Cryptocurrencies are all the rage today. What seemed like a niche product for tech geeks and enthusiasts has now enveloped the whole world with its charm. However, this meteoric rise in popularity has given birth to a lot of copycats and the market is now flooded with numerous cryptocurrencies. This has made it really difficult for regular investors like you and me to invest in cryptocurrencies as people are really not sure which cryptocurrency will be the right investment for them. While its impossible to predict the future of any specific cryptocurrency, we can look at their underlying infrastructure to see which ones are worth your time and which ones are just hacks. In this article, we are going to list 6 different cryptocurrencies which you should consider before investing your hard earned money:
Even if you have never ever tried to learn about cryptocurrencies, chances are you have heard of Bitcoin. While Bitcoin is the largest and most valued cryptocurrency in the world, we are not including it in our list as Bitcoin has become way too pricey to generate any substantial gain without having to take too much risk. So, with that out of the way, let’s get started with our list of the best cryptocurrencies, you should invest in 2019:
This one is a no-brainer. After Bitcoin Ethereum is the most popular and established cryptocurrency in the world. Some people are now preferring Ethereum over Bitcoin as the technology underlying its cryptocurrency is more advanced with far too many applications. Ethereum is a blockchain platform that can run smart contracts. What it means is that basically any contracts which we use today to form mutual agreements such as investments, debts, and contracts can be structured using Ethereum’s technology.
If you want to invest in cryptocurrencies, Ripple is one of the hottest in the market right now. Just a few days back, Ripple overtook Ethereum to become the second largest cryptocurrency in the world by market capitalization. At the time of writing this article, the cryptocurrency is trading at a healthy $3.06 with a total market capitalization of over 118 billion US dollars. In fact, the cryptocurrency has been so popular that it has skyrocketed 37,900% in a span of 12 months from $0.0065/coin in January to $2.47/token by the end of 2017.
3. Stellar
Stellar is yet another blockchain platform which wants to make international payments easier for people and businesses by collaborating with banks. While its underlying core technology might be different from Ripple, its application and premise are the same. The rise of Ripple has also helped Stellar in growing exponentially over the last few months making it one of the largest cryptocurrencies in the world.
IOTA is a cryptocurrency which is really futuristic in its approach. It’s one of the coolest concepts I have heard in a while and that has helped the currency to rise over 1000% in the last couple of months. It is a blockchain platform focused on the future of IoT devices (Internet of Things), and hence the name IOTA. According to their website, what differs IOTA from other cryptocurrencies is its underlying blockchain technology, which the company is calling as Tangle.
According to the company, “Tangle is a revolutionary new block-less distributed ledger which is scalable, lightweight and for the first time ever makes it possible to transfer value without any fees. Contrary to today’s Blockchains, consensus is no-longer decoupled but instead an intrinsic part of the system, leading to decentralized and self-regulating peer-to-peer network.”
Learn More: Visit IOTA
Litecoin was created by a Google Engineer, Charles Lee, in 2011 as a better alternative for Bitcoin. While Bitcoin is a good for peer-to-peer payment service, the resources required to mine Bitcoin are just too costly and the currency also has a slower transfer speed when compared to other new cryptocurrencies. Charles Lee founded Litecoin to solve these problems that the consumers and miners are facing with Bitcoin.
While the likes of Ethereum and Stellar depends on businesses to adopt their technology for ultimately being successful, Litecoin solely depends on its adoption by people. Litecoin has certainly seen a lot of enthusiasm from people as the currency has seen more than 1000% growth in last year. It’s a solid investment for someone who is looking to invest in Bitcoin but cannot afford to do so. Currently, Litecoin is trading at $299.95 with a total market cap of more than 16 billion dollars.
Neo is a Chinese blockchain based company which aims to utilize blockchain technology and digital identity to digitize assets, automate the management of digital assets using smart contracts, and to realize a “smart economy” with a distributed network. Neo was founded in 2014 and is an open-source project hosted on Github.
2019 will be the year when cryptocurrencies will truly become mainstream. As the value of cryptocurrencies is rising exponentially, not only the general public but even the big hedge funds are looking to invest in them. That said, many experts are also terming this phase as crypto bubble and warning people against investing in them. However, just because there’s a bubble doesn’t mean people can’t earn money from it. You just have to smart about investing your money.
