Altcoins that are set to spring up like a rabbit on crack
Litecoin (LTC)
Litecoin has just activated Segregated Witness (SegWit) after voting successfully on it a few weeks ago. What this will do is take the validation parts of a transaction, which we only need at the initial point of verification, and discard them, making transaction size about 60% smaller. This will allow many many more transactions to fit in a single block and speed up confirmation time considerably. The reason the price is about to go up, is that people have been staying away from Litecoin (except for those who realize it's about to go to the moon) because they're waiting for SegWit to use it. Now that SegWit is activated, the Chinese and other heavy cryptocoin users will start buying in to make transactions using Litecoin, which will be much faster than Bitcoin after this release. What we will see is a spike, and not much (if any) of a regress. Some say it could go to $100, some say it will simply double. Some go so bold as to say that it will replace Bitcoin. I don't think that will happen, but my prediction is that it will at least double.
Ripple (XRP)
Now, you may be saying "Hey, this spring has already sprung". And you are sort-of correct, but this one only sprung recently because the major banks announced they were going all in on it (https://finance.yahoo.com/news/75-banks-now-ripples-blockchain-network-162939601.html). This rollout won't complete until 2018 due to the time it will take the banks to fully switch international transactions over to use Ripple. Once that happens, the sell orders will be snatched up and the price will skyrocket. I predict we will see ripple above $1 by the end of 2017, and $2 by the end of 2018.
Stellar (STR)
Everytime I see this coin, I think "Wait, what is this one, the symbol for strength?" The reason is that it's extremely similar to Ripple in technology. In fact, Stellar was a fork of the original Ripple protocol. According to Merkel, "Stellar is mainly designed to target individuals and focuses strongly on technology, rather than making a name for themselves among financial institutions". (https://themerkle.com/ripple-vs-stellar/) So for Stellar, banks are not the reason it will spring up, but everyone who hates banks and centralization. Stellar is the very antithesis of Ripple, and thus, when Ripple takes off, so will Stellar, albeit not as much. The reason for this is twofold:
- Ripple and Stellar use the same type of blockchain consensus and tech.
- Stellar will snatch up users where ripple cannot.
I expect to see Stellar upwards of $0.40 by the end of the year.
Ethereum (ETH)
Gotcha! This one has already sprung, and I don't expect it to climb much more without more good news. Ethereum is probably the most promising of these coins for the future (more on that in another article maybe), but I don't expect its price to rise anytime soon. At least not sharply. The reason it just sprang is the Ethereum Alliance (http://entethalliance.org/) is growing fast. But that price rise is theoretically over. The volatility still in play is the pending vote to switch from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS). I wrote a small piece about the difference between these two in my first article on steemit (https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@alavan/the-blockchain-is-the-most-revolutionary-technology-since-the-internet-itself). But the short version is that this switch will eliminate mining, and use how much ETH you have on the table to determine consensus (because if you lie, you lose it). The problem is that miners will be the ones to vote on the switch (unless there is another hard-fork), and they have no reason to support something that will eliminate their profit. Another hard-fork will likely be a detriment to the price of Ethereum, so I would't want to hold a bag on this right now.
Ethereum is very profitable mining though, so if you have a gaming graphics card, set it to mine, and you can make about $60 per month with a decent card in a decent pool.
This has been Alavan,
Thanks for reading
Great post. As a consummate investor I have always wanted to increase my holdings in Ripple but while mining had to jump through so many hoops that I gave up. How can I purchase Ripple right now and what form of payment can I use? Thanks and I think you right on target with the information. I totally missed the Etherium train and am definitely kicking myself, like, "why did I not buy at $4?!?!" But Ripple is still cheap enough that one could go in with a clean $50 and come out with a good chunk of profit in my opinion, should the world not collapse in the meantime (buy physical silver :). I first mined LiteCoin with a couple Radeon 7850's but stopped when it went from ~$30 to half that. Bitcoin kills me. I know for a fact that a I had purchased about $10 worth back when my computer was using dial-up CompuServe and so somewhere in a landfill there is a hard drive covered in rotten food waste holding around $1,000,000 in BTC. Note to others/self, throw out the PC, save the hard drives. So, in short (LOL) how can I buy some XRP and SPR right now and are the wallets on PC only or can I have it on my iPhone/iPad as well? Thanks for the info and great post! I wonder if we can crowdsourcing, STEEMITsource a venture into going into landfills around major cities and colleges and digging deep enough to find old gaming PC's. I bet there are at least a few that are holding some precious BTC right now like those old Atari ET games haha. Atari or NES? Can't remember, nevermind.
Aww man, I've heard stories of people discovering hard-drives in landfills with millions worth of bitcoin on it. That sucks. As for how to buy any of these coins. I should write an article on how to get started, but in short,
Ok thank you. I have been out of the crypto buying market for a year or so, I got bitten hard by the cryptsy debacle and lost a ton of coins but thankfully most of them were in my personal Wallet backed up and encrypted on some flash drives. But they still stole like 300k DOGE, some BTC and like 20 other crypto's like DarkCoin. But yeah I am always going around weekly to this vintage store up the road that has tons of electronics and when I am not buying $50 records or comic books for $1 each I sometimes find a solid Technics piece of stereo equipment or tube amps and am always on the lookout for Pentium 4 gaming laptops and PC's and those made before Bitcoin became so valuable. Try to look for rigs with a video card and some geeky stickers on the case, but yet to find some coinage, however for $15-$20 it isn't a huge disappointment. Usually just throw them on eBay and always make a little side income.