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The most promising cryptocurrencies for investment. What is the most promising cryptocurrency? is a new social portal that offers earnings under various programs

is a new social portal that offers earnings under various programs.

ABOUT get acquainted with what we can offer you, choose the most interesting opportunity for you and register!






Preparations for the launch of the project began in 2013.

Currently, the most promising and highly profitable program is a new generation cryptocurrency.

From the moment of the test launch and in just 1 month, the popularity and the value of ECOIN increased by more than 200%

At the moment and before the official launch, ECOIN is sold on a limited basis.

The minimum purchase amount for ECOIN is $50.

Funds from the purchase are distributed among people, and are not collected in 1 place with the owner.

The increase in the value of 1 ECOIN planned by analysts:

for the whole of 2016 up to +1000% !!!

A little digression into history:

Let's remember how once, the most popular and to this day, BitCoin cryptocurrency began its journey at a price of $0.01 for 1 BitCoin. For several years, its rate has reached the level of more than $1,000 for 1 BitCoin. Needless to say, all the people who at the very beginning bought 10,000 BitCoins for $100 have already secured their lives by selling part of the cryptocurrency for millions of dollars. And that's with a $100 investment. Of course, the rate of any cryptocurrency, like the rate of any currency, always fluctuates in the market, and now BitCoin is worth less than $500. But the first depreciation of BitCoin occurred a few years after its creation. Imagine that you are now being offered to buy a dollar for 2 hryvnias or 10 rubles per unit! Interesting?

We invite you to be among the very first buyers of the new global cryptocurrency ECOIN , which has every chance of becoming a leader in the world.

1 year ago

  • I would add 100-200 ADA / Cardano and XLM / Stellar coins to the investment portfolio “for the future” - they have VERY good potential.
  • I would take a couple of 1060 video cards from Computeruniverse for experiment (promo code for a discount in 5 — FWAUCZB ) for Zcash mining.

And now - in more detail.

XRP (Ripple protocol)

XRP cryptocurrency logo (Ripple)

In December 2017 - January 2018, the price of the cryptocurrency for cheap international transfers Ripple (XRP) skyrocketed in price from $0.2 apiece to $3.8. In 2017, the rate of "Ripple" increased by 3,803%, after which the coin firmly entrenched itself in the top three "crypto" with the highest market capitalization. During the current year, analysts confidently predict further growth - up to $10 and even up to $100. Why is XRP/Ripple considered so promising?

  • Ripple solved the two main problems of Bitcoin and Ethereum- slow transaction speed and high transfer fees. An international transfer goes through a bank from 3 to 7 days, through Bitcoin - more than 1 hour, through Ethereum - 15 minutes. Bankers ask for a fee of $3.85, Bitcoin - $35, Ethereum - $0.4, . ARipple allows you to make international transfers in 4 seconds and with a commission of only 0.00001 XRP, i.e. de facto free.
  • Ripple is already working - it is used by popular banks. If bitcoin in 10 years has achieved only an appearance in futures trading in the United States, then Ripple has gained support in just five over 100 banks, including American Express, UniCredit, Royal Bank of Scotland, Standard Chartered and UBS. They already work with the Ripple protocol - and !
  • Ripple is not a "revolutionary". Ripple's plans do not include the destruction of banks and governments, as "traditional" cryptocurrencies declare. On the contrary, Ripple is ready to cooperate with the “powerful ones” in order to earn money and at the same time make the world a little better. It is not surprising that banks are so willing to accept XRP - they see the new currency not as an enemy, but as a partner.
  • XRP is cheap- now it is about 50-60 rubles. As a result, investing in a coin will not be difficult even for a person with a small amount of money.

Ripple forecast for 2018

Price stagnation and decline in the first quarter (good chance to buy at a low price), then $5 in the second quarter. Further growth up to $10 per piece is possible (conservative). $100 a piece is optimistic.

But, of course, the price is far from the most important thing in the story with Ripple.

None of the cryptocurrencies that you will read about next has such a chance of eventual acceptance in the real world as Ripple!

Ethereum (ETH)

Cryptocurrency №2 in the world, only bitcoin is cooler. The author is “our man”, the developer is from Russia (but lives in Canada) Vitalik Buterin. It’s expensive, it’s growing fast — on December 31, 2017, Ethereum cost $750, on January 10, 2018, the price skyrocketed to $1,300. What is it about this project that attracts users so much?

Ether is expensive - and it can be "mined"(mine) on video cards! In 2016 and 2017, Ethereum miners literally bathed in gold.

Ethereum has smart contracts- a technology that the authoritative magazine The Economist "new era in financial" technology. What it is? A smart contract is a programmable contract, carefully observed not by people, but by two objective arbiters - the Ethereum virtual machine and blockchain technology. Where can it be applied? Wherever people need to agree on something. For example, you want to safely sell something on Avito to a person from another city. A smart contract is created, and the person will not receive your item until he transfers the money. Poor scammers, how are they going to breed people, they will still have to find a normal job, probably :).

The prospects for Ethereum are very well considered by big business. Among the partners of "Ethereum" are already listed Microsoft, Mastercard, BP, Intel, Samsung, JP Morgan, Toyota and Cisco.

Ethereum has not yet become the No. 1 cryptocurrency in the world only because it has not yet solved two serious problems - slow transaction speed(20 per second - compare with Ripple/Stellar's 1,500 and Visa/MasterCard's 50,000) and their high cost(commission for transfer over the network reaches 5%).

True, Vitalik Buterin and his colleagues already submitted a solution for both problems, the transition from the “heavy” PoW mining protocol to the “light” PoS protocol. In PoS, users will keep some of the Ethereum coins they own in their accounts. This will allow them to be part of validator pools (certifying centers) to receive a reward for conducting transactions in the amount of 2 to 15% for each transfer.

In other words, it is better to buy or mine at least a little “ether” right now, so that later you can earn money on it all the time.

How to mine Ethereum

For this you need a video card. It is most profitable to bring them from the best online store in Germany - Computeruniverse. "Vidyuhi" there are 20% cheaper than in Russia, because. we do not have to pay German VAT, plus the store offers a branded promo code for a €5 discount - FWAUCZB. The highest performing graphics cards for mining ether in 2018 are the "red" ones, these are AMD Radeon RX 570 (27.9 + sol) and Radeon RX 580 (30.2 +). The best manufacturer is Sapphire.

Useful advice: it is better to buy 2 cards cheaper than one - more expensive, because two cards for comparable money will give you more so-called. "sols" (a unit of video card performance in mining). But do not forget that you can import goods to the Russian Federation from abroad in the amount of no more than 1,000 euros per month. The maximum volume of one order, in order not to get suspicious about a commercial lot at customs in 2018, is 2 video cards.

P.S. Don't forget branded €5 discount promo code— FWAUCZB

Zcash (ZEC)

Zcash is the first truly anonymous cryptocurrency in the world The best alternative to bitcoin according to Edward Snowden himself and a very promising direction for mining in 2018. Now - about everything in order:

ZCash is the only altcoin designed and implemented specialists and scientists in the field of cryptography. It provides the user with absolute privacy - and therefore donations to ZEC are accepted by fighters with world governments from Wikileaks Julian Assange. Why, even Vitalik Buterin, the creator of the competing Ethereum cryptocurrency, speaks favorably of ZCash!

  • First, ZCash, unlike Bitcoin, allows users to do not upload data on the amount of payment in ZEC, as well as their sender and recipient to the public blockchain. So, there was some kind of transaction, and who sent what to whom - the devil knows. Zcash coins also do not store transaction history. As a result, only the participants in the transaction have information about this. So a third party, with all the desire, will be able to track the transaction in Bitcoin (special services have already learned how to do this), but not in ZEC.
  • Secondly, ZCash offers something incredible at first glance - it mathematically proves to the entire community that a transaction without any data about it(addresses of owners' wallets, transfer amount) after all took place. And at the same time, it does not report any data to the blockchain! A truly unique protocol is responsible for this. zk-SNARK, developed by the creators of the cryptocurrency based on the so-called. "zero-knowledge proof". Here's how it works:

Zcash is also very popular with miners:

  • The currency is expensive - around 40,000 rubles;
  • Favorable conditions for mining - a block is formed quickly, in just 2.5 minutes, "weighs" 2 MB, and the reward for mining one block is 12.5 ZEC;
  • Ethereum has already announced that it will stop mining for the foreseeable future. The Zcash developers are just starting to think about it, i.e. throughout 2018 and most likely 2019, ZEC mining through mining will not go anywhere.

For mining Zcash buy "green" NVIDIA 10-series cards. The best option in terms of price-to-mining speed is the GTX 1060 with 6 GB of RAM (330 sol hashrate). Farmers with big money are buying up more expensive GTX 1070 Ti (sol 520+) graphics cards. The best manufacturers of these video cards are ASUS (Strix) and Palit.

P.S. Don't forget the branded promo code for a €5 discount - FWAUCZB

Lumen/XLM (Stellar)

Official Stellar Logo

This is the "little brother" and "correct" version of Ripple!

The Lumen (XLM) cryptocurrency and the Stellar blockchain protocol were invented by Jed McCaleb- a figure in the cryptocurrency industry practically legendary. Why? Firstly, it was Jed who created the first popular cryptocurrency exchange. Mt Gox(it accounted for up to 70% of world Bitcoin transactions in the early 10s). His second crypto project turned out to be ... our old friend Ripple! But McCaleb left the company when he fell out with a partner and, in addition, realized that XRP had become a “servant” coin for banks and governments around the world. He grieved, grieved - and launched the “correct Ripple” under the name “Stellar”.

Why is Stellar better than Ripple?

  • Improved Protocol. In 2014, when Stellar was still working on the Ripple blockchain, the so-called. network crash. Blame was a key element of the protocol - consensus mechanism, it turned out to be a technology with inherent vulnerabilities. McCaleb developed a new, more advanced consensus mechanism, the "Integrated Byzantine Treaty."
  • System of simple smart contracts. Ethereum made a bet on complex smart contracts - and became a victim of hackers. Therefore, the developers of the Stellar protocol deliberately made "smarts" simple - so as not to generate errors and not give hackers a chance to hack into the system.
  • Platform for launching other cryptocurrencies. Even an inexperienced developer will create a smart contract on the Stellar protocol in a period from several hours to 1-2 days. And users will be able to buy new coins from him not only for lumens, but also for more popular currencies - ether and bitcoin. The first ICO has already taken place - the "killer" project of Google Play and the App Store Mobius collected $35 million from large investors.
  • Like Ripple, Stellar offers instant money transfers(3-5 seconds) with a negligible commission - 100,000 XLM transfers cost ... 1 cent!
  • Fixed major Ripple flaw. De facto, Ripple is not a crypto project, but an ordinary commercial organization, i.e. its main goal is to earn money for the owners. For Stellar, McCaleb chose a completely different form of organization. The project is managed by the non-profit Stellar Development Foundation (SDF). It has no owner—McCaleb is a co-founder but not even on the board—no preferred members, no shares. The fund lives solely on 5% of the XLM lumens, as originally reported.
  • Large buyers of Lumen entered into a restrictive agreement not to sell XLM for 5 years, so that they would not collapse the currency. So at least until 2019, the Stellar / XLM rate is not threatened by a large release of coins on the market.
  • Serious partners. Computer giant IBM and Stellar are testing a system of free international transfers through XLM coins. And the famous consulting company Deloitte in 2016 has already launched a joint bank with Stellar with transfers in 5 seconds against 3-7 days for conventional banks. So Stellar also has a practical implementation.
  • It is inexpensive- $0.64 per lumen.

Since January 2018, Stellar has firmly “registered” in the TOP-10 cryptocurrencies with the highest market capitalization. The scale of Jed McCaleb's personality and the characteristics of Project Stellar suggest that the price of XLM will only rise.

Where could I buy: on the Russian-language exchange Binance (only for bitcoins).

ADA (Cardano Blockchain)

But "Adochka" is a whole "scientific" cryptocurrency! It pretty much surprised the world with its growth rate at the turn of 2017-2018 - in mid-December, ADA cost 20 cents, in early January it was already almost 80. What is the secret?

Cardano has created an international consortium of cryptocurrency researchers. "Pundits" from the USA, Scotland and Greece studied a mountain of literature, identified the shortcomings of the existing "crypt" and proposed their own version of the blockchain currency for money transfers with the maximum level of security and confidentiality for the participants in the transaction. By the way, a very large contribution to the development of Cardano has been made and is being made by programmers from the countries of the former USSR.

More advantages of Cardano:

  • Project Manager Charles Hoskinson stood at the origin the world's second most popular (and market capitalization, of course) cryptocurrency Ethereum, in 2013-14 he even headed the company. In other words, ADA / Cardano is led by a very strong and successful manager in the industry.
  • 3rd generation blockchain technology- with the rejection of mining (expensive and long) in favor of staking (cheap and fast), the ability to refine the platform through soft forks (Bitcoin and Ethereum have to create new forks when changes are made)
  • ADA is already popular in Japan- the currency is called "Japanese Ethereum", because. During the Cardano ICO, 95% of the coins were bought up by risky guys from the Land of the Rising Sun.
  • Here's the big thing going on: Debit cards will be available in Japan with an instant exchange of ADA for fiat (ordinary, in our case, yen) currencies and first 5 ATMs. You feel? It's already

Investor interest in alternative cryptocurrencies (altcoins) increased significantly in the first half of 2017, as did the quotes of digital assets. This is usually associated with the Japanese government act on the legal regulation of cryptocurrencies, which actually legalized this market and to a large extent contributed to its development.

The simple accumulation by altcoins of a certain critical mass in terms of popularity and the number of people involved in the market also played a role. After the May hype, the total capitalization of alternative cryptocurrencies for the first time exceeded the capitalization of bitcoin.

As of September, the capitalization of bitcoin was about $65 billion, and the total value of altcoins was about $70 billion. At the same time, the most popular of the alternative cryptocurrencies, Ethereum, accounts for about $30 billion.

Now it is quite rare to meet people who know something about bitcoin, but are not at all familiar with altcoins. However, few people understand how different cryptocurrencies differ, why they were created, and what are their advantages and disadvantages. In this review, we will compare Bitcoin and the five most popular altcoins, presenting them in the form of a rating by approximate capitalization, which, however, is constantly changing.

bitcoin (bitcoin)

    Year of foundation: 2009

    Symbol: BTC

    Capitalization: $65 billion

    Rate growth per year: 6.5 times

This is the first and so far the most popular cryptocurrency in the world. It gained its fame after it increased in price by 10,000 times from 2010 to 2013 - from 10 cents to $1000. In part, this was a bubble inflation: by the end of 2014, BTC fell to $200. Then there was a joke that after the crisis, only one currency suffered more than the ruble - bitcoin. However, in 2017, Bitcoin surpassed its previous record and is now trading in the $4,000 region.

Despite its leadership, BTC was and remains a "trial balloon", a cryptographic experiment. Both technically and ideologically it is far from perfect.

Its transactions are slow, and the size of the blockchain with the history of operations has reached 100 gigabytes and continues to “get fat”. The owner of a full-fledged bitcoin wallet (node) must download this data from the Internet. If the wallet has been turned off for some time, then after restarting it, you have to wait a lot of time until the information about new transactions is fully loaded.

To avoid these difficulties, more and more users prefer to store bitcoins not in a node wallet, but on special servers (client-server system) or directly on cryptocurrency exchanges. Thus, the idea that each network user can keep the entire history of transactions turned out to be utopian.

Another often criticized feature of bitcoin is the emission on the principle of POW (proof of work). Some network users (the so-called miners) provide their computing power to ensure its operation. For this they receive a reward and the right to vote in making collective decisions.

The more miners, the more reliable the network is protected from attacks, but the consumption of electricity in this case is quite high, and the efficiency of payments does not change. So, for security reasons alone, the network consumes much more electricity than is needed for transactions.

Another controversial aspect of bitcoin is the public availability of transaction data. Of course, they do not indicate the names of counterparties and the purpose of payments, but with a strong desire, the trade secrets of users can be disclosed. As shown, for example, by an independent investigation into thefts from the first bitcoin exchange Mtgox, published by the Wizsec team.

Despite its shortcomings, bitcoin today remains the number one cryptocurrency, "digital gold". The main reasons for this are its worldwide fame, reputation as a long-term growing asset and rich experience in practical use. Bitcoin is accepted and converted on many online services, the software is well debugged for it. This cannot be said about most altcoins yet.

Ethereum (ether)

    Year of foundation: 2014

    Symbol: ETH

    Capitalization: $28 billion

    Rate growth per year: 22 times

Ether was far from the first altcoin, but it was he who managed to become the main competitor of bitcoin. Already in September 2016, he was the first of the alternative cryptocurrencies to reach the billion dollar capitalization level.

One of the main innovative properties of ETH, which has attracted the attention of not only individuals, but also corporations, is the ability to be used both as a means of payment and as a means of registering transactions with other assets without traditional legal procedures. The authors themselves called the ether "cryptofuel" for the execution of smart contracts.

Another difference between ETH and Bitcoin is the prospect of switching to a qualitatively different energy-efficient method of emission - POS (proof of stake). The network will consume only the energy that is needed to ensure transactions, and the weight of votes and rewards will be determined not by computing power, but by the amount of funds the network participants have. In a sense, it will be like a bank deposit with interest: the more money you have, the more income you get.

The popularity of Ether as a digital asset continues to grow. Services that work with ETH along with BTC are gradually appearing on the market. At the same time, the technical capabilities of ETH are objectively higher than those of BTC, which makes Ethereum an attractive investment object.

Bitcoin Cash (bitcoin cash)

    Year of foundation: 2017

    Symbol: BCH

    Estimated capitalization: $7.5 billion

    Rate growth per month: 2.1 times

Bitcoin Cash emerged from the recent split (hard fork) of BTC into two new currencies with minimal technical differences.

In 2017, during periods of exchange rush, many BTC users faced the problem of a significant slowdown in transactions. Sometimes their passage required several days. This called into question the future of BTC.

To fix this problem, it was decided to make changes to the cryptocurrency blockchain format. However, the opinions of network participants regarding the degree of radicalness of these changes differed. The majority voted for the compromise SegWit2x model, which implies a change in the data structure of the blockchain, and in the future - a twofold increase in the size of its blocks.

But some of the participants considered this only a temporary “crutch” and spoke in favor of an eightfold increase in blocks while fully preserving the rest of the data structure. What is today called plain bitcoin (BTC) is a compromise 2x option, while Bitcoin cash (BCH) is 8x.

BCH in the future is threatened by a very rapid growth in the size of the blockchain, which is already large. So far, bitcoin cash is much less popular than the compromise new BTC. Its rate is also growing less confidently. At the same time, it cannot be ruled out that soon BTC will again face speed problems, while BCH is much more secure from them.

In the future, it is he, and not bitcoin, that may turn out to be more convenient and more popular as a means of payment. But so far, the velocity (the ratio of the volume of transactions to the money supply) of BCH is an order of magnitude lower than that of the classic bitcoin.

Ripple

    Year of foundation: 2012

    Symbol: XRP

    Capitalization: $7 billion

    Rate growth per year: 23 times

This is one of the "old" crypto systems, but like ETH, it claims to be something more than just a currency. This is a whole settlement system that can even be used to conduct transactions in national currencies.

Actually, Ripple itself is only a part of this system (in a sense, its shares). In terms of price, security, and a number of other aspects, Ripple turned out to be more suitable for banks than classic cryptocurrencies like BTC. Already today, it is used for experiments by such financial giants as UniCredit, UBS, Santander, etc.

The ideological content of this system is significantly different from the ideology of bitcoin. If Bitcoin is perceived by many as an anarchic challenge to states and their payment systems, then Ripple, on the contrary, seeks to build bridges between the old economy and new technologies.

For this reason, XRP occupies a special market niche and is not a direct competitor to Bitcoin and most other cryptocurrencies. And although after recent Chinese initiatives against digital assets and ICOs, this currency sank along with other altcoins, the support of large Western banks creates a good safety cushion for Ripple - unlike many other cryptocurrencies, the rate of which is rather based on speculative expectations.

Litecoin (litecoin)

    Year of foundation: 2011

    Symbol: LTC

    Approximate capitalization: $3 billion

    Rate growth per year: 16 times

This is one of the oldest altcoins - it appeared at a time when only a few knew about bitcoin. Like bitcoin cash, this currency was created as a "clone" (fork) of BTC, and with the same main goal - to increase the speed of payments. Old BTC (before 2017), new BTC, BCH and LTC differ mainly in the way data is written to the blockchain.

LTC uses roughly the same SegWit system as new BTC, while BCH and old BTC run on the classic bitcoin blockchain, differing in block size.

The higher transaction speed attracted the attention of investors to LTC, and for a while this currency seemed like a serious challenge to Bitcoin. In the second half of 2013, the LTC rate increased from $1-2 to $50. But this dynamics turned out to be a bubble inflation: in 2014, the cryptocurrency exchange rate rolled back almost to its previous positions and fixed on them for a long time.

It wasn't until June 2017 that LTC was able to beat its 2013 price record.

Against the backdrop of recently emerging innovative cryptocurrencies, LTC cannot boast of fundamental technical advantages. He was among the pioneers of the successful modification of BTC, but today his popularity, like the popularity of Bitcoin, rests mainly on wide popularity and experience of many years of stable work. Like other well-known digital assets, it is often included in multi-currency portfolios.

The Future of Crypto Assets

As we can see, cryptocurrency developers do not waste time and offer new solutions to old problems. Technologies that seemed to be breakthrough in 2013 (for example, the acceleration of transactions in LTC), in 2017 have already been applied to many crypto assets.

In this light, not only bitcoin, but also other modern cryptocurrencies seem to be “trial balloons”, which are destined to eventually take pride of place in museums, losing their positions to more advanced counterparts.

However, cryptocurrencies still should not be compared with individual industrial designs, which sooner or later become obsolete. Rather, they are analogues of entire product lines of specific enterprises or design bureaus. As we saw with Bitcoin and Ethereum, cryptocurrencies evolve and reform as they are used.

And, perhaps, even after 70 years, humanity will still use digital assets with the abbreviations BTC or ETH. Only they will have no more in common with their modern counterparts than the new Intel processors with the processors of the same company of the 1980 model.

The question of the survival of specific cryptocurrencies depends not only on the optimality of their modern protocols, but also on the ingenuity of the authors, their willingness to respond to the challenges of the time by developing brands. The economic situation in the world, which is very changeable, also plays an important role.

At the beginning of 2014, the British newspaper The Guardian called bitcoin the worst investment of the year, but already in 2016, after another devaluation of the yuan, Brexit and the US elections, cryptoeconomists recognized it as one of the best means of storing capital and making a profit.

Today, no one knows for sure whether in the future bitcoin will be replaced by new “forks” or whether it will retain its authority and position. But already now, professional investors are striving to diversify their portfolio and pay attention to the other half of the cryptocurrency market, which is occupied by altcoins.

These digital assets are suitable for both speculative operations and medium-term investments. Thus, the XAI altcoin index, which reflects the dynamics of 30% of the volume of the cryptocurrency market, increased more than 40 times from the beginning of 2017 to mid-August.

In the future, as the technological infrastructure of alternative cryptocurrencies develops and their legal status in different countries becomes clear, investments in them will become more and more reliable.

Which cryptocurrencies are most likely to become a means of payment and a reliable investment asset

Investor interest in alternative cryptocurrencies (altcoins) increased significantly in the first half of 2017, as did the quotes of digital assets. This is usually associated with the Japanese government act on the legal regulation of cryptocurrencies, which actually legalized this market and to a large extent contributed to its development.

The simple accumulation by altcoins of a certain critical mass in terms of popularity and the number of people involved in the market also played a role. After the May hype, the total capitalization of alternative cryptocurrencies for the first time exceeded the capitalization of bitcoin.

As of September, the capitalization of bitcoin was about $65 billion, and the total value of altcoins was about $70 billion. At the same time, the most popular of the alternative cryptocurrencies, Ethereum, accounts for about $30 billion.

Now it is quite rare to meet people who know something about bitcoin, but are not at all familiar with altcoins. However, few people understand how different cryptocurrencies differ, why they were created, and what are their advantages and disadvantages. In this review, we will compare Bitcoin and the five most popular altcoins, presenting them in the form of a rating by approximate capitalization, which, however, is constantly changing.

bitcoin (bitcoin)

    Year of foundation: 2009

    Symbol: BTC

    Capitalization: $65 billion

    Rate growth per year: 6.5 times

This is the first and so far the most popular cryptocurrency in the world. It gained its fame after it rose 10,000 times from 2010 to 2013, from 10 cents to $1,000. In part, this was a bubble inflation: by the end of 2014, BTC fell in price to $200. Then there was a joke that after the crisis, only one currency suffered more than the ruble - bitcoin. However, in 2017, bitcoin surpassed its former record and is now trading in the region of $4,000.

Despite its leadership, BTC was and remains a "trial balloon", a cryptographic experiment. Both technically and ideologically it is far from perfect.

Its transactions are slow, and the size of the blockchain with the history of operations has reached 100 gigabytes and continues to “get fat”. The owner of a full-fledged bitcoin wallet (node) must download this data from the Internet. If the wallet has been turned off for some time, then after restarting it, you have to wait a lot of time until the information about new transactions is fully loaded.

To avoid these difficulties, more and more users prefer to store bitcoins not in a node wallet, but on special servers (client-server system) or directly on cryptocurrency exchanges. Thus, the idea that each network user can keep the entire history of transactions turned out to be utopian.

Another often criticized feature of bitcoin is the emission on the principle of POW (proof of work). Some network users (the so-called miners) provide their computing power to ensure its operation. For this they receive a reward and the right to vote in making collective decisions.

The more miners, the more reliable the network is protected from attacks, but the consumption of electricity in this case is quite high, and the efficiency of payments does not change. So, for security reasons alone, the network consumes much more electricity than is needed for transactions.

Another controversial aspect of bitcoin is the public availability of transaction data. Of course, they do not indicate the names of counterparties and the purpose of payments, but with a strong desire, the trade secrets of users can be disclosed. As shown, for example, by an independent investigation into thefts from the first bitcoin exchange Mtgox, published by the Wizsec team.

Despite its shortcomings, bitcoin today remains the number one cryptocurrency, "digital gold". The main reasons for this are its worldwide fame, reputation as a long-term growing asset and rich experience in practical use. Bitcoin is accepted and converted on many online services, the software is well debugged for it. This cannot be said about most altcoins yet.

Ethereum (ether)

    Year of foundation: 2014

    Symbol: ETH

    Capitalization: $28 billion

    Rate growth per year: 22 times

Ether was far from the first altcoin, but it was he who managed to become the main competitor of bitcoin. Already in September 2016, he was the first of the alternative cryptocurrencies to reach the billion dollar capitalization level.

One of the main innovative properties of ETH, which has attracted the attention of not only individuals, but also corporations, is the ability to use it both as a means of payment and as a means of registering transactions with other assets without traditional legal procedures. The authors themselves called the ether "cryptofuel" for the execution of smart contracts.

Another difference between ETH and Bitcoin is the prospect of switching to a qualitatively different energy-efficient method of emission - POS (proof of stake). The network will consume only the energy that is needed to ensure transactions, and the weight of votes and rewards will be determined not by computing power, but by the amount of funds the network participants have. In a sense, it will be like a bank deposit with interest: the more money you have, the more income you get.

The popularity of Ether as a digital asset continues to grow. Services that work with ETH along with BTC are gradually appearing on the market. At the same time, the technical capabilities of ETH are objectively higher than those of BTC, which makes Ethereum an attractive investment object.

Bitcoin Cash (bitcoin cash)

    Year of foundation: 2017

    Symbol: BCH

    Estimated capitalization: $7.5 billion

    Rate growth per month: 2.1 times

Bitcoin Cash emerged from the recent split (hard fork) of BTC into two new currencies with minimal technical differences.

In 2017, during periods of exchange rush, many BTC users faced the problem of a significant slowdown in transactions. Sometimes their passage required several days. This called into question the future of BTC.

To fix this problem, it was decided to make changes to the cryptocurrency blockchain format. However, the opinions of network participants regarding the degree of radicalness of these changes differed. The majority voted for the compromise SegWit2x model, which implies a change in the data structure of the blockchain, and in the future - a twofold increase in the size of its blocks.

But some of the participants considered this only a temporary “crutch” and spoke in favor of an eightfold increase in blocks while fully preserving the rest of the data structure. What is today called simple bitcoin (BTC) is a compromise two-fold option, and bitcoin cash (BCH) is eight-fold.

BCH in the future is threatened by a very rapid growth in the size of the blockchain, which is already large. So far, bitcoin cash is much less popular than the compromise new BTC. Its rate is also growing less confidently. At the same time, it cannot be ruled out that soon BTC will again face speed problems, while BCH is much more secure from them.

In the future, it is he, and not bitcoin, that may turn out to be more convenient and more popular as a means of payment. But so far, the velocity (the ratio of the volume of transactions to the money supply) of BCH is an order of magnitude lower than that of the classic bitcoin.

Ripple

    Year of foundation: 2012

    Symbol: XRP

    Capitalization: $7 billion

    Rate growth per year: 23 times

This is one of the "old" crypto systems, but like ETH, it claims to be something more than just a currency. This is a whole settlement system that can even be used to conduct transactions in national currencies.

Actually, Ripple itself is only a part of this system (in a sense, its shares). In terms of price, security, and a number of other aspects, Ripple turned out to be more suitable for banks than classic cryptocurrencies like BTC. Already today, it is used for experiments by such financial giants as UniCredit, UBS, Santander, etc.

The ideological content of this system is significantly different from the ideology of bitcoin. If Bitcoin is perceived by many as an anarchic challenge to states and their payment systems, then Ripple, on the contrary, seeks to build bridges between the old economy and new technologies.

For this reason, XRP occupies a special market niche and is not a direct competitor to Bitcoin and most other cryptocurrencies. And although after recent Chinese initiatives against digital assets and ICOs, this currency sank along with other altcoins, the support of large Western banks creates a good safety cushion for Ripple - unlike many other cryptocurrencies, the rate of which is rather based on speculative expectations.

Litecoin (litecoin)

    Year of foundation: 2011

    Symbol: LTC

    Approximate capitalization: $3 billion

    Rate growth per year: 16 times

This is one of the oldest altcoins - it appeared at a time when only a few knew about bitcoin. Like bitcoin cash, this currency was created as a "clone" (fork) of BTC, and with the same main goal - to increase the speed of payments. Old BTC (before 2017), new BTC, BCH and LTC differ mainly in the way data is written to the blockchain.

LTC uses roughly the same SegWit system as new BTC, while BCH and old BTC run on the classic bitcoin blockchain, differing in block size.

The higher transaction speed attracted the attention of investors to LTC, and for a while this currency seemed like a serious challenge to Bitcoin. In the second half of 2013, the LTC rate increased from $1-2 to $50. But this dynamics turned out to be a bubble inflation: in 2014, the cryptocurrency exchange rate rolled back almost to its previous positions and fixed on them for a long time.

It wasn't until June 2017 that LTC was able to beat its 2013 price record.

Against the backdrop of recently emerging innovative cryptocurrencies, LTC cannot boast of fundamental technical advantages. He was among the pioneers of the successful modification of BTC, but today his popularity, like the popularity of Bitcoin, rests mainly on wide popularity and experience of many years of stable work. Like other well-known digital assets, it is often included in multi-currency portfolios.

The Future of Crypto Assets

As we can see, cryptocurrency developers do not waste time and offer new solutions to old problems. Technologies that seemed to be breakthrough in 2013 (for example, the acceleration of transactions in LTC), in 2017 have already been applied to many crypto assets.

In this light, not only bitcoin, but also other modern cryptocurrencies seem to be “trial balloons”, which are destined to eventually take pride of place in museums, losing their positions to more advanced counterparts.

However, cryptocurrencies still should not be compared with individual industrial designs, which sooner or later become obsolete. Rather, they are analogues of entire product lines of specific enterprises or design bureaus. As we saw with Bitcoin and Ethereum, cryptocurrencies evolve and reform as they are used.

And, perhaps, even after 70 years, humanity will still use digital assets with the abbreviations BTC or ETH. Only they will have no more in common with their modern counterparts than the new Intel processors with the processors of the same company of the 1980 model.

The question of the survival of specific cryptocurrencies depends not only on the optimality of their modern protocols, but also on the ingenuity of the authors, their willingness to respond to the challenges of the time by developing brands. The economic situation in the world, which is very changeable, also plays an important role.

At the beginning of 2014, the British newspaper The Guardian called bitcoin the worst investment of the year, but already in 2016, after another devaluation of the yuan, Brexit and the US elections, cryptoeconomists recognized it as one of the best means of storing capital and making a profit.

Today, no one knows for sure whether in the future bitcoin will be replaced by new “forks” or whether it will retain its authority and position. But already now, professional investors are striving to diversify their portfolio and pay attention to the other half of the cryptocurrency market, which is occupied by altcoins.

These digital assets are suitable for both speculative operations and medium-term investments. Thus, the XAI altcoin index, which reflects the dynamics of 30% of the volume of the cryptocurrency market, increased more than 40 times from the beginning of 2017 to mid-August.

In the future, as the technological infrastructure of alternative cryptocurrencies develops and their legal status in different countries becomes clear, investments in them will become more and more reliable.

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