Opening remarks
The stock market was the only investment platform where traders and investors were involved as they wished to invest their money in the market. The intention behind this investment was to park the money in such investment and carefully follow the trends to see whether they receive a profit on their investment or loss.
However, from the past few years, the stock market has seen some competition from the fellow investment market- the cryptocurrencies market. Found in 2009, with the introduction of Bitcoin, over the years, the cryptocurrency market has seen impressive growth in trading volumes. The numbers only increased after the 2017 surge in demand, making the price touch the sky. This sudden growth looked promising to people as more and more people moved in the direction of crypto-asset investment.
With so many options to choose from and so many exchanges providing the support to these cryptocurrencies, investing in one has turned into a child’s play. But with so many options, people often wonder which cryptocurrency to invest in 2018. To help with that, we have combined a list of top cryptocurrency to invest in 2018-2019.
What is cryptocurrency?
The age of fiat currencies and traditional banking is rapidly aging, and financial markets all over the world are changing. Cryptocurrencies have emerged as a threat to the traditional banking system as it takes away the power of money from the hands of the state and gives it back to the general public. Investing in cryptocurrencies has proved to be a life-changing event for several investors.
In the age of modern technology, it makes perfect sense to invest in money that runs on technology and gives power to holder instead of a centralized government. Bitcoin is the leading decentralized cryptocurrency in 2020, and it will remain so for a long time.
There are thousands of different altcoins available in the market today, and it can be quite confusing to decide which one’s are the best and which ones are absolute “shitcoins.” We have listed top cryptocurrencies that are most likely to reap the rewards for you in 2020.
What is bitcoin?
The whitepaper for bitcoin was written by anonymous personality Satoshi Nakamoto. The name Satoshi Nakamoto has grown as a mythological personality in the last ten years. Bitcoin, when launched, was valued at less than a dollar, but in 2017, it was valued at nearly $20,000, making it one of the most valuable assets of the last decade.
Note: At the time of writing, the value of one bitcoin is just above $9,300.
Why should you invest in bitcoin?
Most of the cryptocurrencies are highly volatile in nature, and in investing in them should be done on your own risks. Even though bitcoin dominates the cryptocurrency market, it is still quite volatile. In the long run, Bitcoin has proved itself to be a real winner, and several experts believe bitcoin has the potential to touch six figures in the coming decade. Bitcoin has established itself as “digital gold,” and investors see it as a good asset for a store of value but not as a means of payment.
The reasons you should not invest in bitcoin are not very convincing, but here is why you should avoid investing in bitcoin:
- High volatility
- Increase in strict regulations around cryptocurrencies.
- No intrinsic value.
Best cryptocurrency to invest in 2018 list is as follows:
1. Binance Coin (BNB)
Launched by the cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, Binance Coin was launched as a token on the Ethereum blockchain, but later it was moved to Binance’s blockchain, Binance Chain. Binance Chain was introduced by the company to operate a crypto asset on it.
It was launched as an alternative way of paying the fees that were charged by the exchange. Since then, Binance has also developed a decentralized exchange on the Binance Chain as well.
Note: Binance charges a trade fee of 0.1% along with a withdrawal fee that is charged when the crypto assets are moved to a private wallet.
BNB was an Ethereum-based token (ERC-20) that was introduced with the vision of being a payment method for the users on the exchange. Operating on its blockchain named, Binance Chain, the BNB supply is capped at 200 million tokens. These were distributed in such a way that 100 million were offered during a public ICO, 80 million were given to the founding team, and 20 million were provided to angel investors.
Note: The user, using BNB as the trading fee, get discounts on every trade as follows: 50% discount in the first year, 25% in the second year, 12.5% in the third year, 6.75% in the fourth year, and no discount for the subsequent years.
The transaction speed is better than standard transactions, but the platform also provides the feature to increase transaction speeds. A user can increase the transaction processing with the help of an accelerator node, which is owned by some organization and works with validator nodes. The uniqueness of this coin makes it the top cryptocurrency to invest in 2018 on our list.
If you wish to know more about Binance Coin, you can regularly read the latest news on the coin in our Binance Coin News Section.
2. Ethereum (ETH)
Ethereum is another open-source, blockchain-based computing platform and a system featuring smart contracts. Ether is the cryptocurrency generated by this platform that is based on a modified version of the Nakamoto consensus. Each Ethereum account comes with ether balance which can be transferred by the users from one account to another account.
Launched in 2015 & developed by Vitalik Buterin and his team of developers, Ethereum was funded by an online crowd sale for its development. About 72 million coins were pre-mined, and these account for 68% of the total circulating coins.
Advantages of Ethereum:
- Ethereum Virtual Machine – This 256-bit register stack is the runtime environment for smart contracts in Ethereum.
- Smart Contract – Ethereum Smart Contracts are programming language based abstractions that are compiled down to EVM bytecode.
- Ether – The digital currency acts as the “fuel” for the Dapps that are built on the ethereum blockchain platform.
- Application – Developers have been using this platform to make applications that are then used within Ethereum. Till now, over 300 DApps are live, and more are developing.
Apart from these, the biggest advantages of Ethereum is its adaptability, as a range of applications can be built using Ethereum. Ethereum has helped in bringing some impressive cryptocurrency projects in the market, and due to this, it is in the 2nd position for the best cryptocurrency to invest in 2018 list.
If you wish to know more about Ethereum coin, you can regularly read the latest news on the coin in our Ethereum News Section.
3. Litecoin (LTC)
Started in October 2011 as an altcoin, Litecoin is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency that was based on a cryptographic protocol. Just like Bitcoin, LTC is not managed by a central authority. If we look at the technical details, then it is identical to Bitcoin.
It was released on GitHub in 2011 by Charlie Lee, a former Google employee and former Engineering Director at Coinbase. This platform was the fork of Bitcoin Core, and making it different was the decreased block generation time, increased number of coins, slightly modified GUI, and different hashing algorithm.
Note: The supply limit of Bitcoin is 21 million coins, whereas LTC has a supply limit of 84 million coins.
Some other key differences that make Litecoin different from Bitcoin include:
- The transaction fees are lower than Bitcoin.
- Litecoin uses a scrypt algorithm as opposed to SHA-256, which is used by Bitcoin.
- Due to the massive difference in value against the U.S. Dollar, the risk is lower in LTC as compared to BTC.
Litecoin was introduced later, but in these few years, it has developed a big market for itself as more and more people are shifting towards altcoins for investment. These efforts to bring a change and the differences from Bitcoin put LTC in the third position for the best cryptocurrency to invest 2018 list.
If you wish to know more about Litecoin, you can regularly read the latest news on the coin in our Litecoin News Section.
4. EOS (EOS)
Released as open-source software by Block.One in June 2018, EOS is a native cryptocurrency of EOS blockchain, which was developed to help in building scalable and decentralized applications. The blockchain has an operating-system like a set of services and functions which work similarly to the Ethereum platform.
The whitepaper that gives out the design and information on EOS blockchain explains that the process of transactions is faster on the EOS blockchain as there are only 21 blocks that are producing the nodes.
EOS has four distinctive features, and these are:
- EOS transactions are quick
- EOS tokens are free to transfer as there is no mining fee
- EOS is the only token that the developers can use to obtain resources for their dapps development
- EOS tokens holders can only vote for the block producers that run the network.
One significant difference between EOS and Etheruem is that EOS supports all languages like C++, Java, Python, etc., whereas Ethereum only supports native language, Solidity. There is no maximum supply limit of EOS tokens; however, a 5% cap on the rate of inflation is agreed upon, which will exist forever.
This wide variety of acceptance of languages, fast transactions, and no maximum limit of supply of token makes it the best cryptocurrency to invest in 2018.
If you wish to know more about EOS Coin, you can regularly read the latest news on the coin in our EOS News Section.
5. Bitcoin (BTC)
A project that started in 2008 as a link to a paper by a person/group named Satoshi Nakamoto (identity still hidden) was later turned into an open-source software in 2009. This new software in the world was known as Bitcoin, and nobody knew that in a few years, it would be the king of crypto markets.
Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency that works on the platform known as blockchain technology. This technology was introduced to eliminate any intermediaries, and the transactions between people would be done directly on the peer-to-peer Bitcoin network. The transactions taking place on the network were verified through cryptography on network nodes and stored in public distributed ledgers called blockchain.
Note: Distributed Ledger is a series of replicated, shared, and synchronized digital data that is stored across multiple locations with no central administrator or centralized data storage.
Bitcoin Mining is the process of record-keeping, which is done by using computer processing power. The job of the miners is to keep the blockchain complete, continuous, and it should not get altered by the repetitive grouping of new transactions. On successful mining, the miners are allowed to reward themselves with the latest mined Bitcoin and transaction fees.
Note: The rewards are offered to miners after the mining of every block. The reward offered to a miner for every block is currently 12.5 BTC, which changes with every Bitcoin halving, the next halvening is scheduled for 2020.
Bitcoin is highly volatile, and it is known for the fluctuations in its price. The volume for Bitcoin increased after it reached an all-time high of almost $18,000 by the end of 2017. It soon declined to the lower levels of $3,000 as Bitcoin entered the year 2018.
Bitcoin is the name of the cryptocurrency, whereas BTC is the ticker for the cryptocurrency. With this, Bitcoin makes its place in the best cryptocurrency to invest in 2018 list.
If you wish to know more about Bitcoin, you can regularly read the latest news on the coin in our Bitcoin News Section.
6. TRON (TRX)
TRON is a blockchain-based decentralized application platform which was founded by the non-profit Singapore-based, Tron Foundation. Tron was launched to tackle the global entertainment industry and the problems faced by the creators of digital content.
Tron wishes to remove the middlemen from the industry, such as the Apple Store and Google Play Store, and help the content producers obtain funds directly from consumers. TRX is the cryptocurrency of the TRON network, which can be purchased on exchanges like Liqui and Binance.
This can be obtained from these exchanges by exchanging cryptocurrencies like ETH or BTC, as it cannot be purchased using any fiat currency at present. The digital currency can be stored using the wallets that support Ethereum blockchain.
It was released in late September 2017, and since then, it has seen a sharp increase in the prices as people have invested in the upcoming ambitious project. No one can mine TRX, and the foundation controls the supply of almost 1 billion tokens. Justin Sun, the CEO of Tron, announced in December 2017 that they had locked $34.2 billion tokens until January 2020.
Altcoins are attracting a vast amount of investors as these currencies are more affordable, and the risk involved in these are lower as compared to Bitcoins and other top cryptocurrencies. Hence, TRX gets the 6th position in the top cryptocurrency to invest in 2018 list.
If you wish to know more about TRON, you can regularly read the latest news on the coin in our TRON News Section.
Disclaimer
All the cryptocurrency investments are not away from market risks. Upon that, as the Crypto market is highly volatile, the investors must make a complete background check on the cryptocurrency exchanges, wallet providers, as well as the actual cryptocurrency project itself before any investments.
An intense discussion with a cryptocurrency professional is highly recommended to understand the current market conditions. The above-suggested coins mustn’t be assumed as the final one. There are also other pre-eminent coins to choose from and may not restrict oneself to these coins itself.
