You may have heard the word cryptocurrency. Have you ever thought what does it mean and why is there so much buzz around for cryptocurrencies? Why are people talking about the currency which literally does not exist physically?
Well, if you have no idea about any of the above questions then you are not alone. According to recent surveys, only 3 Million people in the world are using the cryptocurrencies which is a fraction of the total world population.
Let’s learn about cryptocurrencies first and then we’ll move on to our top 10 picks.
Cryptocurrency is a digital asset designed to work as a medium of exchange using cryptography to secure the transactions, to control the creation of additional units, and to verify the transfer of assets. Cryptography provides a mechanism for securely encoding the rules of a cryptocurrency system in the system itself that makes it safe and secure. Most of the cryptocurrencies use the blockchain technology and a blockchain is a continuously growing list of records, called blocks, which are linked and secured using the cryptography. In simple words, cryptocurrencies are the highly secured digital or virtual currencies which help in making transaction easy and safer.
In January 2015, The total market capitalization for cryptocurrencies was roughly $4.04 billion, which at the beginning of 2017 was noted approximately $40 billion. But you would be amazed to know that in past few months market capitalization for cryptocurrencies has increased rapidly. In May 2017, the total market cap for cryptocurrencies was increased to $100 billion which was doubled in next 5 months and in November it was noted as $200 billion! These numbers are not small and you can see that how fast the market is accepting these cryptocurrencies and how drastically their market cap is expanding. As of September 2017, there were more than 1100 digital currencies in existence.
No doubt cryptocurrencies are very popular nowadays and many people want to learn more about these digital currencies. In fact, many companies have already started to accept cryptocurrencies for their business. Few of them are Microsoft, Tesla, Dell, Shopify etc. Cryptocurrencies are being accepted in the mainstream market more and more, also these are easier to store and can be transferred around the world with the click of a button. It’s definitely growing fast but how can you earn using these & which cryptocurrency should you invest in 2018?
We have the answer to these questions. This time we have come up with top 10 cryptocurrencies to look forward in 2018. Let’s get started!
- Bitcoin
Bitcoin is one of the most known and recognized cryptocurrency. It is the first ever digital currency and it was introduced in 2009. With a current market cap of more than $110 Billion, Bitcoin is the sole leader in the world of cryptocurrencies and captured 55% market share. The current value of a Bitcoin is $6558, which is more than 7 times of its value in January which was approximately $900! With Japan’s formal recognition of Bitcoin, the demand for bitcoins has rapidly increased in the Asian market and their prices are expected to soar in 2018.
- Ethereum
After going live in July 2015, with 11.9 million coins, Ethereum has become one of the most popular cryptocurrency. It has a market capitalization of more than $34 Billion, which makes it the second largest cryptocurrency in the world. Its popularity can be judged on its value. Ethereum started 2017 and valued at $8.20, but dues to increase demand of cryptocurrencies, Ethereum is valued at $339 in Nov 2017. Which is 42 times of its value in January! Ethereum’s founder believes that in the next two years its transactional capacity will be equal to Visa’s.
SEE ALSO: Latest Digital Currency by Japan to Be Unveiled Before 2020 Olympic Games
- Bitcoin Cash
Bitcoin Cash was started by Bitcoin miners and developers equally concerned with the future of the cryptocurrency, and its ability to scale effectively. It is a hard fork of the cryptocurrency bitcoin that occurred in August 2017. A Hard fork is a change of rules that allows creating new blocks not considered valid by the older software.
Bitcoin cash has an increased block size compared to bitcoins and with larger blocks, Bitcoin Cash is making the transactions cheap and quick just like cash. Introduced in August 2017 with $0 Market cap and $556 as its initial value, the current value of a Bitcoin Cash is $1190 with more than $20 Billion market capitalization, that’s almost 4 times to its value and market cap in October.
- Ripple
Initially released in 2012, this San Francisco based company is backed by the firms like Standard Chartered, Accenture, and SBI Holdings. Ripple was created to make the transactions secure, instant and nearly free with no chargebacks. It is the 4th largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. Currently valued at $0.23 and a market cap of $8.9 Billion, Ripple is very popular amongst the financial services industry. Many financial institutes such as UniCredit, UBS, and Santander use Ripple as the basis for their own settlement infrastructure. Recently American Express has introduced instant blockchain based payments using Ripple.
- Litecoin
Litecoins has a constant presence in the top 5 of cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. It was created as the lighter & alternative version of Bitcoins that takes less time for making any transaction. Litecoin has almost zero payment cost with transaction time almost four times faster than Bitcoin. Litecoins has successfully managed to grow faster. It covers the market with $3.8 Billion capital and valued at $70 compared to its value in January which was $4.51 with $221 Million market capitalization.
6. Dash
Dash is one of the most popular and user-friendly cryptocurrency. It was first introduced in January 2014 with the name “XCoin” but after a year it was renamed as “DarkCoin” which again rebranded in 2015 as “Dash”. Dash has been into top 10 cryptocurrencies since its inception in 2014. The price of Dash started to surge from March when they started the month valuing at $35.45 and closed at $75.6 by the end of the month and now Dash has market capitalization close to $3.4 Billion valued at $440! Ryan Taylor, Director of Finance at Dash explained that their users seem to love the new version, which has improved privacy feature, carries lower fees, and provides easier access to information about the network.
- NEO
NEO is a Chinese cryptocurrency which was rebranded this year from the name “Antshares”. NEO’s CEO introduced the concept of Smart Economy which will focus on to digitization of all the assets with improved block chain solutions and smart contracts. NEO is popularly known as “China’s first open-source block chain platform” or “China’s Ethereum”. It has a market capitalization of over $2.5 Billion and 1 NEO costs you $38.63.
- IOTA
Founded in 2015 and Introduced in June 2016, IOTA is focused on the Internet of things that provides secure communications and payments between machines. IOTA offers free transactions with no fixed limit on the number of transactions made per second. instead of blockchain protocol, IOTA uses a directed acyclic graph (DAG) with hash-based cryptography which is a generalization of blockchain solutions. IOTA has $2.4 Billion capital on the market and its value is $0.87 which was noted to be $0.57 in June this year.
- Monero
Monero was introduced in 2014. It is one of the fastest growing cryptocurrencies which was created by keeping the focus on high level of privacy on online transactions, decentralization, and scalability. High-level privacy is one of the major reason behind Monero’s popularity. That is why people are embracing Monero because down the line it’s privacy of people’s money which matters most. In last 4 months, the market capitalization of Monero has become 4 times and its value has increased by 3 times. the current market capitalization of Monero is $2.04 Billion and 1 Monero is equivalent to $132.88.
- NEM
Just Like other cryptocurrencies, NEM has also seen a lot of success this year. NEM started the year 2017 with the market capitalization just over $32 Million & valued at $0.003 per NEM. But NEM is well set to finish the year on a higher note. The current market capitalization of NEO is $1.89 Billion and they are valued at $0.210, which is a massive 7000% rise compared to January! It won’t be surprising if they finish the year with a market cap over $2 Billion! NEM uses a unique method which they call as Proof-of-Importance (POI). This algorithm analyses the number of users using its coins and the number of transactions they are making globally. On basis of this information, the algorithm determines the importance of the transaction on the economy. We can say it’s a fair method to determine the legit transactions and it really is very helpful in controlling the fake and fraud transactions.
According to a report by PwC, cryptocurrencies have been called one of the “greatest technological breakthroughs since the Internet.” They have also been called “a black hole” into which a consumer’s money could just disappear.These two stark contrasting statements are the reason why cryptocurrencies have inspired more debate than actual commerce.
When we analyze the overall performance of cryptocurrencies we see that they have registered a steep growth in last 5 months and they are being consistent since the beginning of August. This clearly indicates that there is huge demand for cryptocurrencies in the market and people have already started to see it as a future currency.
These are obviously only a handful of cryptocurrencies that will go big in 2018, but these are the ones that show the most potential.
Which cryptocurrency according to you will skyrocket in 2018? Let us know in the comments below!
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