Here is my short review of my favorite cryptocurrencies and projects.
I wanted it to be noob-friendly and short.
1. Bitcoin
Bitcoin is, despite its shortbacks, the mothership of all cryptocurrencies. If you are new to the space you might think its old and rusty, but make no mistake, Bitcoin is here to stay for longer than we think.
Positives
- The longest unhacked and unstopped operation.
- A massive network effect.
- Most adopted by users and businesses.
- Huge team of developers and supporters.
- Best infrastructure (wallets, services).
- The biggest mining operation.
- One of few trully decetralized coins.
Negatives
- Its slow. 10-240 minutes of confirmation time, depending on your fees.
- Right now there are terribly high transaction fees (up to tens of dollars).
- If you buy from an exchange its not anonymous at all. All your transactions are visible and can be tracked (this applies for most of cryptos).
- Development is not as fast as it could be. Decentralized governance is not very effective (but still better than centralized one).
- Split community. There are attempts to take over bitcoin by chinesse miners and businesses. So far all failed.
My score - 98%
I think bitcoin should be major part of every portfolio and it has bright long-term future. We will see governments trying to take it down by all means, but they wont be able to. Nobody is pretty much. Thats the beauty of it, theres nobody with absolute power over Bitcoin.
2. Litecoin
Litecoin was created in 2011 as a faster and cheaper alternative to Bitcoin. More like its addition, not competition. And thats what it is to this day.
Positives
- Similar code to Bitcoin's - Litecoin can use every new technology Bitcoin implements.
- Close ties to Bitcoin make it more stable.
- Very tight and supportive community. Mostly thanks to Litecoin's creator who is very active.
- Transactions are very fast. 2.5 min. avarege for few cents worth of fees.
- Quite stable price. It goes up in nice jumps.
Negatives
- Its living under a shadow of Bitcoin a bit. But that might change with adoption.
My score - 99%
I think litecoin is probably the safest bet out there thanks to its community and ties to Bitcoin. Its like faster Bitcoin without the drama.
3. Ethereum
Ethereum is quite different to those above. It supports much more versatile programming language. It is meant to be a platform upon which decentralized projects of the future will be build.
Positives
- Its very innovative. If they deliver on their promises, Ethereum will change the internet as we know it.
- It has huge community of developers and businesses supporting it.
- Its not primarily used as currency, so its not a competitor of Bitcoin.
- It moves forward quite fast in its development.
Negatives
- Complicated technology and huge platform resulted in 3 major hacks of its services (not platform itself). This issue will not disappear any time soon.
- Not a single project that launched on the platform did succeed so far. Its still early tho.
- Some say its development and governance are centralized.
- Many new projects are selling their tokens as an ICO (initial coin offering) creating a huge price bubble of basically worthless projects (promises).
My score - 95%
I think Ethereum will deliver, but we will see many of projects launched on it go down. This might cast a bad light on this cryptocurrency.
4. Monero
Monero is considered by many, the best privacy coin out there. There are doubts about the privacy of older transactions on the network, but since 2016 nobody was able to track anything on this network at all. Nobody can see who you send money to or how much. Did you hear darknet uses Bitcoin? No longer true, they all use Monero now. Thats how good it is :)
Positives
- Private.
- Anonymous.
- Very decentralized. Its coded and operated by "grassroots" community of hackers and anarchists.
- It can be mined on home computer - coins above can not.
- Its old and stable.
Negatives
- There is only one official wallet and it still sucks.
- Its not accepted anywhere except the darkweb :) yet
- Bigger projects like Bitcoin have plans to introduce better privacy (I dont think it will be as good as monero's). This can hold its price a bit down.
My score - 97%
If you want to your government to know jack shit, this is the gold for you. Its a good stable coin for long-term investment. But your freedom is priceless.
5. IOTA
This one is from whole another bucket. IOTA doesnt use blockchain like every other coin out there. It uses completely different architecture. IOTA is primarily used for machine to machine transactions and data security, but you can use it as well.
Positives
- Feeless. You can send milions for free.
- While blockchain tech (bitcoin) gets slower and slower as it grows in size, IOTA is the opposite, since every transaction approves 2 other transaction, IOTA will scale exponentially.
- It has bigger potential to win the "end game" than almost anything.
- Its planned to be the backbone of internet of things and smart cities.
Negatives
- Its very young and new.
- Its untested and very risky. Network is small, unsecure (compared to what it will be) and under frequent attacks.
- No real world adoption - just experimentation.
- Not much infrastructure (exchanges and wallets)
My score - 90%
I think IOTA has the biggest potential to bring me ungodly returns, but only if it gets on its feet and reaches the scale. Its very risky and for long-term holding (4 years min.).
6. DASH
... also known as "digital cash" is trying to be easy to use payment solution for masses.
Positives
- Very fast and cheap.
- Huge community and network (smaller than litecoin).
- Good decentralized system of governance.
- Great online and offline marketing.
Negatives
- It competes in same space as Bitcoin and Litecoin.
- It has private send feature, but many doubt if its really private.
- Some nodes have more influence than the others - theres a risk of takeover.
My score - 92%
I think DASH will be here for some time. They are trying to bring the crypto-experiance to the people and their marketing is far-reaching.
Other projects I think have chance
- NEO
- Omise Go
- Lisk
- EOS
- Zcoin
..but dont listen to me, do your own research.
Andrej Cibík @andrejcibik
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