceeding 50%.
These are just some of the top picks for cryptocurrencies that you should invest in right now. There are other remarkable cryptos worth looking at that are not included here. The potential upside here is tremendous considering how early we are in the Blockchain life-cycle. Here’s a piece of advice you will find useful: do your research and invest in cryptos wisely, then you could find yourself reaping huge rewards.
