Remember the Nash equilibrium, Gresham's law, the Stasi rules? So the banking system is similar to the Stasi. But first, about something else. Why did cryptocurrency become a currency in the first place?

A Nobel laureate in economics would answer you something like this: “At some point in time, the market fell into a Nash equilibrium, where everyone suddenly agreed that it was normal to consider a currency.”

Why do men wear trousers and women wear skirts? Although this was not the case in Scotland at one time. It’s just that at some point everyone agreed that it should be like this. Nash equilibrium.

In general... What is currency?

Currency is a medium of indirect exchange. Once upon a time, the medium of exchange was pheasant feathers, which were previously worth nothing. But then there was a demand for feathers and people said: “The feather will be a currency, a means of indirect exchange.” Gradually were formed General requirements to currency: it should be easy to divide into parts, while its value does not change; it is easy to carry; and it should have a long shelf life.

And most importantly, people must be ready to use currency as a means of exchange. The same thing happened with cryptocurrency: people became READY to use it.

Right now I’m ready to exchange my phone for bitcoins. It is clear that cryptocurrency meets all other criteria, perhaps even better than any other fiat currency (it is much easier to store, transfer, divide, and it is eternal).

Why did cryptocurrency appear?

One of the main reasons, in my opinion, is the enormous anger of people towards the banking system with all its rules, which are promoted under the auspices of the mythical fight against scammers and other scoundrels. So, the current banking system is like the Stasi, to which I have to explain why I walk this way and not another, and why I take this route to work and not another. And then, will two-meter fences stop real criminals? When criminals need to hack a banking system, they simply buy the bank.

All these safety rules are essentially useless. Therefore, there is global irritation of people with the banking system. This is visible everywhere - and in businesses of any size, too, from small to large.

The irritation created a request for some analogue to the current system. Cryptocurrency has appeared. And the process cannot be stopped - cryptocurrency will take its place in the global economy. Which one is still a question.

The problem is that cryptocurrency today is not really used as a medium of exchange. The phenomenon is called Gresham's law: when no one wants to pay with a currency that is constantly and greatly increasing in price. Everyone has heard the story of two pizzas that were purchased for 10 thousand BTC in 2010.

Who wants $15 million pizza? Or would you want to drive a Toyota car you bought today for 30 BTC if you find out a year later that you paid $3 million for it? Therefore, cryptocurrency is used as a means of savings and speculation.

At the same time, the process of continuous growth leads to the fact that basic cryptocurrencies are losing their properties as a means of payment - stability. They turn into something like shares of a rapidly growing company. And who would want to sell or exchange rising shares for goods and services today if they will cost more tomorrow? This is problem.

Stablecoins

Cryptocurrency volatility is the subject of a long-standing debate, in which the words “bubble” and “speculative instrument” are often heard. The problem is being solved, among other things, by the launch of special settlement cryptocurrencies, so-called stablecoins. It is a cryptocurrency whose value is determined not only by demand for it, but also by more established methods.

There have been several attempts around the world to create similar stablecoins. As a rule, they were tied either to the value of fiat currencies - the dollar, the euro - or to raw materials (commodities) - oil, gold, and so on. But for various reasons, they have not become widespread.

First of all, because the creators of such currencies violated the blockchain principle - distribution and independence. They issued cryptocurrency, sold it, and used the proceeds to buy collateral. And the fact that the collateral was kept and controlled by the issue organizers did not inspire confidence in the community.

Now more advanced projects are appearing. In general, there is a hypothesis that the future lies with “stablecoins” tied to commodities.

It is based on the fact that in society in general and in the economy in particular, the so-called fatigue of the material of fiat classical unsecured money has appeared. At the same time, we see that the same dollar, euro, yuan, Brazilian real and all other classical currencies are also subject to volatility. And all this against the backdrop of a global rise in the price of money.

The economy is looking for alternatives. But will the social demand for blockchain commodities be critically higher than for classical money? Not sure. But it is most likely that it will be larger than now.

There are several interesting stablecoin projects in the world right now:

• There is a project Tether, which is consistently in the TOP 50 by capitalization (now - just over $300 million). Tether is the coin of the dollar, 1 to 1.
• A startup has been launched in Israel that is trying to make oil-linked cryptocurrency. True, they are not doing very well yet, because they cannot solve the problem of storing oil - it is difficult to store it.
• There are projects that are trying to tie cryptocurrency to computing power, to electricity, such as, for example, SONM.

Of course, real estate has great potential. All developers - both in the USA and in Russia - are trying to integrate into the world of blockchain. Switzerland, Singapore and other countries have allowed to maintain a real estate register using blockchain. I'm waiting for the next breakthrough - the binding of cryptocurrency to square meters.

Agree, it would be great if a grandmother from Perm could use blockchain to invest part of her pension in a business center under construction in Saratov, without the risk that her investment would be stolen.

Our fund currently has just one client from the real estate industry. We help him prepare for the ICO. This is a multi-million dollar business. I don't want to go into details because I don't want our client to be taken away by competitors. Now a legal scheme is being finalized on how blockchain technologies can be used in terms of debt financing for classic companies (in our case, a developer), and so that this process is regulated by the Russian authorities.

You can easily explain to your mother about being tied to gold

But I haven’t talked about the main (yet) and most obvious commodity - gold. Gold is a commodity that everyone understands. Gold occupies approximately 5-10% of the global investment market. Gold is naturally limited natural resource. According to open data, the gold reserves of governments are about 30 thousand tons, and citizens have the same amount of products, coins and bars in their hands. Total about 60 thousand tons. About 3 thousand tons of gold are mined annually in the world.

This is a stable figure that cannot change sharply in any direction due to distributed mining in different countries ah and established technologies.

All this makes gold the ideal equivalent of payment. Actually, this has been the case throughout the history of human development. Even the first money was tied to gold until governments decided to replace the process of gold mining with the simpler process of printing paper money.

Well, and most importantly: you can easily explain to your mother about cryptocurrency tied to gold. And she will understand you.

Now there are several “gold” crypto projects. There are not many of them, but they all have a different concept:

• Impressive project OneGram from Dubai, which plans to raise $500 million in an ICO that began on May 27 and is scheduled to end on September 24. To date, 22% of the 12,400,786 tokens have been sold, selling for $43.18 each. “Dubai” and “gold” sound somehow impressive, you’ll agree. OneGram linked to warehoused physical gold. They have a rather strange feature, in my opinion: they position themselves as a project specifically for Muslims. In the world of blockchain, any artificial limitation raises questions because it contradicts the very concept of technology. True, according to the founders themselves, now the majority of the project’s investors are not Muslims.
• There is also British Royal project mint Royal Mint Gold, in which one token is tied to one gram of gold. The project raises questions from a decentralization point of view.
• Another ambitious project - US-Australian OZCoin. It is backed by 100 thousand ounces (a little more than 2.8 tons) of 24-karat gold.
• For me, the most interesting of the “golden” projects is "Russian" Goldmint. I put “Russian” in quotes because there is an international team working there, and it is interesting to me for two reasons. First of all, he's from Russia (and that's great). Secondly, we invested in it :) The project plans to hold an ICO in September, and in May it held a pre-ICO and raised $600 thousand in a couple of days. We have a piece of paper hanging in our office that says that so many Goldmint tokens belong to everyone to the DTI team.

Our investment logic is simple. Imagine that there is a gold bar that can be quickly and cost-effectively transported to any point on the planet and has the property of being impossible to steal. How much more expensive is such an ingot than a classic ingot? Obviously, significantly more expensive. Of course, there are a lot of other risks, the project may not take off, but at least we had the opportunity to get to know and study the team.

Usually, team verification removes 9/10 of the risk - the likelihood of a “scam” or some kind of illegal actions is equal to zero. I have always said that the Whitepaper, the business plan in the ICO world is secondary to the team. It doesn't matter what you do, but what matters is who you are. If tomorrow Elon Musk raises cows, they will believe in his project. All that remains is the business risk: whether the project will take off or fail.

Goldmint is made by the team of the Lot-Gold project, which over the year of its existence was able to grow from zero to 5.5 billion rubles. revenue. We made sure that they were able to do a good classic business, now they want to turn the gold market upside down. Whether it will work out or not is difficult to say in advance. The project is complex, including from the point of view. The company is developing a special proof-of-gold box - a safe with a gold verification system, constantly connected to the Internet. It is understood that such devices can be installed in banks, pawnshops, and jewelry stores (all that remains is to convince of this).

The safe will evaluate gold items, and special software will make it possible to issue GoldCoin in real time. A person can come to a bank, put a piece of jewelry in this safe, and the metal is automatically assessed, the individual is identified, and then GoldCoin is issued. The value of GoldCoin is tied to the price of gold on the exchanges of New York, Great Britain or China. It sounds promising.

Review of TOP 15 cryptocurrencies

Now about cryptocurrency in general. On the Internet you can easily find sites where you can see the capitalization of each cryptocurrency that is traded on a crypto exchange, its current price in dollars, a chart of price changes, and the amount of currency traded on the market. Such statistics will help little to understand, but will at least give a general idea of ​​what is happening.

I will briefly talk about several cryptocurrencies included in the TOP 50 by capitalization: what is their essence, advantages and disadvantages. And although I have invested in many of them, I will not give any specific investment advice here.

1.Bitcoin

A real world analogy is gold.

I will talk about Bitcoin in more detail than about other cryptocurrencies, because in the crypto industry Bitcoin has become the standard by birthright. In other words, this currency appeared first on the market, and therefore ranks (for now) first in popularity, capitalization and exchange rate against the dollar. All other currencies that appeared later began to be called altcoins, and Bitcoin still remains the benchmark that everyone uses as a starting point.

Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency that can only be sent, received, and stored. At the same time, it has many disadvantages inherent in the architecture itself: it is slow, difficult to scale, requires a lot of power for mining, a lot of storage space, its transactions are expensive, and the cryptography can be hacked if desired.

Here are some more disadvantages:

1. Bitcoin is slow- means that transactions in Bitcoin occur once every 10 minutes. To confirm a transaction, you need to mine, which is a very energy-intensive process. In order for the number of users to increase (scalability), the computing power of computers must increase.
2. For the operation of the Bitcoin network huge amounts of information need to be stored.
3. Bitcoin turned out to be not such a decentralized system, as announced at the very beginning. In theory, miners could join together in huge pools and control the network.
4. The maximum number of bitcoins that can be issued is 21 million. To date, 16.75 million have already been produced. What will happen when the total volume reaches the limit? Obviously, there will be a so-called hard fork, when a decision is made to create a new version of the Bitcoin network. This means a big vote, a referendum if you will, among Bitcoin holders. Chinese cryptocurrency holders advocated holding such a referendum as early as September. After it, the “constitution” of Bitcoin may change. And we know how constitutions change easily and quite quickly in different countries...

Most likely, as a result of the hard fork, the cost of the transaction will be reduced several times, because its verification will be simplified. The restrictions regarding mining will also change. Perhaps it will be removed altogether. But there are still too many unknowns. And most importantly, there are other currencies that are technically more advanced. For now, Bitcoin remains the gold standard of the cryptocurrency world.

Will the situation ever change? I’ll ask a counter question: is it possible to write a social network better than Facebook? Definitely. The simplest thing remains - to force 2 billion users to switch to this new social network.

Is it possible to write a better cryptocurrency than Bitcoin? The fourth position in terms of capitalization - Litecoin - is better in all respects. It appeared almost simultaneously with Bitcoin, but still a little later.

Bitcoin in the world of cryptocurrencies is a kind of analogue of the classic store of value, to which everyone is already accustomed.

2. Ethereum

A real world analogy is the new Microsoft or the new Amazon.

Ether is beginning to overtake Bitcoin in terms of popularity. Perhaps this currency has more prospects. If Bitcoin can only act as a means of exchange and storage, then Ethereum has a number of advantages. The main thing is the ability to create. Now this platform is the most popular in the world for building a blockchain economy, and is used in numerous ICOs. Ethereum inherited almost all the diseases of Bitcoin.

Yes, it is faster - updating every 10 seconds (that is, 60 times faster), but it has the same problems with scaling (the recent case with SONM is an example of this), power consumption and storage.

It may well challenge Bitcoin’s leadership in the near future.

3. Ripple

A real world analogy is the new VISA. The project team is trying to create a new payment system so that it can be used to make payments in all currencies. The advantage of this currency is that it is used by banks. However, it is not decentralized. Coins are not mined, that is, their number does not increase. Ripple has a huge speed advantage over BTC and ETH, but the transactions are not as transparent. For classical banking system

this is normal - anonymity was never welcomed there.

4. Litecoin

A real world analogy is platinum, which is cheaper than gold.

An absolute analogue of the cue ball. Faster, cooler in all respects - but just ended up second. It is worth buying it from the point of view of diversifying investments in the same bitcoin. But in terms of innovation there is nothing there.

5. Ethereum Classic

Alibaba is the largest online store with a multi-billion dollar turnover. But they still understand that it is still not as cool as Amazon. Classic may even turn out to be more expensive than regular Ethereum, but it has its own nuances. ETC appeared after the Ethereum hard fork, which occurred last fall, and still does not inspire confidence in the crypto community. The main attention is still paid to ETH, and all significant projects are carried out on this platform.

6. Dash and NEM

An analogy from the real world is “it’s unclear who.”

To be honest, I don’t come across these currencies very often. NEM is primarily traded in Japan, where it is officially legal to buy and sell goods with cryptocurrency. The number of coins is always one less than 9 billion; additional emission is not provided, so there is no mining here, but there is so-called harvesting.

A major jump in the NEM rate occurred in May, when a closed platform, Mijin, was created based on NEM, through which Japanese banks can conduct secure transactions. NEM is built following the example of Bitcoin, but there are no fundamental differences in the architecture.

Dash is a cryptocurrency whose transactions are completely anonymized. Many people talk about this as an advantage, but think: why? to an ordinary person complete anonymity during transactions? Also, all decisions on changes to the “constitution” occur through general voting, that is, the Dash network is completely decentralized.

Naturally, both currencies work faster than cue ball and have a number of other software advantages.

7.IOTA

A real world analogy is the new Google.

A true innovation in the world of cryptocurrency. Offers a fundamentally new paradigm that can change everything. IOTA is also called the “cryptocurrency of the Internet of things.” It appeared five years ago, but it literally just became popular. As soon as it entered the stock exchange, it immediately broke into the Top 10 cryptocurrencies.

What's innovative about it? The very principle of operation. IOTA is built like a web and is infinitely scalable.

How does Bitcoin work? In order to make a Bitcoin transaction, the miner must do some work to confirm the transaction. Spend time, a huge amount of energy and allocate storage space. In the case of IOTA, you can confirm the transaction yourself using your device - for example, a regular phone. Your smartphone confirms two other people's transactions. Those transactions are confirmed by your two. And so on. The more users, the faster and better the network works.

Now IOTA users have reached a critical mass and the currency has become very popular. There is no limit to scalability, no miners are needed, so transactions are free. You don't have to pay a commission to miners, you don't waste computing power.

In general, this is a real bomb that threatens to make a revolution. IOTA generally solves all the problems inherent in Bitcoin (limited limitations, high requirements for computing power, pseudo-decentralization, data growth and storage problems, slow speed).

8. Monero

An analogy from the real world is AFK Sistema.

Briefly, unlike Bitcoin, the emission of Monero is not limited, but transactions take up several times more space than Bitcoin. But that's not the most interesting thing. Russian ears stick out here. In general, inexpensive transactions, good transfer speed, good mining. But you have to be careful - some kind of AFK "Sistema" could happen to them...

9.EOS

An analogy from the real world is the Empire State Building.

EOS is the evolution of the currencies of BitShares and Steemit (which, by the way, were seriously criticized, which does not prevent BitShares from being close to the top 10 in terms of capitalization). It is based on a breakthrough technology that can be compared to the advent of blockchain. In theory, they can replace Ethereum or enter into synergy with it.

From a technology point of view, the project is better than Ethereum. The developers have created a new language, and now an operating system is being created on the EOS platform, on which it will be possible to build individual applications.

The logic is this: all databases, all web programming will be transferred to the blockchain. New technologies will allow different applications to be launched asynchronously, which will significantly increase the speed of the EOS-based OS.

The team expects that the whole world will eventually work on EOS. In general, to be honest, this is already the world of “Crypto 3.0”, which is too much even for me. Too grandiose and incredible. But this could well happen in five years.

10. BitShares

Analogy from the real world - I couldn’t come up with it :)

The point is that the value of any fiat currency is replicated here on the blockchain. A useful tool to avoid losing on conversions and not to depend on the laws of different countries, taxes, etc. There is also a similar currency, Tether, which is pegged 1 to 1 to the dollar.

If you want to sell or buy dollars on the blockchain, this is the place for you. These are not speculative instruments. (Here you need to understand that BitShares itself, as a unit of account, also “floats”.

It is used as a currency to collect fees on fiat currency transactions. You can speculate on it. But if we want to operate fiat money on the blockchain, then we can do this within the BitShares system).

And 5 more cryptocurrencies from the top 50

1. Waves

An analogy from the real world is the Russian Tesla.

In fact, this is a crowdfunding platform. Serious claims, aggressive marketing. But they may turn in the wrong direction and “chichvarkin” will happen.

2.Dogecoin

Real world analogy - question...

I don't know much about them, but I like them because my friends at Google buy them. And that's why I buy them too.

3. Bancor

An analogy from the real world is the stock exchange.

At its core, it is an exchange: a platform on Ethereum on which you can exchange different crypto tokens (but all of them must be of the ERC20 standard - this is the most common Ethereum standard on which most projects are developed). Everything is regulated by smart contracts. This is a new economic tool in the blockchain world. Essentially, they brought derivatives to the blockchain, something that had never been done before. It seems to me that this is a niche product, which, however, can grow 5-10 times.

4.Decred

A real world analogy is McDonalds.

A good, fashionable currency, I see prospects in them. Fast, cheap to transact, profitable to mine. Miners love it - in other words, market providers love it. And it’s like McDonald’s - it doesn’t belong to anyone. 99.9% of McDonald's shares are traded on the stock exchange, but the most major shareholder owns only 2% of shares. That is, the possibility that something bad will be done to Decred, that there will be some kind of conspiracy, is extremely small. Decred like McDonalds.

5. Aragon

A real world analogy is Netflix.

Fantastic project. Moreover, by “fantastic” I do not mean “cool”, but precisely the original meaning of the word. The business model is unclear, but the team is good. They are trying to work in the event prediction market.

For example, I can say that in 2018 Vladimir Putin will lose the presidential election (ahem). And I am ready to trade this forecast for some amount. Let's say for a dollar. No, for a ruble. And you can join me...

While the project is in the alpha stage and no one is putting real money into it, the team really knows how to correctly analyze the data. Aragon could become a crypto-Netflix. How they will do this, I have no idea. But let me just remind you that Netflix was unprofitable for 7 years.

The traffic of this resource is growing from month to month.

The Coinmarketcap service collects all cryptocurrencies that are listed on at least one exchange and that have a blockchain and open source code. At the time of writing this review, the service offers over 800 digital assets, sorted by capitalization. The latter is the product of the current price of a cryptocurrency and the volume of its supply on the market.

The digital currencies represented in the top ten of the Coinmarketcap rating are in greatest demand among traders and crypto investors. This is due to various factors, and the most important among them are high liquidity, stable exchange rate growth, prospects for further development of the ecosystem and the reputation of the developers.

It is also worth noting that in the world of cryptocurrencies everything is changing very rapidly. However, at the time of writing this review, the total capitalization of the first ten cryptocurrencies in the Coinmarketcap rating is $122.4 billion. If this number is compared with the total value of all cryptocurrencies ($138.8 billion) presented on this service, it turns out that the market share of the ten most popular digital currencies will account for 88%.

1.Bitcoin(stock ticker - BTC, sometimes - XBT). The first in history and the most popular in the world. Created at the turn of 2008-2009. Despite such a “venerable age”, the cryptocurrency is actively developing; developments are being carried out on the basis of the Bitcoin blockchain and various solutions are being implemented to improve it. It was the emergence of Bitcoin that was the reason for such a rapid development of the cryptocurrency market and the regular appearance of a variety of digital assets. Bitcoin is based on a revolutionary technology that has been actively researched and developed by the world's largest companies for several years now, and is also used in many industries.

The current capitalization of Bitcoin is $71 billion, which exceeds the value of many large world-famous companies. The supply of the first digital currency is strictly limited to 21 million BTC. On the Coinmarketcap website you can see the current volume of Bitcoin supply on the market - 16,506,412 BTC, daily exchange trading volume, as well as various useful links to official sources of information, social media, block explorers, exchanges where this cryptocurrency is presented, etc.

2. Ethereum (ETH). It is a digital currency platform for creating decentralized blockchain-based online services (Dapps) powered by smart contracts. If Bitcoin is often called “digital gold” (due to the complexity of its production, limited supply and excellent investment qualities), then Ethereum is sometimes called the “digital analogue of oil”. This is because the ETH cryptocurrency is a kind of “fuel” for the Dapps created on its basis.

There is ongoing debate in the crypto community about which investment object is more attractive: Bitcoin or Ethereum. Despite the relatively young age of the latter (the Ethereum network was launched on July 30, 2015), “ether” is preferred by fairly well-known cryptocurrencies in the world. They are convinced that the popularity of Ethereum will soon eclipse Bitcoin.

The rapid growth in popularity of Ethereum is evidenced by the following graph, which reflects specific gravity the most popular cryptocurrencies on the market:

Data: Coinmarketcap

So far, the market capitalization of “digital oil” ($28 billion) is approximately two and a half times less than the corresponding figure for Bitcoin.

At the same time, Ethereum's potential is high and attracts the attention of major software developers such as Microsoft and IBM. There are many Initial Coin Offerings taking place on the Ethereum platform, and many crypto tokens are being created based on the underlying ERC-20 standard.

3. Ripple (XRP). This cryptocurrency is used in real-time gross settlement system, as well as for currency exchange and money transfers. The Ripple protocol launched in 2012. Its goal is to provide "secure, instant and nearly free global financial transactions any size without chargebacks.” According to some crypto enthusiasts, the Ripple payment system may in the future become an “alternative to SWIFT”.

The largest companies and banks in the world cooperate with Ripple, including BBVA, Mizuho, ​​Mitsubishi UFJ, UniCredit, UBS and Santander. Ripple investors include names such as Accenture, Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures and Seagate.

The rapid rise in the price of Ripple (XRP) occurred in the first half of this year and allowed the cryptocurrency to confidently gain a foothold in the top three of the Coinmarketcap rating. Currently, the capitalization of the XRP cryptocurrency is approaching 7 billion. There were times when the capitalization of Ripple was the total market value of the digital currency Ethereum.

4. Bitcoin Cash is the resulting “alternative to Bitcoin.” So, on August 1, the Bitcoin blockchain split into two chains and a new digital asset appeared - Bitcoin Cash (sometimes -), which has a common history with Bitcoin, but is traded under a different ticker - BCC (less often - BCH).

After the hard fork, many exchanges and wallets gave holders of “digital gold” an excellent opportunity - to receive a certain amount of Bitcoin Cash tokens, which should correspond to the balance of Bitcoin in a 1:1 ratio. For example, if a user has 1 BTC in his wallet, then he receives 1 BCC after the hard fork.

Immediately after its appearance on the exchanges, the new cryptocurrency was lower in capitalization, leaving behind such market “veterans” as Litecoin and Ripple. However, shortly after exchanges made Bitcoin Cash deposits and withdrawals available, the “alternative to Bitcoin” began to rise in price. So, if on August 2 the BCC price reached 0.485 BTC (approximately $1300) on the Bittrex exchange, then two days later its weighted average price slightly exceeded $250.

Not everything is going well with the new cryptocurrency. Bitcoin Cash is not as attractive as “regular” Bitcoin, and the network is testing it every now and then. Apparently, the new cryptocurrency so far owes its capitalization of $4.8 billion only to the popularity of Bitcoin, nothing more.

For several years, Litecoin was “in the shadow” of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, trading around $3-4 per coin. In March of this year, on the eve of the implementation of SegWit, the price of “digital gold” began to rise rapidly. Now the price of Litecoin is approaching $50 per coin and, according to many analysts, this is far from the limit. Cryptocurrency is available on most exchanges and exchange platforms, and is also accepted by many companies as a means of payment.

The maximum supply of Litecoin is limited to 84 million tokens and this moment There are 52.4 million LTC in circulation on the market.

7.NEO. The NEO digital asset platform (formerly known as Antshares) is often referred to as the “Chinese Ethereum.” Recently, representatives of the project completed the full... In particular, the Chinese startup announced an upgrade of blockchain nodes, an update technical documentation, social media, official website, change of stock ticker, as well as the successful transition to the NEO 2.0 smart contract system.

The NEO coin has been demonstrating impressive growth for a long time, which allowed the cryptocurrency to take 7th place in the Coinmarketcap rating in a short period of time. In just the last three months, the price of the cryptocurrency has increased approximately 20 times and NEO is now trading around $45. The supply volume of NEO is fixed and limited to one hundred million tokens, of which 50 million coins are in circulation on the market. The market capitalization of “Chinese Ethereum” exceeds $2 billion.

It is also worth noting that the project is developing very actively and has already established cooperation with well-known blockchain startups, including Bancor, Coindash and Agrello. Chinese blockchain startup Red Pulse announced the creation of a platform for financial research, which will be built on the NEO 2.0 smart contract system. Also, in collaboration with the NEO project, a blockchain operating system called Elastos is being developed. According to the developers, it is intended to “explore the technological value of using blockchain applications in new Internet operating systems and further develop Smart Economy.”

8. NEM (XEM). This digital currency gained popularity in early 2015. It is distinguished from many other digital currencies by its original open source code and a number of interesting innovations. For example, the XEM cryptocurrency is based on the POI (Proof Of Importance) algorithm, a “proof-of-stake” modification. However, unlike PoS, in POI, in addition to proof of storage of a certain amount of funds, the user’s activity is also taken into account - the number of transactions he has made. Receiving a block reward on the NEM network is called “harvesting”.

A major update called Catapult is expected this year, during which NEM will switch from Java to C++. The new version of the private network has been tested for stable operation at speeds of up to 3000 transactions per second. The update will take place first on the private Mijin blockchain and then on the public NEM chain.

A new platform is also being developed based on NEM, which is designed to support projects in conducting transparent and orderly ICOs. According to project representatives, the new solution will significantly optimize the process of attracting investments in digital currency.

XEM's capitalization exceeds $2 billion. The coin is popular not only in its native Japan, but is also actively traded on a number of major exchanges, including Poloniex and Bittrex.

9. Dash. The launch of the cryptocurrency, which at that time was called Xcoin, occurred on January 18, 2014. From January 28, 2014 to March 25, 2015, the cryptocurrency was called Darkcoin.

Main features of the Dash cryptocurrency:

— transactions are anonymized thanks to the Darksend mechanism;
— a combination of several cryptographic algorithms is used;
— mining Dash requires less energy than Bitcoin;
— decisions on the development of the system are made not by individual programmers, but by all members of the Dash network through a decentralized control mechanism.

The DASH network operates so-called masternodes - special nodes that ensure the operation of the PrivateSend transaction mixing mechanism. To stimulate the work of masternodes, a reward is provided, which is 50% of the miner’s reward for the found block. The DASH system also implements the InstantSend instant transaction service. Another feature of DASH is the use of the X11 hashing algorithm.

The DASH cryptocurrency has many supporters. Since its inception, the price of the cryptocurrency has increased several hundred times and Digital Cash is currently trading around $200.

In general, the growth of Ethereum Classic greatly intensified in the spring of 2017, after the launch. Further growth of Ethereum Classic expects to be stable, at least thanks to the project, which provides for limiting the emission and reducing the reward for the block. In particular, the total number of coins will be approximately 210 million, but not more than 230 million; As for the reward for the mined block, it will be reduced by 20% after block number 5,000,000 and will be reduced by 20% in the future after each subsequent 5 million blocks.

Hello, dear reader! The market for forks, altcoins, and tokens is especially relevant today, flooded with all sorts of altcoins of various specifics. Most of them are short-term “bubble” - garbage that prevents inexperienced users from identifying a number of forks that are worthy of attention. The other day, out of curiosity, I was looking for information on the wise choice of cryptocoins for trading and mining, but I didn’t find anything comprehensive and specific. That's why I decided to write and posted this post about best cryptocurrencies 2018 of the year.

I have been involved in the cryptocurrency business for more than 3 years and have gained own experience, both in trading on exchanges and mining. At first I was wrong and did not bet on real altcoins, but on garbage, and now I can inform you about the profitability, rating and earnings on altcoins. I advise you to read the information to the end and not repeat my mistakes in the future.

List of cryptocurrencies for 2018

The correct approach when choosing good, relatively reliable forks would be to rely on factual data about the most important indicators. That's why list of cryptocurrencies 2018 for investment and trading, I compiled it based on statistical data on: capitalization, liquidity, popularization, cost, volatility, development prospects.

1. Market capitalization- this is the total quantity of an asset released onto the market, multiplied by the current market (exchange) price. This financial indicator used to estimate the total value of market instruments, entities and markets. The greater the capitalization of an altcoin, the less likely it is to “extinct” and leave the crypto market.
2. Liquidity is economic term, indicating the ability of assets to be quickly sold at a price close to market. Those. the presence of a high level of supply and demand for any asset. Liquidity is very important for traders and money changers. With high liquidity and volatility, you can make good money on the exchange. The higher it is, the more stable the crypto coin.
3. Popularization is the process of disseminating financial information. tools in a modern form accessible to a wide range of people. There are no specific values ​​for this data. A conclusion about popularity can be made based on the sum of capitalization and liquidity indicators.
4. Altcoin prices expressed in fiat money (dollar, euro, ruble, yuan), bitcoin and other forks. The more expensive an asset is, the greater its value for the end consumer, the less likely it is to depreciate, especially in the short term. Most crypto coins have indirect value. Those. are not expressed in the value of fiat money, but in relation to other cryptocoins. For example, execoin cost 0.0004 bitcoin, which results in the EXE/BTC currency pair, which is traded on exchanges. And btc has a value in fiat.
5. Volatility is a statistical financial indicator that characterizes price variability over time. It is the most important in managing financial risks, where it represents the degree of risk of using financial resources. instrument for a certain period of time. High volatility means greater earning potential, but also greater risk.
6. Development perspective- a valuable factor that promises either the further prosperity of a crypto product or its extinction. Most forks have no prospects for development; they are created only for the purpose of making money for their founders. As a rule, at first they arouse some interest among consumers, increase in price, appear on stock exchanges, but over time they completely depreciate in value.

Cryptocurrency rating 2018

Data on the capitalization of the best cryptocurrencies:

This is only the first 10 of the list of cryptocurrencies for 2018. Here we see the total market capitalization in dollars (as well as for 24 hours), current value (price) and volatility in % (change). An online resource where you can view the ranking of the best cryptocurrencies in detail: coinmarketcap.com

The best cryptocurrencies for investment and trading

Every trader has their preferred financial instruments and I'm no exception. Lately I've been trading in fiat-denominated coins. Among them, for the summer of 2018 I prefer: LTC, XMR, XRP, ZEC, EOS, BNB, IOTA, BCH, BTG, ADA paired with USD, BTC.

Conclusion: we select the best cryptocurrencies of 2018 based on the statistics described above. Also remember that they are changeable, check them periodically. If any indicators have changed dramatically and significantly for the worse within a few days, you should temporarily stop working with the weakened fork.

That's all, if I missed something or didn't explain it enough, please write it in the comments. I express my readiness for a constructive dialogue in case of disagreement with the material presented.

The past year has already gone down in history as the starting point of the explosive growth in the popularity of cryptocurrencies. Nobody knows what awaits them in the future, but it is worth summing up some results and recording the current status quo, so that it would be easier for our readers to make decisions about investing in this instrument in the future.

Today we present to your attention the rating of cryptocurrencies in 2017, based on their capitalization at the time of writing. It is worth remembering that this market is subject to enormous volatility, and therefore any information and ratings quickly become outdated, so before making any financial decisions based on this material, first check its relevance at the time of reading.

#10 - NEM

• Capitalization: $3,642,336,000
• Price: $0.404704

Another relatively little-known coin, which appeared in 2015 and gained extreme popularity in Japan, which allowed it to rapidly soar into the top ten cryptocurrencies by capitalization. Unlike most of its competitors, this cryptocurrency was developed using original open source code and received a number of technological advantages not available to its more famous colleagues.

This instrument also has interesting philosophical foundations that proclaim equal opportunity and financial freedom. All this might have remained a lyric if it were not for the fantastic growth of the rate of this crypt in the late spring of 2017, which allowed investors to make thousands of percent of their initial deposits.

#9 – Bitcoin Gold

• Price: $223.62
• Capitalization: $3,734,224,329

The brainchild of the mining company Lighting ASIC, which is one of major players in the industrial mining market. The postulated goal is to become a better digital gold than Bitcoin, and the method chosen for this is to solve the problem of centralization of mining using the Proof-of-Work algorithm. This is the second hard fork of the classic Bitcoin after Bitcoin Cash, which also wants to remove Bitcoin from its throne by adding more advanced technological tools.

Today, no one is surprised by the various ICO projects based on Bitcoin or the desire of interest groups to separate from the root structure of the cue ball itself in order to create their own improved product, seeking to outshine the cue ball. At the moment, all these aspirations remain just fantasies, and therefore each such project has an unpredictable fate.

#8 - Monero

• Capitalization: $3,810,414,004
• Price: $246.64

Many people mistakenly believe that this coin is a fork of Bitcoin, but this is not so - we have an independent cryptocurrency. The main task that the developers set for themselves is to ensure the highest possible anonymity of transactions, for which the CryptoNote protocol is responsible. It applies ring signatures using one-time keys when making monetary transactions.

The coin achieved wide popularity last summer, entering the pool of cryptocurrencies used as a means of payment in unofficial online markets. Investors highly appreciate the potential of this currency, not least due to the activity of the development team, which is constantly improving its brainchild.

#7 - Dash

• Capitalization:$5,412,663,025
• Price: $698.85

This cryptocurrency was a response to the community’s request to create a more reliable system for protecting the personal data of the coin owner than was implemented in Bitcoin. The currency has several specific features that distinguish it from a wide variety of other financial instruments:

Crypto coins are sent to recipients’ wallets after mixing and splitting transactions in the PrivateSend service. Dash's stable growth makes it one of the most attractive cryptocurrencies on the altcoin market, so we advise you to pay special attention to studying it.

#6 – Litecoin

• Capitalization: $8,255,159,882
• Price: $152.20

Enough old coin, formed as a result of a Bitcoin fork. The creators of Litecoin saw a number of shortcomings in the classic bitcoin, and therefore decided to increase the issue of their currency to 84 million coins and increased the transaction speed by 2.5 times. At the same time, these coins are similar in many ways - Litecoin is mined in a similar way, it is anonymous, its emission is limited, and transactions cannot be canceled.

Today, Bitcoin mining is an extremely resource-intensive process, and therefore many miners have switched to this particular coin, and perhaps you will like it too.

#5 – Ripple

• Capitalization: $9,208,410,948
• Price: 0.237703

A serious project that began in 2012 and set itself the goal of creating a full-fledged digital monetary system with maximum transaction security, which is what it generally strives for to this day. It is this cryptocurrency that has attracted increased attention from the main players of the classical financial market, among which there are such giants as UniCredit, UBS, Western Union and others.

The Ripple protocol is already used in the work of banks and payment systems, and therefore the future of this cryptocurrency looks bright. This cryptocurrency is also good for starting to study cryptoeconomics using its own example, as it has a large package of interesting technologies that are important for the development of the industry as a whole.

#4 - IOTA

• Capitalization: $12,013,657,994
• Price: $4.32

The rapid growth of IOTA capitalization volumes in recent months indicates that this coin has the highest prospects along with giants like Bitcoin or Ethereum. Unlike the developers of most other currencies, who focused on creating a tool for reliable anonymous transactions, the creators of IOTA see the key to the development of the crypto-economy in the Internet of Things and are mastering its inherent technologies.

IOTA is based on the Tangle consensus method, which, unlike the usual blockchain protocol, increases the speed of transactions, which in turn occur without any commissions. This technological advantage has motivated many investors around the world to fill their virtual cryptocurrency wallets with this particular coin. If quite recently IOTA was not even included in the top 100 cryptocurrencies by capitalization, today it is confidently positioned in the top 5 and this looks like just the beginning.

#3 - Bitcoin Cash

• Capitalization: $22,395,607,424
• Price: $1329.97

The fruit of the Bitcoin hard fork, which appeared on August 1, 2017, and rapidly went up after it arrived in the wallets of the owners. Since Bitcoin Cash became available for withdrawal, it has significantly lost in price in relation to its older brother, it is somewhat more difficult to mine, and the network of this crypt experiences various problems from time to time, but nevertheless, the common pedigree with the main cryptocurrency of our time allows the coin remains on the first line of the ranking of the top 10 cryptocurrencies by capitalization.

As in the case of Bitcoin Gold, predicting a coin that appeared as a result of a Bitcoin fork is a thankless and ineffective task, and therefore we will leave it and move on to the two largest currencies on the crypto-economy market.

#2 - Ethereum

• Capitalization: $43,676,646,849
• Price: $453.75

After Bitcoin took the leading position in the market since its inception, the emergence of various altcoins was perceived as a desperate attempt by developers to jump on board the train, or simply a scam for short-term profit. The situation changed after the appearance of this crypt, the creators of which modified the blockchain technology with the help of smart contracts, which made it possible to look at the capabilities of the crypt not only as a speculative instrument, but also as a useful technological innovation.

The coin immediately attracted such giants of the financial and IT market as Sberbank, Microsoft, IBM and others, and therefore long-term investments in this project still look like a wise decision.<

#1 - Bitcoin

• Capitalization: $257,773,684,162
• Price: $15,405.50

And predictably, our top 10 cryptocurrencies are headed by the great and terrible Bitcoin. This is the world's first digital currency, which served as a catalyst for the gold rush that has erupted in recent years around the cryptocurrency market. Bitcoin is already widely used today as a generally accepted means of payment, and its open source code has become the starting point for many subsequent projects in the cryptocurrency market. Nothing can stop Bitcoin from holding the top of the ranking of the top 10 cryptocurrencies of 2017 by capitalization, and in the future it will be difficult to encroach on its hegemony.

If you are not inclined to try on the role of a trader who monitors quotes of a particular coin every minute, but want to invest in cryptocurrency for the long term, Bitcoin still remains the most promising option, although you certainly can’t expect growth of thousands of percent.

The world of cryptocurrencies is replenished with new promising digital money. Today there are thousands of tokens in the world, each of which has its own advantages and disadvantages. Most coins are increasing in value, causing people to buy and sell tokens every day, trying to find a better cryptocurrency investment.

We bring to your attention a description of the TOP 10 best cryptocurrencies in order to understand the principles of operation of their platforms and, possibly, make a choice. This list is important to study along with.

Bitcoin is the world's first cryptocurrency created as a peer-to-peer payment system between network participants. Provides a high level of security and allows you to make exchange transactions between users for unlimited amounts. From the user's perspective, Bitcoin looks like a special client program that needs to be downloaded to a PC. You can also register an online wallet.

The very first and most famous cryptocurrency in the world, Bitcoin, still remains one of the most expensive

Transactions are carried out over a long period, as the load on the network is constantly increasing. The purpose of blockchain is to translate and verify the authenticity of a financial transaction. To speed up the process of cryptocurrency transfer, an incentive (commission) system for miners is used. Set the amount of reward for processing the transaction, and the transaction will be confirmed tens of times faster.

Ethereum is a platform for creating blockchain applications. Used in many areas of the crypto industry. The project was launched in 2014, successfully collected over 31,500 bitcoins and was successfully promoted.

Ethereum is used mainly to launch an ICO, that is, the process of raising funds for your crypto project. People cannot change the Ethereum code, the platform is protected from outside interference, has a high level of security and is never idle.

Transaction times are much shorter than Bitcoin, so Ethereum is more mobile and is more often used to pay for goods and services.

Corporate crypto platform for making global payments. The founders of Ripple are confident that thanks to their project they will be able to significantly speed up the process of technical development of civilization. The platform has a huge transaction speed and transfers money with a minimum commission.

The Ripple platform is characterized by high transaction speeds and minimal fees for them

The scalability of Ripple is amazing - up to 3000 operations per second with 15 transactions in the Ethereum system, which is also considered innovative and very promising. The Ripple network is growing and is already used all over the world. The platform is used even by large banks in developed countries.

A decentralized cryptocurrency that is used on the same principle as Bitcoin. In a nutshell, this is the second version of the first cryptocurrency, or an improved Bitcoin. Members of the crypto community noticed the problem of scalability within the Bitcoin platform and decided to create a new branch with a large hash size of 8 MB instead of 2 MB - Bitcoin Cash.

This is perhaps the only cryptocurrency that is profitable to mine in 2018 using ASIC systems. The number of miners with video cards is much larger, so the demand for ASICs has jumped, mining cryptocurrency has become profitable, which is what enterprising enthusiasts are doing.

First . Cryptocurrency appeared as an analogue of silver for carrying out fast transactions within the system. It quickly began to grow, attracting the interest of large investors. Software is no different from Bitcoin. To ensure a sufficient level of protection, cryptographic methods are used to encrypt data on transaction records.

The Litecoin cryptocurrency, which appeared as a result of a fork of Bitcoin, quickly became widespread and became popular in the crypto community

The difference between litecoin and bitcoin is in different ways of finding blocks: litecoin has scrypt, bitcoin has SHA-256. The initial premium for the mined block was 50 LTC. It decreases by 2 times every 840,000 new blocks. The transaction time is 4 times less than Bitcoin - this is the main advantage of the platform.

The cryptocurrency seemed so promising to users that just four days after its appearance, ADA’s trading turnover increased to $100 million per day. A week later, it took 7th place in the cryptocurrency capitalization ranking.

What is Cardano? It is a decentralized crypto platform that provides reliable and scalable digital currency transfer. Based on technology that is intended to create a new economic model that can replace the outdated model, the pyramidal banking system.

An analogue of Ethereum, created in China. No wonder, the Chinese love to create copies. Since its launch, in 3 months, the cryptocurrency has increased in price by 20 times. The emission of cryptocurrency is limited to 50 million coins; it is simply impossible to print or add them to the system.

Neo is considered the Chinese equivalent of Ethereum

For better scalability, NEO uses a special distributed storage protocol, NeoFS. At the moment, the block generation speed is about 15 seconds and this is an excellent result.

NEO has gas, just like Ethereum. From this point of view, NEO is a blockchain stock. “Gas” is generated automatically in the system and is paid to users as dividends for holding neo coins. NEO provides ownership of the platform, and neo gas is used to pay financial transactions and pay bonuses to miners.

A completely decentralized crypto platform for transferring funds between users. Supports all types of currencies and has a built-in decentralized exchange that can be used for trading, investing or exchanging.

With Stellar, a user can send money as easily as sending an email to a friend. Payments bypass the banking system, which means business income grows, and banks remain without commissions; they already have enough money.

It takes a few seconds for the transaction to be confirmed. Simultaneously supports thousands of financial transactions per second. The number of cryptocurrencies is limited to 100 billion XML. The new SCP technology is used as a translation proof algorithm.

Monero is a cryptocurrency platform created for the purpose of storing users’ personal data. For this, a special CryptoNote algorithm is used. This is not a fork of Bitcoin, but a unique code that uses ring signatures to encrypt sensitive data.

The Monero platform was created for the purpose of storing users' personal data

Payments within Monero cannot be tracked, financial transactions in the system are not interconnected, and confirmation of work completion is carried out using a special CryptoNight hashing algorithm.

A program that introduces blockchain for vertical and horizontal scaling of decentralized platforms. The project serves to create decentralized blockchain applications.

The application is planned to be used as an alternative to Ethereum and who knows, perhaps it will take root in the crypto market even better than its predecessor. EOS is the project of Daniel Larimer, a smart and promising crypto platform developer who at a young age managed to create projects such as Steemit and BitShares.