There's no dispute that Bitcoin spearheaded the cryptocurrency craze, but in recent months many many more have surfaced as legitimate alternatives. For those still learning the in's and out's of the crypto market, please keep in mind that not all crypto currencies are competing against each other. Each coin offers a different set of benefits and setbacks, each with varying industry applications. That being said, as I continue to review the industry and the various coin offerings, there are three primary elements I tend to review:
- The technology - How sound is the technology, the transaction processing, mining process etc.
- Industry application - What is the primary use for the coin/platform within a real world context. What industry are they focused on, and what is the future potential of their solution?
- Development Team - Who created the coin, what is their background, and who else is involved with the development (partners, developers, investors, etc).
With that as the basis for my ratings system, I've started to embark on reviewing various cryptos in order to identify my list of top 10 favorites. There are so many cryptocurrencies on the market that it's impossible to review them all, but based on the dozens I've reviewed, here's a look at my favorites:
Foundational Coins
Foundational coins are ones that I believe to be setting the standards within the cryptocurrency industry. These coins are dedicated the the overall growth of the blockchain technology and it's global implementation. It's no surprise to see who I've listed here, as they are already recognized as the two largest players in this space.Ethereum - I'm a huge fan of what Ethereum has done with their platform, and I consider it to be a building block for the future of the crypto market. They've created a solution that can be used by a diverse number of industries, within the crypto space and real world applications. This is primarily with their 'smart contracts' allowing for all kinds of transactions to utilize their back-end blockchain solution. I strongly believe in the direction they are headed, as well as the leadership team. The founder is a smart guy, and the supporting cast is second to none. Get a glimpse of those invested in the development of Ethereum by checking out the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance.
Bitcoin - Bitcoin needs no introduction, as it's been leading the way in terms of media attention; to the point where many mistakenly believe that Bitcoin IS cryptocurrency. I like Bitcoin from several perspectives, including core technology as well as the various 'hard forks' which allow for variations in the platform making it more applicable to specific industries. The technology is sound, and the upcoming implementation of the Lightening network will be a big advancement. I also like the fact that Bitcoin has a limited supply available, which will help the price continue to appreciate. Although the found of Bitcoin is unknown, the team working on it's future development includes many of the brightest minds in the world.
International Bank/Transactions
The banking and high volume financial industries offer a huge market potential for cryptocurrencies that can stand up to the challenge of processing huge numbers of transactions. As all crypto's continue to battle the challenge of scale-ability, there are two specific coins who have focused their efforts on the financial markets...
Ripple - A website I use frequently, Cryptocompare, explains ripple as follows: "Ripple positions itself as a complement to, rather than a competitor with, Bitcoin. Ripple is a distributed network which means transactions occur immediately across the network - and as it is peer to peer - the network is resilient to systemic risk. Ripples aren't mined - unlike bitcoin and its peers - but each transaction destroys a small amount of XRP which adds a deflationary measure into the system. There are 100 billion XRP at present."
Although some crypto enthusiasts don't consider Ripple to be a true cryptocurrency, I think there is definitely some potential and industry application. The founders of Ripple, have strong backgrounds and track records, although one has since left (Jed McCaleb) has left to start Stellar. Ripple has created a ton of great industry partners, many of which are currently engaged in test projects to prove the usability of the Ripple platform. You can see many of these partners on their website.
Stellar - As mentioned above, Stellar was created by one of the founders of Ripple, and as such offers a somewhat similar solution. Cryptocompare describes it as follows: "Supported by a nonprofit, Stellar brings the world together by increasing interoperability between diverse financial systems and currencies.
Stellar is a technology that enables money to move directly between people, companies and financial institutions as easily as email. This means more access for individuals, lower costs for banks, and more revenue for businesses. Help better the world’s financial infrastructure by participating in our community or by building on Stellar."
I like the technology, the folks involved as well as the market potential. IBM has been one of the big-names who've also jumped on board with supporting and developing Stellar.
Future of Fast Transactions
IOTA and Cardano an in a unique category as they process transactions differently than the bulk of crypto currencies. By eliminating the mining process, transactions are validated by the senders and receivers of the currency. This is an intriguing solution, that could make it more scale-able than other means. Although it remains to be seen, I like what both these two coins are working on.IOTA - IOTA is an open-source distributed ledger protocol that goes 'beyond blockchain' through its core invention of the blockless ‘Tangle’. The IOTA Tangle is a quantum-proof Directed Acyclic Graph, with no fees on transactions & no fixed limit on how many transactions can be confirmed per second in the network. Instead, throughput grows in conjunction with activity in the network; the more activity, the faster the network. Unlike blockchain architecture, IOTA has no separation between users and validators; rather, validation is an intrinsic property of using the ledger, thus avoiding centralization. IOTA is initially focused on serving as the backbone of the emerging Internet-of-Things (IoT).
Cardano - Designed and developed by IOHK in conjunction with the University of Edinburgh, the University of Athens and the University of Connecticut, Cardano SL (or Cardano Settlement Layer) is a Proof of Stake cryptocurrency based on the Haskell implementation of the white paper “Ouroboros: A Provably Secure Proof of Stake Blockchain Protocol” by Aggelos Kiayias, Alexander Russell, Bernardo David and Roman Oliynykov.
Other Interesting Coins
The following are various other coins that have caught my attention, that I believe has value for varying reasons...
Steem - I first discovered Steem while I was searching for coins placing an emphasis on social media in some fashion. Of the onces I reviewed, Steem is leading the way in how they've approached things. They've launched their own social platform, Steemit, as a proof of concept, which rewards contributors for sharing content on the website. Simply from a social media platform perspective, Steemit is lacking in a lot of ways, but once you incorporate the payment structure, it starts to show some real potential. What I'm most curious to find out is what the end goal is for Steem... Is to to develop Steemit into a leading social platform or is it to implement their payment/reward system into other leading social platforms (wikipedia would be a great one!).
"Steem.it is a blockchain-based social media platform where anyone can earn rewards by posting relevant content, curating quality content by upvoting and by holding Steem based currencies in a vest fund, which generates interest.
There are three main currencies in Steemit: Steem, Steem Power (SP) and Steem Backed Dollars (SBD).
Steem is liquid and can be bought in an exchange and converted into steem dollars or steem power.
Steem Power is basically Steem that is locked in a vesting fund for 3 months. Users can use steem power to upvote content and get curating rewards.
When a user upvotes content his steem power gets depleted and then slowly regenerated. Steem Power holders recieve interest from their holdings. The more Steem Power a voter has the more revenue he'll generate for himself (in form of SP) and for the content creator (In SBD).
There is also an incentive to upvote content early, as the rewards are distributed according to time. The earliest votes gets the biggest share of the reward.
Steem Backed Dollars are there to protect content creators from volatitlity and can be traded for roughly 1 usd worth of steem, in order to cash out from steem. Converting Steem backed dollars into STEEM takes 5 days. Users also recieve interest from holding SBD. T
Steem is a proof of work currency with a scheduled blocktime of 3 seconds. Steem PoW mining is done in rounds of 63 seconds by 21 miners (witnesses). 19 of the miners are pre voted, one is the other with the most computational power, and the last one is selected from a queue of witnesses that did not get on the top 19 voted witnesses.
90% of the block reward is allocated to a vest fund to reward curators and PoW miners, the other 10% are made liquid in the form of steem and are used to reward content creators. Steem gets converted to Steem Backed Dollars and sent to the content creator."
EOS - EOS was created by Dan Larimer who is also the founder/developer of Steem. He knows his stuff, and is in the process of launching the EOS platform as what appears to be a rival to Ethereum, using 'smart contracts". I'm intrigued to follow their progress.
"EOS tokens are ERC-20 compatible tokens distributed on the Ethereum blockchain pursuant to a related ERC-20 smart contract (the “EOS Tokens”).
The founders tokens represent 10% of the aggregate EOS Token and are currently held in Smart Contracts.
The ICO is divided into two phases, period 1 offers 20% of total supply and period 2 offers 70% to investors, Phase 2 is split into 350 consecutive 23 hours periods, selling 2 mln EOS tokens each period.. 10% is held by the team in smart contracts."
Monero - I like Monero for it's focus on security and anonymity, which is very similar to the initial focus of Bitcoin. Although this tends to attract some shady applications, anonymity is a big part of the crypto space, and Monero is at the forefront of that journey. They have some interested developments on the horizon to further enhance their solution.
"Monero (XMR) is a cryptonight algorithm based alternative crypto currency. The coin is based on Proof of Work and has a block reward that varies smoothly. The difficulty retargets every block with a sixty second block target.
Monero uses a Ring Signature system to protect your privacy, allowing users to make untraceable transactions."
NEO - "NEO is a platform in which users can issue and trade assets. NEO has been rebranded from the original 'Antshares'. NEO tokenizes proofs of ownership of an asset and not the asset itself, thus taking into account all of the legal complications and obligations that may come with the transfer of shares, equity and assets.
NEO represent an ownership of the NEO platform and allows users to buy NEO (ANC) and to vote on protocol changes on the NEO blockchain. ANS are 100% premined and issued on the NEO's genesis block."
Concluding Thoughts
This, in a nutshell, encapsulates my 10 favorite cryptocurrencies. I think the year ahead will be an exciting one as many of these coins will further establish their technology as well as the proof of concept with industry trials. I look forward to continuing to review new and exciting coins as I'm introduced to them and would love to hear about your favorite coins.Thanks for stopping by.
