Top Altcoins and Cryptocurrencies to Invest in 2018 ?

Ethereum:

Ethereum is a true outlier and it is the only crypto-currency believed by experts to be able to overtake Bitcoin Market cap in the near future. Ethereum started in 2013 and had 40x growth rate over the last two years.

Its platform allows creating a smart contract that runs on a decentralized network and runs exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, fraud, censorship or any third party interface. The team behind Ethereum is really exceptional. They are doing an amazing job to show the real potential of the Ethereum. Also, the degree of adoption of Ethereum is phenomenal at the moment. Many developers are working on apps that use the potential of smart contracts. If one cryptocurrency can make it big, it’s Ethereum. If already went over 1000% over the course of couple of months and it could go 1000% more over the next few months – that much potential this cryptocurrency has.

Monero:

Anonymous / private Bitcoin. Now, you may think, “What are you talking about? The BTC is anonymous already.”  This is a very unfortunate albeit popular misconception. All BTC transactions can be seen by the public, and by giving out your wallet address to someone, the person is able to see all the payments you’ve sent and received. The black market (weapon manufacturers and drug dealers) created a solution for this. They basically created software that mixes your coins with other coins. Nevertheless, the software needs to be trusted and may not work correctly, which is pretty bad when your freedom depends on it. Monero has the mixing system built-in. This makes it perfect for any kind of black market.  A popular darknet market adopted Monero, and this is how the currency got its first big growth boost.

Monero is an open-source, privacy-oriented cryptocurrency. The developers involved introduced this innovative cryptocurrency without setting aside any for themselves. The team has relied on donations and the broader community to further development. Monero was launched in April 2014 – read here more on monero.

Ardor:

Dubbed as NXT 2.0 – Ardor is a scalable blockchain platform that natively supports a wide range of features including voting, privacy based coin mixing, account management, blockchain storage, transaction aliasing, and built in marketplace creation. However, Ardor’s implementation of child chains is the stand out feature that makes this platform a truly innovative project.

The introduction of child chains opens up great levels of customisation. It also enables each child chain (which could be a group, institution, private/public organisation, company, etc.) to run its own self contained blockchain ecosystem whilst still benefitting from all the core features of Ardor itself. These features can also be turned on and off as per the requirements of that given project. This feature makes Ardor a very attractive platform for a wide range of use cases.

This flexibility will truly be a game changer in the crypto space because businesses looking at blockchain solutions will no longer have to choose a one-size-fits-all approach on a shared blockchain. Instead, they will be given creative freedom to build child chains that suit their very specific needs and security requirements.

The project has the crypto community very excited. Ardor already has a healthy market, which is pegged to explode in Q1 2018 when the Ardor mainnet launches. Read more on Ardor here.

sia coin:

Sia is a cryptocurrency set to dramatically change the way we look at enterprise cloud storage, and the technology is no doubt set to transform data storage in the future. It has its eyes set firmly on a market currently dominated by Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Dropbox.

Traditional cloud storage services such as DropBox upload customer’s data to a central ecosystem. The data is controlled here and thus exposed to all sorts of shady shenanigans such as personal data misuse, accidental loss, and database breaches.

With Sia your uploaded files are encrypted, broken up into tiny pieces and then spread across multiple hosts. This means superior redundancy (multiple copies of your data are securely stored across multiple hosts) ensuring data loss and snooping is no longer a problem.

What makes Sia so great is that anyone can participate and get paid for leasing their spare storage space. This is something many of us have with the price of hard drives being so low. When a host and an uploader connect a contract is formed. This contract is called a ‘smart contract’. It allows the renter to receive payments in exchange for their storage space being used.

Given SiaCoin’s potential, we strongly believe it is seriously undervalued. In fact, there are hundreds of other coins out there without a fraction of the usefulness of Sia. Read more on what is sia coin here.

factom coin:

Factom is a blockchain-based system that runs on top of Bitcoin. Factom is optimized to store millions of realtime records with a single hash. Factom allows companies to create immutable database, and they store database in their own blockchain, create a hash of that data, and store it in the bitcoin blockchain.

Factom is useful for all kinds of business apps, and they have got a huge contract with more than 25 smart cities in China. They are also working with other countries to create immutable database, which will allow government to secure their data. Factom had initially raised 5.3 million dollars in its Series A funding, but the company is so appealing that private investors were compelled to increase their investment in Factom. Factom raised a total of 8 million dollars in April 2017 from various high-profile investors, including Tim Draper, Stewart Title, and Bill Gates. See more on Factom cryptocurrency here.

ripple:

When managing transactions, most crypto technologies are based on decentralisation. However, Ripple has a more traditional approach and it takes the idea of banking and in particular SWIFT transactions and provides a much needed upgrade by utilising blockchain technology.

Currently, when sending cross border fiat transactions money goes through multiple intermediaries. This can take weeks to complete. The process is not only limited to those banks ‘in the loop’ but is also riskier because when unaffiliated banks are working with each other, they have to issue IOU’s, which means a sending bank has less security should a receiving bank suddenly collapse.

Ripple addresses all these shortcomings by providing cheaper, instant transactions. These transactions are initiated using a single currency, XRP. Ripple and XRP are two parts of the same project. However, given XRP’s integral role and future use cases as a currency used by the general public, the price of XRP has rocketed in the last few months reaching nearly $0.30 at the time of writing this article.

Ripple was introduced in 2012, and there are also over 100 banks worldwide that are currently working with the Ripple team and trailing the system, including CIBC, ATB Financial, UBS, Reisebank, Santander, UniCredit, BMO Financial Group, Shanghai Huarui Bank, Abu Dhabi Bank, Standard Chartered, etc.

The technology will likely become the new defacto standard for financial institutions and banks wanting to transfer funds worldwide. In the future, it will become the currency of choice recommended by banking institutions and governments for general use. This makes Ripple well worth a sizable investment now.

stratis:

Stratis is not coin. It is an end-to-end blockchain development platform that allows for complete sidechains that are non-disruptive to the primary blockchain. Stratis was one of the biggest risers in April and May of this year, and it is currently sitting comfortably at 8th position on CoinMarketCap.

The project opens up a world of possibilities for developers, and is seen as a direct competitor to Ethereum. Ethereum allows for smart contracts. However, they all exist on the primary blockchain. Smart contracts on Stratis eliminate this risk and live on their own true sidechain.

Its language choice is what gives this project a clear advantage. It allows developers to code decentralized apps in an existing, widely adopted programming language, C#, which is a huge advantage because it allows any current C# developers to begin exploring the platform, its uses and blockchain power with a minimal learning curve. This will undoubtedly lead to faster adoption and growth. Also, the project has backing by Microsoft and a very active development team. All these features make Stratis a winning project to invest in.

Stratis also recently announced its “Breeze Wallet”. This is a specialist wallet that aims to increase the privacy of both Bitcoin and Stratis platform users. This Bitcoin wallet will have Tumblebit built in, which is an incredible deal and will raise awareness of Stratis tenfold. This will likely trigger a price hike. Read our in-depth article on Stratis coin here.

golem:

Golem is built on top of the Ethereum blockchain. Golem is a project run by the group of Polish programmers. It is on track to becoming the world’s most powerful decentralised supercomputer. This supercomputer will process anything from scientific research in academia through to rendering the latest block buster movies, and once complete users will have supercomputer processing power at their fingertips.

However it does not stop there. Golem can also be used to process or mine any ‘big data’, for example identify trends in environmental changes, predict stock market movements, help assess and discover cures and better medical solutions, etc.

Its unlimited use cases is what makes the project exciting. Users earn GNT tokens by leasing unused processing power. These tokens can be re-used on the platform or traded on an exchange at the current market rate.

The technology is currently in its alpha stage. It can be downloaded and installed by anyone. Golem aims to eventually have Smartphones, huge data centres, laptops, and everything in between contributing to its ever growing cache of processing power, and with more and more processing power required everyday investing in Golem is a must for investor.

Expanse:

Expanse.Tech™ was created as the first stable fork of Ethereum and launched on 9/14/15. Expanse is a community-based project without an ICO and is blockchain agnostic, meaning the project evolves through provable on chain consensus that is controlled through user voting and our own DAO.

Our Decentralized Autonomous Organization, (DAO), has a unique self-funded design to keep it truly decentralized and without outside obligations. This way, the Expanse community can evolve and grow while rewarding holders, partners, and investors, while having total creative freedom.

The Expanse platform now has over a two-year history of consistent growth and stability. Starting out small, but with big ideas, the team is growing and other projects are now coming on board to help make the dream a reality—limited only by the imagination and talent of all the diverse people around the world involved in the journey.

Lisk:

Lisk is a new altcoin, having launched on 24 May 2016. Lisk is a decentralized network with its own blockchain. It has been launched to enable developers to build a wide range of apps on the Lisk network by developing custom side chains. It has similarities to the Ethereum network, but the Lisk blockchain has not been built with the intention to create smart contracts. It has been built to develop different apps and functionalities using the Lisk App SDK framework. Furthermore, Lisk has entered into a partnership with Microsoft Azure. This means that developers worldwide can develop, test, and deploy Lisk blockchain applications using Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform and infrastructure.

The Lisk ecosystem looks great from the programmer/developer point of view. Research-wise, Lisk has a higher ‘knowledge’ entry barrier for non-coders, so a background in programming won’t hurt if you want to fully understand and appreciate how it works.

STEEM:

STEEM was launched on 24 March 2016 and it is an open-source, decentralised cryptocurrency created to reward posters on Steemit.com, the blockchain-based social media network. Steemit promises a fast-paced development, including a user-friendly graphical wallet client. Its chief technology officer is BitShares founder Daniel Larimer.

Steem has a built in inflation of 100% annualy and no coin limit. The platform itself (Steemit) has grown considerably since the Coin launched and currently has over 70,000 users. Steem is the fundamental unit of account on the Steem blockchain, and all other units (Steem power and Steem dollars) derive their value from the value of Steem. There is no need to hold on to Steem in its cryptocurrency form. Instead, it should be used either to purchase Steem dollars, Steem power or be converted to Bitcoins.

Steem power (or SP) is a token symbolizing how much power you have inside the Steemit platform, and when you have a lot of SP, your votes count more in the system. Steem dollars (or SMD) are the units used to reward users for posting and curating content, and each SMD represents the amount of Steem equivalent to 1 USD.

Stay Tuned ! In Next Blog Post Will Cover other Potenial Coins ! See Ya