Top 7 Cryptocurrencies to Invest in 2018

The first in the history and the most popular cryptocurrency in the world. It was created in 2009. Despite such a "venerable age", the cryptocurrency is actively developing. It was the appearance of bitcoin that caused such a rapid development of cryptocurrency trading market and the appearance of a wide variety of digital assets.

The current capitalization of bitcoin is more than $ 95 billion, which exceeds the cost of many large companies with a worldwide reputation. According to the bitcoin protocol specification, there would only ever be 21 million bitcoins in total.

This is a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts. While bitcoin is often called "digital gold", Ethereum is sometimes called "digital oil." It's all because ETH is like a "fuel" for smart contracts and the Dapps created on their basis.

Despite the relatively young age of Ethereum (it was launched in 2015), quite well-known people from the cryptocurrency world prefer it to BTC. They are convinced that sooner or later the popularity of Ethereum will exceed bitcoin.

For now, the market capitalization of "digital oil" is $ 28 billion or three times less in comparison with the corresponding indicator of BTC. At the same time, the potential of Ethereum is high and attracts the largest software developers, such as Microsoft and IBM.

This cryptocurrency is used in the digital payment system, as well as for currency exchange and money transfers. The Ripple protocol was launched in 2012. Its goal is to provide "safe, instant and almost free global financial transactions of any size without refunds". According to some crypto enthusiast, the Ripple payment system may become an alternative to SWIFT in the nearest future.

Among Ripple investors are globally recognized venture capital firms and strategic investors, including Santander, Accenture, Google Ventures, Seagate, Andreessen Horowitz, and others. As of this writing, the market cap of Ripple is around $ 8 billion.

This is the result of the hard-fork - an alternative to bitcoin. On August 1st, the BTC blockchain was divided into two chains and a new digital token appeared - Bitcoin Cash.

Immediately after its appearance on the exchanges, BCH was rated third in terms of capitalization, leaving behind such "veterans" of the market as Litecoin and Ripple. However, shortly after exchanges made Bitcoin Cash depositing/ withdrawing available, the "alternative to bitcoin" sharply dropped in price. Apparently, its capitalization of $ 5.9 billion is mostly due to the popularity of bitcoin.

For several years, Litecoin has been "in the shade" of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, trading around $ 3-4 per coin. In March of the current year, in the run-up to the SegWit implementation, a rapid increase in the price of LTC began. Now the price is approaching the $ 55 level per coin with the market cap of $ 2.96 billion and, according to many analysts, will continue its growth. The altcoin is represented on most exchanges and exchange platforms and is accepted by many companies as a means of payment.

The launch of Dash, which at that time was called Xcoin, was on January 18, 2014. Starting from January 2014 to March 2015, the altcoin currency was known as Darkcoin. Today, Dash has many supporters. Since its launch, the price of the cryptocurrency has grown several hundred times and now it's traded around $ 280. The market capitalization is $ 2.14 billion.

This digital currency became widely known in early 2015. It's distinguished from many other cryptocurrencies by the original open source code and a number of interesting innovations. For example, XEM is based on the POI (Proof Of Importance) algorithm (the "proof-of-stake" modification). The capitalization of XEM is $ 1.76 billion. The altcoin is popular not only in its home country Japan, but is also actively traded on a number of major exchanges.