2019 isn’t too far out. With 2018 being fairly disappointing thus far in the world of altcoins, we’re keeping our fingers crossed for the last few months of this year. If 2018 has taught us anything, it’s that you can’t count your chickens before they hatch. Altcoins as a whole are on a serious decline. This decline can’t necessarily be linked to any one thing. If we had to guess though, the fomo at the start of 2018 set the year up for failure. We seem to be returning to levels that are healthier for a space that’s this young. While some sit and sulk over what could have been, we see this decline as very positive, and a chance to get greedy moving into the new year.

With that said, we’ve compiled a list of tokens that we think will boom in the new year. This list of altcoins was compiled by looking at the network’s purpose, technology, team, and a number of other criteria. Another criteria that weighed in heavily on our choices is the community of users as seen on Reddit, Twitter, and other social medias.



We’d like to note that this is not financial, investment, or any sort of advice. This is simply an opinion piece. If you’re unfamiliar with cryptocurrency and blockchain, navigate here for a great 101 resource.

This article is not a paid endorsement. All altcoins selected solely by the author of the piece with no financial or other incentives, whatsoever.

Ethereum

The king of altcoins. Ethereum has had its issues this year. Creator Vitalik has suggested on twitter that this sharp decline in the price of ETH is the network returning to the levels that it should be at. Ethereum is established with a slew of working dApps, Loads of very talented developers, and a community that is ecstatic about the progression of the network. Even with the shortcomings of ETH, we don’t see a cryptocurrency world where Ethereum ceases to exist. Ethereum 2 network is allegedly in the works, showing how dedicated the development community is to furthering the powerhouse that Ethereum has become. We expect Ethereum to make a grandiose comeback in market cap come the new year. . . If not sooner.

Stellar

The Stellar Blockchain project mainly pointed at remittances or cross country payments in a fast, efficient, and cheap way. Stellar offered their solution to the resource usage issue that many proof of work networks encountered with their Stellar Consensus Protocol (Can be explored in the Stellar Consensus Protocol White paper Here). Stellar seems to be doing everything right. The network is fueled by brilliant strategic partnerships, including tech giant IBM. If you do any online business, especially internationally, you’ll see there is a need for fast, simple and cheap ways to send payments. With the leaders in online payments currently charging 5% or more in money transferring fees, it’s easy to imagine a world where Stellar, with its <5 second transaction speeds and ultra low transaction fees, thrives in business. It is said that Tempo running on the Stellar blockchain as a remittances dApp can facilitate 600,000 transactions for 0.01 USD in fees. We’ve sung Stellar’s praises before and will continue to as this project has accomplished so much and still has so much potential. We expect Stellar to do very well moving forward.

Lisk

Lisk hasn’t gained the following it surely will, but we’ve added it to this list anyways. As a platform for hosting blockchain applications, Lisk is similar to that of the Ethereum Network. What’s the difference and why not just use Ethereum? Well, Lisk is written in Javascript. If your familiar with computer languages, the learning curve of Javascript is MUCH friendlier than that of Ethereum’s complex code Solidity. Not only that, but javascript has been a favorite of developers in nearly all programming professions since its release, making developers more readily available. Simplifying the development of blockchain applications is a massive step in the direction of progression. These sorts of projects are the ones we keep our eyes out for. We like this altcoin, and expect big things from Lisk.

4New

This is the newest of the altcoins on this list. We love this project, and though it has yet to prove itself, it’s an amazing example of technology that could impact the world in a positive way. Basically, the 4New project runs a series of factories that burn trash, convert it into electricity, and tokenize the electricity. The team is very dedicated to the mission and understand the potential. What gets us most excited about this project is that they’re using progressive technologies in waste cleanup and applying it to the cryptocurrency world. It’s projects like this that we believe will rocket blockchain to the general public. This technology is advanced and very progressive. Will 4New moon in 2019…? Time will tell, but the potential for huge success is there.

Basic Attention Token

BAT is the perfect example of an altcoin that comes in with a purpose, identifies a niche in the market, and acts accordingly. The team is highly experienced with very impressive resumes. BAT is advertised as a unit of account between advertisers, publishers, and users. In fact, BAT does not encourage the trading of their tokens on any exchanges (though they’re happy to advertise ALL exchanges who list BAT). Citing the data usage, energy use, and expense that users face for unwanted ads on their mobile devices, the Basic Attention Token White Paper addresses issues we all can relate to. The Brave Browser needs to be mentioned with Basic Attention Token. The Brave browser seamlessly integrates with the BAT token. Blocking trackers and ads that steal your information and sell it to companies who spam your various inboxes, the browser protects you while you surf the web.

ZCash

One could not possibly list 10 coins with potential without adding a privacy token in the mix. Zcash is our altcoins pick for privacy tokens. We do not condone the use of the darknet. But ZCash is a token that will be used in this particular case. Privacy tokens have tons of uses other than on darknet markets though… We all know people and organizations who shouldn’t know how we choose to spend our money. The privacy aspect of currency is wildly enticing to everyone besides those who control your money. Privacy in the financial world leaves a huge margin for illegal activities. We all deserve privacy, and the consequences of privacy should fall solely on the user, and not the currency. With this mindset, this altcoin will flourish.

Ethereum Classic

Ethereum and Ethereum Classic on this list? Coinbase listed this altcoin on their exchange. It seemed like ETC was a deadcoin and the Coinbase acquisition seemed odd to say the least. But with Ethereum priming to make a switch to a Proof of Stake system. The Proof of Work based Ethereum Classic just might be the go to network for Ethereum developers who don’t agree with Proof of Stake systems. Had this acquisition never happened, ETC would have never made this list, but I think Coinbase is on to something here… Don’t count Ethereum Classic out.

EOS

We can sense it. Here it comes. The massive divide that EOS has on the crypto community will leave EOS haters dismissing this article as garbage. Like it or not, we think the EOS ecosystem has huge potential. The ecosystem is similar to that of Ethereum, but simplifies it and brings crypto to a larger population of people. In the EOS ecosystem, users may not even know they’re on the network. This will help blend blockchain into the mainstream. Much like Lisk, development on the EOS platform is much simpler, as it has support for transcribing your dApps and integrating them into their network. EOS had a wildly successful fundraiser over the last year, raising billions of dollars. EOS is hiring tons of developers, which looks very good for their longevity. Last but not least, the ecosystem is very fast, very cheap, and most importantly, scalable. Love it or hate it, we expect EOS to rise in 2019.

Tron

We’ve been very vocal about this in the past. I won’t rant further about it, but Tron is awful. It’s a lowcap coin, and as we all know, people find it easier to buy lower cap coins because they think that a plus 100% boom pays out more. This is the Tron community, though, for better or worse. And it’s the community of Tron that’s going to propel its awfulness into the mainstream. In positive light, they recently purchased BitTorrent. This is an interesting move into some sort of more secure and decentralized torrenting methods for the future, this is where the IPFS part of their projected project will come in handy. The distribution of file parts and recombining them to the user downloading will be a great innovation to the field especially if they figure out placeholder styled downloads with first come first save vs the systematic styled approach we have now.

Tron will thrive in 2019 as long as the #TronArmy continues its praise. And while We’re not fans of the project, it’s community, or team. We’re just going to have to live with this altcoin.

Litecoin

Last on this list is Litecoin. One of the original altcoins, Litecoin is the oldest cryptocurrency on this list. Founded in 2011, LTC has become a BTC alternative with a top 10 market cap. Some key differences lie in Litecoin’s foundation though. Litecoins coin limit is 84 million vs 21 million from Bitcoin. The average mining time of a block on the LTC blockchain is roughly 2.5 minutes vs BTC’s 10 minutes. Litecoin took the key features of the Bitcoin and improved upon the technology. And they did it before crypto was cool. The project has a dedicated following and it has large current market cap of over 3 billion USD. With tons of active traders paired with Litecoin being one of the big four on coinbase, Litecoin will surely gain value in 2019. Perhaps the biggest reason for this is yet to be said though. Litecoin halves in the new year, and if history repeats itself, this is going to be HUGE for this altcoin.



Notable Mentions

Cardano

First and foremost Cardano seems to be a big player in the eyes of Coinbase. With Coinbase making their official/unofficial announcement on Twitter, with their blog stating that they are exploring adding 5 new tokens to their platform (fingers crossed for a release matching the ETC rather than the failure of the BCH release on their platform). Cardano was created by Charles Hoskinson one of the co-founders of Ethereum. It makes me happy that these mentioned assets have their own platform/ blockchain vs the ERC20 tokens that will eventually flood the Coinbase market. Cardano has been meeting their all their targets on the ever counting down roadmap. They also have a growing community with over 100,000 followers on twitter alone this year. I’ve also noticed they’ve been using a testnet to mainnet approach rather than throwing up changes for the community to deal with or even releasing mainnet and the community suffering from major problem. . . Not going to name anyone but their network name rhymes with mangle. . .

On a side note Cardano is one of the most documented “altcoin” out there with 100’s of articles written in several languages just in “Advice and Answers from the Cardano team”

Monero

Monero is now the prefered coin on dark markets, it’s a privacy token known for this. I don’t see it coming to coinbase listing any time soon. Monero runs on a proof of work standard which is another reason I see it continue through the years, there will almost always be a value behind it even if it’s only the cost of energy that was used plus a bit of a market upsell similar to Bitcoin. They have a great transaction schematic that involves ring signatures and stealth addresses created on the fly to keep you and your transactions private. I see Monero as a classic and almost a standard need in the crypto community considering it was founded on similar principles of privacy and decentralization.

Notable Mention: I didn’t include Ripple (XRP) on this list due to its centralized nature. I have no doubt Ripple will continue to gain a massive following and will be huge in the banking industry. Ripple will make you money in 2019.

Thank you for reading as always! These are certainly not the only altcoins destined for success. But with so many different options for altcoins, We think these 10 are great bets for 2019!

For more information about the author, visit their blockdelta profile.