The world of cryptocurrency is moving really fast. Cryptocurrency as an investment option seems to be rising exponentially. Well, the numbers certainly are. Of late, top cryptocurrency (especially Bitcoin) has been attracting as many traders and investors as gold, penny stocks or real estate, if not more.
Bitcoin is a trendsetter and Godfather of cryptocurrency industry. At the starting of this year, Bitcoin was priced at 1000$ and at the time of writing this article it is crossing 7000$ mark.
Investing in top cryptocurrency besides Bitcoin can prove to be a highly profitable long-term investment. As these are new and low-valued in comparison to Bitcoin, and thus, have more chance to grow over the period of time. And let me remind you that a bitcoin’s value has grown to this price in almost 8+ years.
There are more than 5000 cryptocurrencies in the world but I am going to shortlist the 7 top Cryptocurrency to invest in 2017-18 according to market cap, demand, future scope and value investment asset. The following 7 top cryptocurrencies are outliers and are the one I am sure will go up in value by 10x-100x over the next 2 years.
7 Top Cryptocurrency list to invest in 2017 -18
1.Ethereum –
Ethereum is second only to Bitcoin in the hierarchy of top cryptocurrency and undoubtedly one of the most promising ones among the top cryptocurrency to invest in 2017-18. It has shown impressive growth rates in the year 2017, proving itself as a game changer and a rival to Bitcoin. Although Ethereum operates publicly like Bitcoin, it comes with some features of its own.
Created by 19-year-old Vitalik Buterin in 2015, Ethereum is a decentralized software platform that enables smart contracts and Distributed Applications (ĐApps) to be built and run without any downtime, fraud, control or interference from a third party.
The biggest difference between Bitcoin and Ethereum is the use of blockchains. While Bitcoin’s blockchain records contracts, showing how digital funds have moved from one place to another, Etherum has expanded this concept. The Ethereum blockchain uses a far more complex scripting language, and its smart contracts can form complex applications that have a broad range of potential uses.
Due to the Ethereum features and its potential to change the world forever, it has caught everyone’s attention including corporations like Microsoft, Mastercard, BP, National Bank of Canada, Intel, Samsung, Toyota, Cisco, and other market giants.
In 2016, an Ethereum-based VC known as The DAO amassed a huge amount of ether in a crowd sale, just to have almost a third stolen by a hacker. The event shook the online community, leading to a huge price drop. Following the attack on the DAO in 2016, Ethereum was split into Ethereum (ETH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC). But Ethereum price is stable since then maintaining good growth rate.
The market cap of Ethereum is second after Bitcoin $30,993,709,186 with a price of around 328 US Dollars. Some experts even predict within 5 years Ethereum price will surpass Bitcoin.
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2.Litecoin
Litecoin launched on 13 October 2011, founded by Charles Lee, ranked second in my list of top cryptocurrency to invest in 2017-18. Litecoin was among the initial cryptocurrencies following Bitcoin and was often referred to as ‘silver to Bitcoin’s gold.’ It’s also an open source pear-to-pear digital currency same like Bitcoin. Although Litecoin is like Bitcoin in many ways, it has a faster block generation rate and hence offers a faster transaction confirmation. In short, the Litecoin network has virtually zero commissions and allows you to send and receive payments at a rate 5 times faster than Bitcoin.
The trend of Litecoin has always followed the Bitcoin. For quite some time, LiteCoin was nothing more than a distant competitor for Bitcoin. Though it was far less valuable, it was still there as a potential alternative.
The breakthrough came in in May 2017 when world’s most popular cryptocurrency exchange called “CoinBase” started to use LiteCoin alongside Ethereum and Bitcoin. Since then, investors have begun to take LiteCoin more seriously. Additionally, the currency has also adopted “Segregated Witness” technology which fixes problems that Bitcoin has yet to solve. The solution adds more capacity into the network and reduces transaction fees. Litecoin is the second most accepted cryptocurrency in websites that accept virtual currency payments.
Litecoin could truly be a viable alternative to Bitcoin in coming Years. The market cap of Litecoin is $4,202,463,479 with a value of around $79.54 for 1 Litecoin.
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3.Ripple
Ripple is a real-time gross settlement system network by ripple and lies third in the list of top cryptocurrency to invest. The Ripple protocol was launched in 2012, by Chris Larsen and Jed McCaleb, founder of the OpenCoin company. But unlike Bitcoin, which was born with the aim of completely bypassing banks and any kind of financial institution for any kind of transaction, Ripple is born with the precise purpose i.e. “working with banks to change the way they send money to the world” as stated on their website. It is a Centralised and pre-mined currency. Currently, Ripple is the fourth largest cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Bitcoin cash on the basis of market cap.
Ripple is built upon an open source Internet protocol, consensus ledger and native currency called XRP. Currently, there is about 100 billion XRP in existence. Some companies like UniCredit and Santander and even several major banks (such as Bank of America, Bank of England, and the Bank of Japan) have implemented Ripple into their systems. Meanwhile, it has a market cap of $8,056,482,410 with a value around $0.223713 per unit. If you are ready to invest for long-term then Ripple can definitely yield very high return.
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4. Bitcoin cash
In August 2017, the Bitcoin blockchain spun off a more nimble iteration called Bitcoin Cash. It’s essentially identical to Bitcoin, but with the important distinction that it has more block size capacity. The biggest reason Bitcoin cash was created because of Bitcoin scalability limitation.
Let me make it simple for you. Bitcoin transactions are completed when a “block” is added to the blockchain. A full 1Mb Bitcoin block generally contains around 2000 transactions and generally takes around ten minutes to process. If you compare this to the 2,000 transactions per second that Visa can handle, you can see how scaling has been holding Bitcoin back.
Hence, Bitcoin Cash is a solution to the Bitcoin scalability problem. It increases the block size to 8Mb. Bitcoin Cash has a market cap of $11,361,359,620, and 1 unit costs 673$ which is double of its launch price. So for those who missed the opportunity to grab Bitcoin when it was below 1000$. Bitcoin cash provides the second opportunity for them to invest in “future Bitcoin”. Bitcoin cash is the third largest cryptocurrency according to market cap.
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5. Dash
Dash (originally known as Darkcoin) is based closely on bitcoin software or it can be mentioned as another more private version of Bitcoin, branded as a privacy-centric digital currency with instant transactions. Dash offers more anonymity as it works on a decentralized master code network that makes transactions almost untraceable
Dash also offers instant transactions, whereas bitcoin transactions can take several minutes. Therefore, you don’t have to worry about transaction delay as it instantly appears to the person on the other side of the transaction. On top of that, there are low fees that come with Dash even in some cases it’s free to send Dash.
Launched in 2014, Dash has huge member base and one of the top cryptocurrency in the industry with high daily trading volume. It has undergone rapid growth in past few months, and able to sustain an impressive growth rate since its launch.
Dash has a market cap of around $2,081,686,565 at the time of writing this post. One dash costs $287.31. Given the technical advantages of this top cryptocurrency, it’s certainly a viable Bitcoin alternative.
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6. Monero
Monero is an open-source virtual currency launched in April 2014 that focuses on privacy and decentralization. It is one of the best options to choose a Bitcoin alternative to invest in 2017-18
This cryptocurrency is completely crowd funded and donation based.
Monero is based on the CryptoNote protocol algorithm. This algorithm was invented to add multiple privacy features not seen in most cryptocurrencies. For this, it uses a special technique called ‘ring signatures.’
Unlike Bitcoin where a transaction can be tracked. This algorithm makes it nearly impossible to track any kind of processed transactions between addresses and neither amount of funds on an address can be determined.
This was a major upgrade over Bitcoin and make Monero more secure and untraceable currency.
Originally launched as BitMonero, later shortened their name to Monero. Moreover, the market cap of Monero is $1,314,184,017 with a value of around $85.87 per unit. Monero is growing rapidly and seems to have bright future, and one of the top cryptocurrency to invest in 2017-18 besides Bitcoin.
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7. Zcash (ZEC)
Zcash, a decentralized and open-source cryptocurrency launched at the end of last year. Zcash is an extremely popular fork of the Bitcoin Protocol. “If Bitcoin is like http for money, Zcash is https,” that’s how Zcash defines itself on their website.
Thus, like https, Zcash offers both shielded and transparent transactions that vary in whether or not the amount and recipient of a transaction are private or not. Zcash’s blockchain shows only that a transaction took place, not who was involved or what the amount was.
ZCash is very popular among miners as it is more profitable than most of the other altcoins, due largely in part to its 2.5-minute average “block time”, 2mb block-size, and 12.5 ZEC per mined-block reward.
Although it was launched at the latter end of 2016, Zcash is already in the top ten cryptocurrencies by market cap. The market cap of zcash is $569,440,051 with a price of $224.17 per unit.
Conclusion
If we go according to the current trend, cryptocurrencies are here to stay and it is proved by Bitcoin which is a trendsetter for other altcoins. In above-mentioned cryptocurrencies, some altcoins are equipped with improved, superior and advanced features over Bitcoin and virtual currencies such as Ethereum and Ripple which are being used more for enterprise solutions also have become popular.
These cryptocurrencies have huge potential and done well till now with continues increase in their overall market cap and per unit price. Hopefully, they will maintain this evergrowing trend and give investors high return in 2018.
Also read
10 legit ways to earn Bitcoins online