In my first article, here on Steemit, I will go over the best cryptocurrencies for 2018. This is based on what I've been observing in 2017 and I feel like these coins have up to 10x potential in 2018. So, let's take a look.
The very first one should be no surprise, its Bitcoin.
Bitcoin of course you guys know, is the first and most well-known cryptocurrency today. That has not changed and in terms of adoption, it's growing. As Bitcoin is getting into mainstream media more and more because the price increase, more and more people want to learn about it and hear about it and know want to know how to get involved with it and buy it. Because of that, bitcoin is only go up and up in 2018. And then there are the Bitcoin futures and ETFs. As you probably know Bitcoin futures is a big deal. Although in an indirect way, everything settled and everything traded in futures is cash. It's based on bitcoins price so now you got big or old institutional investors that is too afraid to touch Bitcoin. Now they're looking at it in terms of „okay, maybe I can trade Bitcoin futures instead“, and if they're thinking about Bitcoin now, everyone else is going to follow.
So, Bitcoin futures is definitely a big deal. It adds more attention to Bitcoin which is a good thing. And then right afterwards ETFs which are exchange-traded funds they're going to come right behind it and those will have a direct correlation with Bitcoin because the companies that are set to follow them, do need to have Bitcoin on hand. I when the ETFs will open, then you do have people that can invest directly in these funds and have a direct correlation to Bitcoin and the supply of Bitcoin. As we know bitcoin is scarce, there's a limited amount. It's the biggest reason why bitcoin is going up because unlike anything else out there in terms of dollars or gold or oil or even cattle for example, there's a limited supply but there's not a finite supply. You can always find more gold you'll always find more silver eagles pearl or dollar so you could always raise more cattle, but bitcoin is finite, after 21 million that's it. You can't generate, you can't mine anymore.
Because of that, as the price is going up more and more people are just go hoard it. They're not going to use it as a currency and that's fine. That's why bitcoin in my opinion is still the true wealth builder. If you want to change your life, you want to change your lifestyle, you want to accumulate as much Bitcoin as possible within the next three or five years. I really believe that.
Now, the other cryptocurrencies I will be writing about and just general trading of cryptocurrencies, they can make a lot of money, they definitely can, but in my opinion the point of trading cryptocurrencies is to make money and use that money to accumulate more Bitcoin because I feel like Bitcoin being a store value will have the most growth in three to five years compared to any other cryptocurrencies. So, because of that finite number of 21 million Bitcoins, it's a value store and it's the first and most well-known and the largest cryptocurrency out there. Bitcoins growth is not to stop in 2018.
Bitcoin should be part of everyone's portfolio!
In 2017 Bitcoin saw about of 1700 percent increase and I predict that Bitcoin will still see upwards of 1000% growth in 2018 so that's tenfold in terms of price increase. So, we end a year at 20,000, let's say, there's a good chance that Bitcoin can be at 200,000 by December 2018 and I'm not exaggerating that number.
Bitcoins growth is gold stay steady because the new influx of money from institutional investors and overall interest from the general consumer base. If you talk to just your friends, your family, your co-workers even though many of them do know about Bitcoin or heard about it but if you asked how many of them actually hold Bitcoin, very little and if they do, it's a little bit and that's the reason why as Bitcoin goes up and up and up, more and more people are going to be interested, more people want to get involved even businesses. Square recently opened up Bitcoin trading on their cash app. PayPal can't be far behind. You got consumers going getting more involved with Bitcoin, you got businesses getting more involved into Bitcoin, merchants of course and then you got the wealthy and the investors that are simply hoarding more and more Bitcoin as a value store. It's good cause Bitcoin to go up. Do not ignore Bitcoin for 2018!
Bitcoin cloud mining: https://hashflare.io/r/3E404F43
LITECOIN
Litecoin is the second most well-known cryptocurrency today. It has largest adoption right behind Bitcoin. I'm a big fan of coins that have adoption because there's a lot of new cryptocurrencies that's coming out has a lot of promise, a good team but there's no product, no adoption. Litecoin definitely does.
Charlie Lee, who is the mentor of Litecoin, he actually came out and committed that he was go spent a lot more time marketing and forming business relationships on the behalf of Litecoin because he kind of stood back a little bit but now he's coming back full swing and immediately after he announced that, Valve, a huge game maker, announced that they were stay away from Bitcoin and moving into Litecoin. It was huge news, it triggered this avalanche of buys and Litecoin jumped up from 100$ to 150$ and now it's hovering above 300$ as I'm writing this. Litecoin is not to be ignored. Some of the other things that you might not know of is obviously litecoin implemented SegWit and Lightning Network and anything that has Lightning Network implemented can do atomic swaps. So, Bitcoin once they get their Lightning Network fully implemented Litecoin and Bitcoin could definitely do atomic swaps. What does that mean?
That means decentralized exchanges will now be able to trade between them. You can also trade between other people. It opens up possibilities and there's a ton of other coins that is set to go live on Lightning Network, which you could also do atomic swaps with. I see a 3 to 5 times growth potential with Litecoin. That means right now if Litecoin is around $300, I could see it hit a 1000$ and I could see a hit 1,500$ before the end of 2018. Don't ignore Litecoin anymore. Litecoin is here to play.
ARDOR
ARDOR was created by the NXT team. it's built upon the NXT platform but of course improved, includes child chains now which is a big deal. Child chains, off chains, side chains primarily move all their transaction off the blockchain. So, for example, when ethereum has a scaling issue, these generation 3 platform which ARDOR is, the first that's coming out to the market, that these child side chains, off chains will help with transactions and help the blockchain scale tremendously to handle the future. So, ARDOR is coming out first. It's backed by a team that knows what they're doing.
They conducted ICO for a child chain called IGNIS back earlier this year. It was very successful, they raised 15 million dollars and they're dropping a whole bunch of more coins to people who are holding NXT. That's kind of the reason why NXT has jumped up so much toward under the year because the snapshot is happening December 28th and once it happens, every next token that you own you will get half IGNIS token and Ignace is a big child chain that's being attached to ARDOR. IGNIS has to do with a lot of the features that ARDOR talks about in terms of handling transactions and so forth.
IGNIS is a big part of that and it's big part of ARDOR. Again, I'm a very big fan of platforms that have a large adoption rate and it's coming to market and ARDOR is coming to market. I anticipate, one state's hit in January you go hear a whole slew of new coins and nude apps that's going to be released for order. I feel like ARDOR has huge potential. I've been watching them since they were around 25 cents they jumped the 50 Cent's and I've been telling people to get in on it. Now they're hovering around 90 cents to a dollar. Even then, I am going to say ARDOR has a 10x potential in my opinion. I believe by the end of 2018 if the adoption continues to grow and grow and grow and they become one of the leaders of generation 3 platform coins. Then they have a 10x growth potential.
IOTA
A lot of people jumped on IOTA to bandwidth recently but there's good reason for and I will say I am one of them. Because IOTA has been hovering around for years and not many people know it but what really kicked off the interest in iota is because of ethereum scaling issues and because IOTA is big partnership with Samsung and Microsoft. Let me talk about ethereum scaling issue and IOTA „Tangle“. Ethereum because it's a generation 2 platform coined, it can't handle that many transactions, it can handle about 15 transactions per second. So, they're desperately trying to scale that up.
Etherium team is looking at on chain solutions and off chain solutions. The off-chain solution would be RAIDEN network which is kind of equivalent of Lightning Network for Ethereum RC 20 base tokens. With that said ethereum team still needs time to develop and to test and get everything working. So, it didn't help that this very popular viral app called CryptoKitties have now revealed that yes, ethereum does have a scaling issue because ethereum had some issues before with couple ICO’s before but other than that we never really heard any other issues about scaling until now. That brought up a lot of tension for IOTA.
IOTA doesn't use blockchain, it uses something called a „Tangle“. They're forming a lot of transaction channels between each person so unlike a blockchain, where you need nodes or miners to verify to either do proof of work, proof of stake, you need or master nodes to handle things, IOTA doesn't need any of that. They make it proof of work being your verify other transaction so every transaction that you make as a proof of work, you have to verify two other transactions. It's kind of interesting. Actually, I should say, the more people that go on IOTA’s network, the more transactions and the faster it becomes. It's very interesting with all their block chains, there's a problem with scaling even with side chains and these generation 3 platforms, there's kind of a limit in terms of how much it could handle. With IOTA because of the way structure with the “Tangle“, there is no limit.
If you have millions upon millions of people get in IOTA and make transactions, it actually gets better. It's the only network of all cryptocurrency that actually gets better with more transactions and users compared to any other blockchain out there in the cryptocurrency world. It's awesome and because of the “Tangle“ and how the proof of work is verifying other transactions, there's no transaction fee. It's the only blockchain out there that has zero fees. You can send someone 1 cent, you could send someone 0.1 cent and there's no fees involved.
That makes it awesome. Again, something no other blockchain can say, they might have low transaction fees but not zero transaction fee. So, IOTA to sum up has no scaling issues, no transaction fees and then I mentioned this data marketplace, the big partnership they formed the Samsung, Microsoft and few others. It's going to be a data marketplace. If you think about ethereums’s EEA, the enterprise ethereum Alliance. This is kind of it. They don't really have official name but this is the start of it. You go get a whole bunch of companies that go store data in this marketplace. The marketplace can be accessed by other companies. You can access the data through encrypted manner. It's going to be a huge one of the first of that kind.
And because of IOTA’s no transaction fees and no problems of scaling issues, it's perfect to handle massive amounts of data and massive amounts of transactions. IOTA is one of those coins, I feel has 10x growth potential. It is hovering around the 4.50$ mark, I can see it go up as high as 45$ by the end of 2018. Don't ignore IOTA.
RAIDEN NETWORK
The reason why ethereum is not on here is because ethereum is hovering around 50-60 billion market cap. I do see it go up, I don't see it going up as high as these other coins I’ve mentioned and I do think that there are held back a little bit order going be held back a little bit because of the scaling issues, they definitely need to solve it. Raiden network has got solved that.
Raiden network is already here, it actually just opened up its network in November and it's being tested by a dozen other RC 20 based token companies because they want to get in on Raiden Network. Raiden network is the Lightning Network for ethereum. What does that bring? It opens up payment channels so it offers low transaction fees, so you can actually send micro payments. It offers very lightning fast, I should say Raiden fast transactions and it's compatible with all your RC 20 tokens.
So that means the thousand plus coins that are based on ethereum can all jump on to Raiden network. It has huge growth potential and not to mention ethereum, if they want to solve their scaling issues quick, the company they need to rely on is rating Network. Raiden network has been pumped a little bit, it's going on up and down up and down as I'm writing this it's around 2.60 $. I feel like that is a steal, I feel like Raiden Network being at 2$ to 2.60$ does have also have 10x potential. I see that it can go up as high as 26$ but in the 2018 because of how many companies, including ethereum, will be utilizing it in 2018. I see huge potential with Raiden.