Which cryptocurrency is the most promising?

Those who managed to mine Bitcoin before the rate of this cryptocurrency soared were able to earn huge sums.


After this incident, many users decided to also mine crypto money. They appear almost every day; naturally, not all rates will increase in the future, so you need to make the right choice.

Which cryptocurrency is the most promising? If you find out the answer to this question, you will have a chance to get rich. The rates of such electronic money depend on how actively they are used, so the price increases in direct proportion to popularity. But how can you predict what will become popular in a year or two?

Promising cryptocurrencies 2016

Even experts are not always able to make the correct forecast. The case of the sharp change in the dollar exchange rate is the best proof.

No one could have imagined that in relation to the ruble, it would increase more than 2 times. Someone accidentally made money on this, after which they thought about investing in other currencies.

It is pointless to buy all types of crypto money and store them, since due to insignificant deposits you will still not be able to earn big money.

Every day some new cryptocurrency appears, here is just a small part of them:

• Blocknet;
• BitcoinDark;
• Bitmark;
• Capricoin;
• Dash;
• Decred;
• DarkGoldCoin;
• Diamond;
• Dogecoin;
• Emercoin;
• Ethereum;
• Factom;
• Flycoin;
• Megacoin.

The most promising cryptocurrency may appear from this list in a few years. They are all worthy of attention their average rate is about a dollar per unit. We tried not to add crypto money to this list whose rate is less than 50 cents.

How to find new promising cryptocurrencies?

To understand current trends and find a currency that has a better chance of becoming a leader in exchange rate, use foreign services. We are talking about projects that help you earn electronic money.

For example, using the program, several types of currencies are mined at once:

If such a popular service allows them to be generated, we can draw a conclusion about their future popularity.

Pay attention to the current exchange rate of all these cryptocurrencies to Bitcoin (it is presented in the last line). At the very top of the list are the most promising cryptocurrencies of 2016.

Other foreign systems can be used in a similar way. When any crypto money is mentioned on them, this means that their popularity is increasing, and this is what affects the rates. For example, a new currency, Litecoin, is coming on the heels of Bitcoin (

As you know, all cryptocurrencies showed a tremendous increase in price in 2017. Most of them grew tenfold. The difficulty of cryptocurrency mining reaches a new peak every week. The growth rate reaches an exponential curve:

And apparently this is just the beginning.

There are a large variety of cryptocurrencies (more than 1000). Some of them are appearing and emerging right now. The choice is very large. Let's look at the top 10 most promising cryptocurrencies in which you should invest money now. They have every chance of becoming widely used in the future, which means they will increase in price.

• Technology Outlook
• Current capitalization
• Number of transactions
• General user interest
• Recent growth

So, the latest and most current top promising cryptocurrencies for investing in 2018.

1. Ethereum (Ethereum, Ether)

The Ethereum cryptocurrency has been revolutionary in recent years. It appeared only in 2016 (creator Vitaly Buterin). During this time, she managed to grow 1500 times. In 2017, it grew 120 times.

It was only in 2017 that Ethereum began to take first place in the list of the most promising currencies of the future. According to rumors, this coin was purchased by the largest corporations in the world: Microsoft, Google, Apple.

Ethereum price rate in dollars ():

In September and October 2017, Ethereum was updated to further improve it. Mining will become extremely difficult for small holders. It is planned to give preference to those who already hold cryptocurrency. This will ensure network security. The idea is that those who have the means have no desire to hack the network.

2. Bitcoin (Bitcoin, Bitcoin)

Bitcoin lost its first place to Ether in 2017 for the first time in the known history of cryptocurrency. Despite everything, Bitcoin remains the most expensive digital currency. Its capitalization is more than $300 billion. Ethereum is still lagging behind in capitalization.

Bitcoin is the oldest of all known cryptocurrencies. It has existed since 2009. It all started with her. Many traders use it as an index.

The future of Bitcoin is almost guaranteed to be positive. Many online stores abroad are starting to accept it for payment. Many countries are starting to legalize it.

You can buy Bitcoin at every cryptocurrency exchanger.

Bitcoin price exchange rate in dollars (online Bitcoin exchange rate):

3. Litecoin (Litecoin, Light)

Litecoin is a fork of Bitcoin. In 2017, a new LiteNet network was introduced, which is much faster and more productive.

Litecoin has always kept pace with Bitcoin (I mean growth/decline). But then all the money began to go into BTC, and LTC cost around $4 for a long time.

Litecoin cost rate in dollars (online Litecoin rate):

4. DigitalCash (Dash, Dash, “Dasha”)

The Dash cryptocurrency is famous for its revolutionary idea and special x11 creation algorithm. She has an official website, an official company. It is actively developing and conquering new markets. Her growth was almost as phenomenal as Eth's.

Dash has risen in price since the beginning of 2017 from $9 to $200.

Until 2015 it had a different name - Darkcoin

Dash is characterized by high anonymity. Transactions on the network are almost impossible to track.

Dash value rate in dollars (Dash online rate):

5. ZeroCash (ZCASH, ZEC, Zcash)

ZCash is developed by Zerocoin Electric Coin Company (Zooko Wilcox - founder and CEO). The first launch took place on January 20, 2016. ZEC mining began at 17:10 London time with the release of the 1.0.0 "Sprout" release on October 28, 2016.

At the start of trading, ZEC was worth $2 million. On the same day, the price fell to 30,000 thousand dollars, which still seems like a cosmic price.

Transactions in ZCash cannot be tracked, so there will always be high interest in this currency. It has the important property of absolute anonymity.

A distinctive feature of ZCash is also the complete lack of correlation with other cryptocurrencies. It feels like the coin completely lives its own life.

ZCash value rate in dollars (ZCash online rate):

We will consider the remaining cryptocurrencies in less detail.

6. Bitcoin Cash

On August 1, 2017, a fork of Bitcoin appeared - Bitcoin Cash. The entire history of this cryptocurrency until August 1 is the same as that of the main parent.

On crypto exchanges its ticker is BCH. Do not confuse with BCC (BitConnect)!.

The creators of Bitcoin Cash have slightly improved the code and now transactions are faster. Mining power also began to be updated more often.

After the appearance of Bitcoin Cash, it immediately took third place in the world in terms of currency capitalization. Its prospects have not yet been precisely determined, but judging by the active interest and proven technology, we can safely assume that in the future this cryptocurrency will be among the top ones.

7. DogeCoin (DOGE, Dogecoin)

Dogecoin was created in 2014. The encryption algorithm is the same as Litecoin - Scrypt. In fact, this is the same Litecoin. However, there can be an infinite number of coins here. They are extremely cheap. Their popularity is due to their logo.

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Preparations for the launch of the project began in 2013.

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

Since the test launch and in just 1 month, popularity and ECOIN price 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 one place from the owner.

Analysts' planned increase in value of 1 ECOIN:

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

A little excursion into history:

Let us remember how once upon a time the most popular cryptocurrency, BitCoin, began its journey with a price of $0.01 for 1 BitCoin. Over the course of several years, its rate reached a level of more than $1000 for 1 BitCoin. It is not worth explaining that all the people who at the very beginning bought 10,000 BitCoin for themselves with $100 have already secured their lives by selling part of the cryptocurrency for millions of dollars. And this is with an investment of $100. Of course, the rate of any cryptocurrency, like the rate of any currency, always fluctuates on the market, and now BitCoin costs less than $500. But the first decline in the BitCoin rate occurred a few years after its creation. Imagine that you are now offered to buy a dollar for 2 hryvnia or 10 rubles per unit! Interesting?

We invite you to be among the very first buyers of the new world 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 the experiment (promo code for a discount in € 5 — FWAUCZB ) for Zcash mining.

And now - in more detail.

XRP (Ripple protocol)

XRP (Ripple) cryptocurrency logo

In December 2017 - January 2018, the price of the cryptocurrency for cheap international transfers Ripple (XRP) soared in price from $0.2 per piece to $3.8. In 2017, the Ripple rate increased by 3,803%, after which the coin firmly established itself in the top three cryptocurrencies 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 takes from 3 to 7 days through a bank, over 1 hour through Bitcoin, and 15 minutes through Ethereum. Bankers ask for a commission 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 - popular banks use it. If Bitcoin only achieved its appearance in futures trading in the United States in 10 years, then Ripple gained support in just five more than 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 “powers that be” in order to earn money and at the same time make the world a little better. It is not surprising that XRP is so readily accepted by banks - they see the new currency not as an enemy, but as a partner.
• XRP is inexpensive- now it’s about 50-60 rubles. As a result, investing in a coin is not difficult even for a person with a small amount of money.

Ripple forecast for 2018

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

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

None of the cryptocurrencies you'll read about have the same chance of eventual adoption in the real world as Ripple!

Ethereum (ETH)

#2 cryptocurrency in the world, only Bitcoin is cooler. The author is “our man”, a developer originally from Russia (but lives in Canada) Vitalik Buterin. It is expensive, growing quickly - on December 31, 2017, Ethereum cost $750, on January 10, 2018, the price soared to $1,300. What is it about this project that it attracts users so much?

Ether is expensive - and it can be “mine”(mining) on ​​video cards! In 2016 and 2017, Ethereum miners were literally swimming in gold.

Ethereum has smart contracts- a technology that the authoritative magazine The Economist calls “a new era in financial” technology. What it is? A smart contract is a programmable agreement, the careful observance of which is monitored not by people, but by two objective arbiters - the Ethereum virtual machine and blockchain technology. Where can it be used? 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 will they deceive people, they will probably have to find a normal job :).

The prospects for Ethereum were very well considered by large businesses. Ethereum's partners already include: 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 1,500 for Ripple / Stellar and 50,000 for Visa / MasterCard) and their high cost(commission for online transfers reaches 5%).

True, Vitalik Buterin and his colleagues have already presented a solution for both problems - the transition from the “heavy” PoW mining protocol to the “light” PoS protocol. In PoS, users will leave a portion of the ether coins they own in their accounts. This will allow them to be part of validator pools (certification centers) and 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 make money on it all the time.

How to mine Ethereum

For this you will need a video card. The most profitable way to transport them is from the best online store in Germany - Computeruniverse. Video cameras are 20% cheaper there than in Russia, because... we don't have to pay German VAT, plus the store offers a branded promo code for a €5 discount - FWAUCZB. The most productive video cards for Ethereum mining in 2018 are “red”, these are AMD Radeon RX 570 (27.9 + sol) and Radeon RX 580 (30.2 +). The best manufacturer is Sapphire.

Helpful advice: It’s better to buy 2 cards cheaper than one more expensive one, because two cards for comparable money will give you more so-called. “solov” (a unit of video card performance in mining). But do not forget that goods worth no more than 1,000 euros per month can be imported into the Russian Federation from abroad. The maximum volume of one order, in order to avoid suspicion of a commercial shipment from customs in 2018, is 2 video cards.

P.S. Don't forget the brand name promo code for €5 discount— FWAUCZB

Zсash (ZEC)

Zсash 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, first things first:

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 against world governments from WikiLeaks Julian Assange. Why, even the creator of the competing cryptocurrency Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, speaks favorably of ZCash!

• Firstly, ZCash, unlike Bitcoin, allows users to do not post data on the amount of payment in ZEC, as well as their sender and recipient on the public blockchain. So, there was some kind of transaction, and who sent what to whom, the devil only 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, even if they want, will be able to track a transaction in Bitcoin (special services have already learned how to do this), but not in ZEC.
• Secondly, ZCash offers an incredible thing at first glance - it mathematically proves to the entire community that a transaction without any data about it(owners’ wallet addresses, 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 cryptocurrency based on the so-called. “zero-knowledge proofs.” Here's how it works:

Zcash is also very popular among 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 abandon mining for the foreseeable future. Zcash developers are just starting to think about this, i.e. throughout 2018 and, most likely, 2019, ZEC production through mining will not go away.

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

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

Lumen/XLM (Stellar)

Official Stellar logo

This is the “little brother” and the “correct” version of Ripple!

Lumen (XLM) cryptocurrency and Stellar blockchain protocol were invented 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 global Bitcoin transactions in the early 10s). His second crypto project turned out to be... our old friend Ripple! But McCaleb left the company after he had a falling out with his partner and, in addition, realized that XRP had become a “minion” coin for banks and governments around the world. I grieved and grieved, and launched the “correct Ripple” called “Stellar”.

Why is Stellar better than Ripple?

• Improved protocol. In 2014, when Stellar was still working on the Ripple blockchain, the so-called crash happened to it. "network collapse" A key element of the protocol was at fault - 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 relied 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 the system.
• Platform for launching other cryptocurrencies. Even an inexperienced developer will create a smart contract on the Stellar protocol in a period of 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 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 the main flaw of Ripple. De facto, Ripple is not a crypto project, but an ordinary commercial organization, i.e. his main goal is to make 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). There is no owner - McCaleb is a co-founder, but is not even on the board - no preferred members, no shares. The fund lives solely on 5% of XLM Lumen coins as originally reported.
• Large buyers of Lumen entered into a restrictive agreement banning the sale of XLM for 5 years to prevent them from collapsing the currency. So at least until 2019, the Stellar/XLM rate is not threatened by a large release of coins onto 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 already launched a joint bank with Stellar with transfers in 5 seconds versus 3-7 days for conventional banks. So Stellar also has a practical implementation.
• It's inexpensive— $0.64 per lumen.

Since January 2018, Stellar has firmly entered the TOP 10 cryptocurrencies with the highest market capitalization. The scale of Jed McCaleb's personality and the characteristics of the Stellar project suggest that the price of XLM will only increase.

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

ADA (Cardano blockchain)

But “Adochka” is a whole “scientific” cryptocurrency! It quite 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 “cryptocurrency” and proposed their own version of a blockchain currency for money transfers with the maximum level of security and confidentiality for the participants in the transaction. By the way, programmers from the countries of the former USSR made and are making a very large contribution to the development of Cardano.

More benefits of Cardano:

• Project Manager Charles Hoskinson stood at the origins 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.
• Blockchain technology 3rd generation- with the abandonment of mining (expensive and time-consuming) in favor of staking (cheap and fast), the ability to modify the platform through soft forks (Bitcoin and Ethereum have to create new fork options when changes occur)
• 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.
• The most important thing is about to happen: Debit cards will become available in Japan with 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) grew significantly in the first half of 2017, as did digital asset prices. This is usually associated with the Japanese government act on the legal regulation of cryptocurrencies, which actually legalized this market and greatly contributed to its development.

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

As of September, the capitalization of Bitcoin was about $65 billion, and the total indicator of altcoins was about $70 billion. At the same time, the most popular of the alternative cryptocurrencies, Ethereum, accounted for approximately $30 billion.

Nowadays 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 their advantages and disadvantages are. 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 founded: 2009

Symbol: BTC

Capitalization: $65 billion

Exchange rate growth over the year: 6.5 times

This is the first and so far the most popular cryptocurrency in the world. It gained its fame after its price increased 10,000 times from 2010 to 2013 - from 10 cents to $1,000. This was partly a bubble: by the end of 2014, BTC had fallen to $200. There was a running joke back then 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 around $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 grow. 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 wallet node, but on special servers (client-server system) or directly on cryptocurrency exchanges. Thus, the idea that each network user would be able to keep the entire transaction history turned out to be utopian.

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

The more miners, the more reliably the network is protected from attacks, but the electricity consumption in this case is quite high, and the efficiency of payments does not change. Thus, 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 if there is a strong desire, the commercial secrets of users can be disclosed. This is what was shown, for example, by an independent investigation into thefts from the first Bitcoin exchange Mtgox, published by the Wizsec team.

Despite its shortcomings, Bitcoin remains the number one cryptocurrency today, “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, and the software for it is well-developed. This cannot yet be said about most altcoins.

Ethereum (ether)

Year founded: 2014

Symbol: ETH

Capitalization: $28 billion

Exchange rate growth over the year: 22 times

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

One of the main innovative properties of ETH, which attracted the attention of not only individuals, but also corporations, is its 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 ether “crypto fuel” 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 needed to support transactions, and the weight of votes and rewards will be determined not by computing power, but by the amount of funds of network participants. In some ways, 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 ether an attractive investment.

Bitcoin Cash (bitcoin cash)

Year founded: 2017

Symbol: BCH

Approximate capitalization: $7.5 billion

Exchange rate growth per month: 2.1 times

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

In 2017, during periods of stock market frenzy, many BTC users were faced with the problem of a significant slowdown in transactions. Sometimes their passage took several days. This has called into question the future of BTC.

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

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

BCH in the future faces the threat of 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 exchange rate is also growing less confidently. At the same time, it cannot be ruled out that BTC will soon again encounter speed problems, while BCH is much more reliably protected from them.

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

Ripple

Year founded: 2012

Symbol: XRP

Capitalization: $7 billion

Exchange rate growth over the year: 23 times

This is one of the "old" cryptosystems, but like ETH, it claims to be 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 such as BTC. Already today it is used for experiments by such financial giants as UniCredit, UBS, Santander, etc.

The ideological content of this system differs significantly from the ideology of Bitcoin. While Bitcoin is perceived by many as an anarchic challenge to states and their payment systems, 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 China’s recent initiatives against digital assets and ICOs, this currency sank along with other altcoins, the support of large Western banks creates a good cushion for Ripple - unlike many other cryptocurrencies, the rate of which is based more on speculative expectations.

Litecoin (lightcoin)

Year founded: 2011

Symbol: LTC

Approximate capitalization: $3 billion

Exchange 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, with the same main goal - to increase the speed of payments. Old BTC (pre-2017), new BTC, BCH and LTC differ mainly in the way data is recorded on the blockchain.

LTC uses roughly the same SegWit system as the new BTC, while BCH and old BTC run on the classic Bitcoin blockchain, with different block sizes.

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

It was not until June 2017 that LTC was able to break 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 operation. Like other well-known digital assets, it is often included in multi-currency portfolios.

The future of crypto assets

As we see, cryptocurrency developers do not waste time and offer new solutions to old problems. Technologies that seemed breakthrough in 2013 (for example, accelerating transactions in LTC), in 2017 were already applied to many crypto-assets.

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

However, cryptocurrencies 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 the example of Bitcoin and Ethereum, cryptocurrencies are refined and reformed as they are used.

And perhaps even in 70 years, humanity will still be using digital assets abbreviated BTC or ETH. Only they will have no more in common with modern analogs than new Intel processors with processors from the same company from 1980.

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 a big 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 supplanted by new “forks” or whether it will retain its authority and position. But already now, professional investors are seeking to diversify their portfolio and are paying attention to the other half of the cryptocurrency market, which is occupied by altcoins.

These digital assets are suitable for both speculative transactions and investments for the medium term. Thus, the XAI altcoin index, which reflects the dynamics of 30% 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 clearer, investments in them will become more and more reliable.