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To the surprise of many, 2017 was the year in which cryptocurrencies became a dominant trend. As for the best participants, Bitcoin, the main cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization, was not even in the top ten . The value of Bitcoin may have increased more than 1,000% in 2017, but that was not enough to place it among the 10 fastest growing crypto-active .

Although the technology is relatively new, digital currencies – like Ripple – are already making waves in multiple industries. The increase of the demand has increased the prices significantly and many obtained good benefits when investing in Bitcoin and other cryptoactives. But, you wonder what is the next cryptocurrency to invest in 2018 besides Bitcoin? Here, we have selected the most promising cryptocoins to invest in 2018.

Our biggest favorites for this year are  Ripple , which is touted as a new type of payment system for banks, along with lesser-known names like Tron, Stellar and Cardano.

Best cryptocurrencies to invest in 2018

Ripple (XRP)

Official Site: https://ripple.com/

Created in 2012,  Ripple  is both a payment network (RippleNet) and a cryptocurrency (XRP). RippleNet connects banks and other large institutions and allows them to transfer money and other assets through the network. All transactions are recorded in the   decentralized XRP ledger .

Ripple XRP is the currency used in the payment network for all transactions, which reduces the time and money associated with cross-border payments. Each transaction through the system is processed in just four seconds. In comparison, Ethereum takes more than two minutes, Bitcoin takes more than an hour, while traditional systems can take between three and five days.

The currency is also scalable: it can handle 1,500 transactions per second. On the other hand, Bitcoin, according to reports, only manages seven at the same time, which is one of the reasons why Bitcoin Cash was created  .

In addition to being fast and scalable, the Ripple network also offers low transaction fees. Due to its benefits, the system is already being used by more than 75 financial institutions around the world.

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The New York Times once described Ripple as “a cross between Western Union and a currency exchange, without the high fees” because it is not only a currency, but also a system in which any currency, including bitcoin, can be traded . “Ripple connects banks, payment providers, exchanges of digital assets and companies through RippleNet to provide an unrestricted experience to send money worldwide”, say its creators.

The current supply of XRP is approximately 38.7 billion of a maximum supply of 100 billion, which is much more than the rest of the cryptocurrencies in this list.

Unlike other cryptocurrencies, you can not mine Ripple, but each transaction destroys a small amount of XRP, which adds a deflationary measure to the system. As already mentioned, all the coins, 100 billion, have already been created. About 40 percent of them are in circulation, while the rest of the coins are owned by the company.

They will be released to the market gradually: one billion Ripples per month. This is to show investors that Ripple will not sell all the supply in the market immediately, which would have a negative effect on the price.

Cardano (ADA)

Official Site: https://www.cardanohub.org/

Cardano  is a new Blockchain platform and complete protocol launched as cryptocurrency (ADA) to the market in Bittrex Exchange on September 29, 2017. It aims to be the most advanced Blockchain platform created so far, being presented as a third generation (considering to Bitcoin as first generation, and Ethereum as second).

The ADA crowdsale took place between Japanese investors between September 2015 and January 2017, during which almost 30,000 million “coupons exchangeable for ADA” were distributed, in the first ICO with compliance KYC.

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Cardano is a smart contract platform, similar to Ethereum, with a focus on security through a layer-based architecture. It is the first blockchain project that is created from scientific philosophy and is based on peer-reviewed academic research.

Unlike other projects, the objective of the Cardano team is not to review the entire financial system. Its objective is to use blockchain technology to take banking systems to places that were previously too expensive to implement, specifically in the developing world.

The Cardano platform, open source and free of patents, is in the development phase until 2019, so the currently active version (“Byron”) is the first generation of the  settlement layer  (called  Cardano SL ,  Cardano Settlement Layer ), which is where the ADA cryptocurrency resides.

Tron (TRX)

Official Site: https://tron.network/en.html

TRON is a new and promising Chinese cryptocurrency that aims to be one of the largest currencies in the market, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin. On New Year’s Day 2018, TRON reached the first position by volume negotiated in Binance , surpassing other great players like Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash and Ripple.

So, what is TRON? It is a decentralized protocol based on blockchain that aims to build a free content entertainment system around the world. The protocol allows each user to publish, store and possess data freely, and autonomously decentralized, decides the distribution, subscription and sending of content. It also allows content creators to free, circulate and manage digital assets, thus forming a decentralized content entertainment ecosystem. Therefore, content providers will no longer have to pay high channel fees to centralized platforms such as Google and Apple. Its official currency is TRONIX (TRX).

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Like Bitcoin, TRON is designed to authenticate and verify user transactions using blockchain technology. The strength of the currency is quite high and is backed by a strong community.

The man behind TRON is Justin Sun, founder and CEO of Peiwo, China’s largest live voice broadcasting app. He not only puts his experience on the table as Ripple’s main representative in China, but he is also considered a protege of Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba Group Holdings Inc. His popularity has allowed TRON to grow at a very fast pace.

While the Tronix Foundation does not yet officially have an association with Alibaba, its core team is well connected with the Chinese technology giant, which it shows as a real and growing possibility in the near future. Especially because it continues to show strong market confidence and community support.

TRON has issued two previous ICOs that were sold in seconds. According to Sun, TRON will become a new king of the distributed economy where the transmission of videos, games of chance and digital entertainment will be extremely easy and fun. The users of this cryptocurrency will have their own unique economy.

Nem (XEM)

Official site: https://www.nem.io/

NEM (XEM) is a  peer-to-peer cryptocurrency  released in 2015. Unlike other cryptocurrencies, NEM has its own original source code.

NEM or  New Economy Movement is a business-level solution to boost the impending blockchain economy. Originally intended to be a fork of the NXT platform, the community decided to go with a completely new code base with an alpha version released on June 25, 2014 and the first stable version on March 31, 2015. In 2016, NEM jumped to be one of the largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. The platform is currently being rewritten in C ++ and will be released as the “Catapult” update sometime in early 2018.

NEM has introduced new features of blockchain technology such as its  importance test algorithm  (POI), multifirm accounts, encrypted messages and an Eigentrust ++ reputation system. The NEM software is used in a chain of commercial blocks called Mijin, which is being tested by financial institutions and private companies in Japan and internationally.

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The average generation time of the block is one minute , 10 times lower compared to Bitcoin, so NEM is able to execute and validate many more transactions in less time.

NEM allows instant money transfers worldwide, without large installments. All portfolios are highly secure and exclude any possibility of unauthorized access.

NEM offers a truly impressive system that promises to be an important player in the next blockchain economy. The ease of development, flexibility and the exclusive PoI system make NEM a very attractive platform for any developer or company looking to build a blockchain solution.

Litecoin (LTC)

Official Site:  https://litecoin.org/es/

Litecoin is a global and open source payment network that is completely decentralized and without central authorities. Created by  former Google engineer Charles Lee in 2011 , it was announced as an alternative to bitcoin. Lee essentially set out to reduce the time required to confirm new transactions and modify the way bitcoin was mined to ensure anyone could participate.

It is the sixth cryptocurrency by market capitalization (at the time of writing these lines) and the third oldest cryptocurrency that still exists. Litecoin is also one of the four currencies that you can currently buy through Coinbase, the most popular broker to buy cryptocurrencies, along with bitcoin and ether.

Litecoin comes from the bitcoin source code, and like bitcoin, it operates in a chain of blocks. Charles Lee has said that in the past he intended litecoin to be considered silver if bitcoin represented gold. But there are some key technical differences that have made litecoin attractive recently.

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To begin with, the litecoin network is faster than the bitcoin blockchain: extracting a “block” of litecoin transactions takes an average of 2.5 minutes compared to 10 minutes of bitcoin. Litecoin’s transaction fees are also lower: sometimes close to zero. (Bitcoin transaction fees vary depending on network activity and can be very high in places like Coinbase). Litecoin has a supply limit of 84 million coins, compared to 21 million bitcoin.

Unlike bitcoin, created in 2009 by someone (or someone) using the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of litecoin is very public and popular on social networks. Lee was an engineer at Google in 2011 when he created litecoin. He joined Coinbase in 2013 as one of the company’s first employees, and was engineering director there until he left this year to focus on full-time litecoin. December 19 (2017), Lee announced it had sold all its litecoin to avoid any accusation of “pumping” ( pumping ) the currency for their own financial benefit.

Stellar (XLM)

Official site: https://www.stellar.org/

Stellar Lumens  announces itself as an open source distributed payment infrastructure, built on the premise that the international community needs “a global financial network open to all.” Stellar Lumens will cover this need, connecting individuals, institutions and payment systems through its platform.

The Stellar Lumen team wants to make monetary transactions cheaper, faster and more reliable than with current systems. In addition, its protocol would connect people from all over the world by allowing more efficient cross-border payments.

Founded in early 2014 by Jed McCaleb and Joyce Kim,  Stellar was originally a hard fork in the Ripple protocol . After making some changes to the important consensus code, the network generated the creation of the ” Stellar-core “.

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The technical document and the new code for this update were launched in April 2015 and the network was launched in November of the same year. The original asset in the Stellar network was called “stellars” (launched with 100 billion units in 2014); the name was changed to Lumens (XLM) after the 2015 update.

XLM is backed by a strong team of developers, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. If you check the list of board members and advisors, you will find great names of people like  WordPress, Y-combinator, Microsoft, Apache, Stripe, Google  and many others. In general, it is a positive indicator when a list of big names supports a project.

The Lumen / XLM is another asset in the field of cryptocurrencies that is rapidly populating. It seems to be positioned as a digital currency solution for the developing world, but it has been flying below the radar in recent years.

As of November 2017, Deloitte, Stripe and, most notably, IBM have created partnerships with Stellar. A big step in the right direction.

Iota (MIOTA)

Official site: https://iota.org/

IOTA is a new open-source cryptocurrency that does not use a blockchain. Its innovative quantum test protocol, known as  Tangle , gives rise to new unique features such as zero rates, infinite scalability, fast transactions, secure data transfer and many others. IOTA was created as a very related derivation of blockchain technology, but it is much more advanced and is already recognized in media such as Forbes, Techcrunch, International Business Times and Huffington Post. IOTA was developed in 2015 by David Sønstebø and is maintained by the IOTA Foundation, a non-profit foundation located in Germany.

According to the consultancy Bain, the IoT market is expected to be worth $ 470 billion by 2020. Through the IOTA Foundation, the German non-profit organization behind the cryptocurrency is one of the first to move in this space. It has already partnered with companies that will play a leading role in IoT, such as Cisco Systems Inc. and Samsung Electronics Ltd., to create a data market that can be monetized later. IOTA has also partnered with Innogy, an energy company.

IOTA focuses initially on serving as the backbone of the  Internet of Things (IoT). IOTA is an ambitious project that seeks to generate several applications of the IoT, doing it through Tangle, the most relevant innovation in the IOTA. Its creator defines it as a ledger that is lightweight and makes it possible to transfer values ​​without giving anything in return.

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To send an IOTA transaction, a user’s device must simply confirm two other transactions in the Tangle network. Since each transaction requires the sender to verify two other transactions in Tangle, more transactions can be confirmed as the number of users who send them increases. This means that IOTA scales proportionally to the number of transactions ad infinitum. The user and the validator are no longer dissociated entities in IOTA. This eliminates the need to waste large amounts of energy in mining. IOTA has zero fees.

Transaction times are inversely proportional to the number of transactions in the Tangle network. The more transactions, the faster each transaction will be confirmed. As IOTA approaches the critical mass of adoption, transaction times will approximate the propagation time of the network. The amount of coins will never increase or decrease. The total money supply is 2,779,530,283,277,761

IOTA is able to achieve a high performance of transactions by parallelizing the validation. As the Tangle grows with more transactions, IOTA will become faster and safer.

Neo (NEO)

Official site: https://neo.org/

Neo, formerly known as AntShares, is the first public blockchain in China. It is widely regarded as the “Chinese Ethereum” because, like Ethereum, it aims to become a platform on which decentralized applications can be built by allowing users to execute smart contracts in their Blockchain.

In essence, Neo is an intelligent contract ecosystem that allows users to automate the storage and exchange of digital assets.

Neo has great sustainability in the environment of cryptocurrencies, because apart from the smart contracts it can generate, it has a limited number of coin creation. The platform includes 2 different tokens. NEO and GAS are the cryptographic currencies that manage the Neo network. Both NEO and GAS have a limit of 100 million chips each.

Founded by Da Hongfei and Erik Zhang, Neo started his life as AntShares in 2014. In 2016, in response to the growing interest in AntShares, and the need for blockchain solutions that meet the requirements of both government regulators and companies private, Da and Erik founded OnChain, a venture backed by venture capital that offers blockchain-based financial services. In 2017, AntShares was renamed NEO. Both Neo and OnChain are based in Shanghai.

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The Neo Project was financed by two crowdsales . The first fundraiser took place in October 2015 with a duration of 10 days during which 17.5 million NEO tokens were sold for $ 550,000. In the second collection, the remaining 22.5 million NEO tokens were sold for $ 4.5 million.

NEO partners include the WINGS crowdfunding platform and the multinational Microsoft technology corporation.

Eos (EOS)

Official Site: https://eos.io/

There has been a lot of publicity around EOS. When it was announced by its founder, Dan Larimer, in New York City in May of 2017, you could see an advertisement for giant jumbotron shining on Times Square. In the first 5 days of its sale of ICO tokens, EOS raised an unprecedented $ 185 million in ETH, all without having any type of product or service yet.

Basically, EOS is (or, rather, will be) a blockchain technology much like Ethereum. They plan to create their own chain of blocks with a long list of impressive features. Some even call EOS the “killer of Ethereum.”

EOS is a blockchain platform for the development of decentralized applications (dApps), similar to Ethereum in functions. The idea behind EOS is to bring together the best features and promises of the various smart contract technologies (eg, Bitcoin security, Ethereum computing support) into a user-friendly, massive scalability application platform for the everyday user to empower the impending blockchain economy.

The EOS project is being developed by a company called Block One, directed by Dan Larimer (co-founder of Bitshares and Steemit) and Brendan Bloomer. Both provide a serious experience in the world of cryptography and have been publicly active in the promotion of technology as a whole, in addition to their own projects.

The EOS team is in line with the roadmap proposed earlier this year, and continues the development of the platform with great speed. EOS Dawn 1.0 was released on September 14, 2017. The launch of Dawn 2.0 on December 4, 2017 brought with it the tracking of resources and communication between blocks, and the release of Dawn 3.0 is estimated to be in 2018 and is intended to be the first official launch of the system.

At this time, it is too early to say whether EOS will deliver on its promises. If they manage to create a chain of blocks with all the impressive features they claim they will have, EOS will surely be a great competitor of Ethereum.

Qtum (QTUM)

Official Site: https://qtum.org/

Qtum is an open source blockchain project developed by the Qtum Foundation, based in Singapore. Qtum is a hybrid platform of blockchain applications. Qtum’s core technology combines a fork of the bitcoin kernel, an account abstraction layer that allows multiple virtual machines (including the Ethereum virtual machine) and the Proof-of-Stake consensus. This set of technologies will allow Smart Contracts and decentralized Applications to run on a family basis, while offering a solid environment for developers.

The Qtum Foundation plans to be the public blockchain for business. Development efforts will allow this platform to be commercialized in various industries, such as: mobile telecommunications, protection against counterfeiting, finance, industrial logistics (shipping, guarantee, etc.) and manufacturing.

The idea of ​​Qtum is based on uniting the most successful and reliable blockchain technologies to build a network for real-world commercial applications. Qtum knows that improving existing blockchain technologies is paramount to its success and focuses primarily on the introduction of affordable options for the business world. The objective is to merge the blockchain and the business world.

Qtum takes concepts and established codes from blockchains, including Bitcoin and Ethereum, and combines them to create a better complete package.

A wide selection of developers and blockchain experts make up the team, including Neil Mahi and Jordan Earls, both veterans with several years of experience in cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology.

The QTUM team is based in Asia, and much of its marketing and outreach efforts have attracted Asian markets, specifically the Chinese market.

The QTUM team is young, but they have a great sense of technology and the challenges that await them. Anthony Di Iorio, one of the founders of Ethereum and one of the first investors in QTUM believes that it is the best blockchain team in China and Asia. This “has led them to see where improvements are needed in smart contract platforms, learn from Ethereum’s mistakes, and focus on the region they know best.”

In addition to Di Iorio, QTUM raised $ 1 million in initial private funds for the project of 11 angel investors who helped build the testnet and the initial implementation of the idea. Subsequently, in March 2017, QTUM completed a crowdsale that raised $ 15.6 million in just over 5 days.

After the initial collection, the Qtum mainnet became operational in mid-September 2017. At the time of writing these lines, QTUM is the sixteenth most valuable cryptocurrency by market limit.

Verge (XVG)

Official Site: https://vergecurrency.com/

Verge (XVG) is a cryptocurrency based on blockchain known for its emphasis on being secure and anonymous, with a focus on privacy and daily use. It uses multiple networks centered on anonymity (ie Tor, I2P), which obfuscates IP addresses so that transactions can not be tracked.

According to the official website, Verge’s mission is to empower people around the world by taking block chain transactions into daily life. The currency of Verge allows direct transactions to be carried out quickly, efficiently and privately. With Verge, companies and people have flexible options to send and receive payments at the touch of a button. Verge offers useful integrations and tools that allow managing large-scale transactions between merchants and small-scale private payments.

Verge started her life as DogeCoinDark in 2014, which makes it one of the oldest anonymous coins. When it was launched, its goal was to be a fun anonymous digital currency. In February 2016 the name was changed to Verge.

Verge is a 100% open source project and the Verge community has full input and inclusion in each and every one of the decisions made regarding the implementation of new functions. Verge has a central development team that works constantly to improve the existing architecture. Unlike other currencies, there was no initial collection or ICO at its launch, and there was no previous pre-mining.

The privacy of the users is the main characteristic of this cryptocurrency. Verge uses TOR and I2P networks to ensure that anonymity is in constant operation. All transactions made through Verge are processed in a maximum of 5 seconds. This technology is guaranteed by “Simple payment verification”.

The emergence of Verge has to do with the increase in the price of Bitcoin, which has affected cryptocurrencies in all areas. New investors are flooding the market in search of potential competitors to more established currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.

OmiseGO (OMG)

Official Site: https://omisego.network/

Founded in 2013,  Omise  is a capital supported payment service company operating in Thailand, Japan, Singapore and Indonesia. OmiseGo , created by this company, is an extension platform operated separately. It is owned by its users and card holders, not Omise.

OmiseGO (OMG)  is a smart contract platform and ERC-20 token  (the Ethereum code standard). OMG uses a participation test algorithm (PoS) and has a total supply of 140,245,398 million with a current current supply of 102,042,552 million tokens.

The ultimate goal of OMG is to be  a preeminent high value exchange and settlement platform . With OmiseGo customers will have the ability to monitor fiat tokens, digital forms of money and different resources (for example, reliability and reward approaches).

According to the World Economic Forum, the number of people around the world who do not have access to bank accounts amounts to more than two (2) billion. This number represents around 35% of the world population . OmiseGo can solve this problem, especially in economically developing countries, and aim to use the blockchain technology to carry it out.

OmiseGO’s core development team is made up of highly respected figures within the blockchain community. OmiseGo has a distinguished team of advisors,  including Vitalik Buterin  and other members of the Ethereum Foundation. The Omise group has also worked on numerous projects, including Hydrachain, Golem, Tendermint and Cosmos.

The popularity of OmiseGo is currently on the rise . Although this may simply be the result of someone artificially “pumping” the OMG price, the token has a fair amount of trading volume. At this time, a GMO has a value of $ 21, which is a fairly high value considering that there are almost 100 million tokens in circulation.

Bonus: Binance Coin (BNB)

Official Site: https://www.binance.com/

Binance Coin (BNB) is the cryptocurrency of the Binance Chinese exchange platform  . The token was created during the fundraising event (ICO) to finance the development of the exchange. Currently, the cryptocurrency has a market capital of 180 to 218 million US dollars, of which between 18 and 35 million US dollars are traded daily.

Binance  is one of the newest exchanges in the industry. The Hong Kong-based company raised about $ 15 million in its  initial coin offering  last July (2017) and immediately acquired 20,000 registered users as part of the collection. The platform has achieved enormous success in a very short time and focuses on the global market, with an emphasis on China.

Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance, has an impressive resume with years of experience in cryptocurrencies. He was Director of Development at Blockchain, Cofounder and Director of Technology at OKCoin, and Founder and CEO of BijieTech before working at Binance.

From its ICO to date, Binance has grown enormously and is now in the top 10 cryptocurrency exchanges in the world. Currently it has more than 140 altcoins listed on it, and the number increases as the days go by.

Binance tokens can be used to reduce fees for trade costs and commissions. If you pay using your own token, you currently receive a 50% discount on the negotiation rate, which drops to 0.05%. With this discount, Binance easily has the lowest rates in the industry.

Recently, Binance announced a buyback plan of up to 100 million Binance Coins in the first quarter of 2018. This purchase is intended to increase the value of the remaining currencies, thereby also benefiting investors.

How to invest in cryptoactives?

Investing in cryptoactives can be a risky enterprise. If you have decided to invest in a certain cryptocurrency, and have reviewed both your technical documentation and the project roadmap, and you are confident about the development team, then this is what you should do:

Buy something from Bitcoin or Ether

Many of the potentially successful cryptoactives do not have a payment mechanism that allows direct exchange for fiat money, in fact, a large percentage of tokens must be exchanged initially by Bitcoin or Ether. Therefore, your first step will be to acquire one of these 2 cryptocurrencies through an online broker. Coinbase  is one of the best sites to buy your first Bitcoins, they have a solid reputation in the market, advanced security measures to protect your funds, and allow you to make payments by credit card and bank transfer. In addition, the site has other popular buying options, such as  Ethereum, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash .

Open an account on an exchange platform

Once you have purchased your first Bitcoins, you must open an account in a cryptocurrency exchange platform such as Bittrex, Poloniex or Binance. Binance  is our favorite exchange, since it allows us to exchange BTC and Ether for promising cryptoactives such as  Ripple, Stellar Lumens or Cardano , among others. Binance is currently one of the most successful exchanges on the market, with advanced security measures, a large number of cryptoactives to choose from, and its transaction rates are quite low.

Transfer Bitcoin or Ether to Binance

To start trading in Binance, you must transfer some balance in Bitcoin or Ether from your Coinbase wallet to the address to receive deposits from your Binance account. Once this is done, you can start trading in the exchange, for which you are offered 2 options: a basic mode that is ideal for beginners, and an advanced mode that has more negotiation tools.

For a basic explanation of how to trade in this exchange platform, check out our guide to buying Ripple or any other cryptocurrency in Binance . 

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