It is very difficult to get involved with investing in cryptocurrencies now if you don’t already have a funded account at a crypto exchange. For reasons unbeknownst to me, most exchanges no longer accept new applications and even if you can open account the verification process to get funded would take forever. This is somewhat curious in itself, but that aside, here are 2 ideas that are likely to develop into something bigger over the next few years:
Waves
On the surface, Waves is another multi-currency crypto wallet. To me, however, Waves is a play on convenience more than anything else. Aside from holding a basket of currencies, it has a built in exchange allowing people to buy other cryptocurrencies, and even has a feature allowing you to make your own cryptocurrency without any coding. Most importantly, they allow you to hold fiat currencies – a huge differentiator that no other crypto wallets have really figured out how to do. The built in exchange also has much potential to grow. If you have any experience using any crypto exchanges you would know they are fragile and liable to shut down at any time, without warning. Should Waves build a good reputation of reliability, they will see trade volume at their exchange increase as people ditch the other shitty exchanges for a trustworthy one. In addition, they are growing as a preferred blockchain to ICO on.
Minebox
This is a derivative of the SIA blockchain. Undoubtedly, decentralized data storage will grow into a popular application for blockchain technology. People hate the idea of leaving their data with one institution, no matter how trustworthy they are, and would embrace the concept of decentralizing cloud data storage so nobody has access to their data other than themselves. SIA attempts to do this, and allows people to lend out unused storage space on their computers in return for a fee.
Minebox is essentially a big ass smart data storage box that can store many terabytes of data itself, and is programmed to automatically lend out unused space when connected to the internet, collecting interest for you in the process. In a sense, it is the next generation of cryptocurrency mining.
Safecoin (currently MAID safecoin), SONM, and to some extent GOLEM are competitors trying to do similar things. I like SIA the best.