Cryptocurrency and blockchain technology have become incredibly popular amongst individual and institutional investors across the globe. For those that trade their own accounts on any of the various exchanges, or for those who are simply researching the best available options we hope this list serves as a resource in beginning your own due diligence.

For those who don’t have the time or interest in managing their own accounts, many have been leaning more towards investing in actively managed hedge funds relating to the cryptocurrency industry instead of the individual cryptocurrencies. Whatever you decide, do your own research before investing and never invest money you can’t afford to lose.

Click here to Get Access to the Top Performing Hedge Funds, run by seasoned Advisors with investment management experience.

Now onto our top picks with the highest upside potential this year..

The Big Dogs

Larger market cap (for crypto) coins with highest upside potential in 2018

1. Cardano (ADA)

According to Cardano Foundation Press – a package update is released today which marks first major one since Sep mainnet launch that includes a significant input by the team behind the platform.

On 3rd March, CEO of IOHK, Charles Hoskinson tweeted that Cardano’s upcoming 1.1 patch would be available from 6th March, 2018. Then he added that he’d release more notes once the patch had been finalized. This is definitely good news for the Cardano family, even if prices continue to slide down.

The patch may not be that major, but it still shows that the team is working to make the Cardano platform secure. It is also likely the patch will contain some sort of software improvement regarding the Linux installer of the Cardano wallet. Keeping in line with IOHK’s ethos, everything needs to be reviewed before being released. The patch is a correction in the software that we hope Charles’ notes will shed further light on.

Cardano was not the first to implement a proof of stake algorithm. It was the first to attain peer-reviewed status as a provably secure proof of stake. The system greatly reduces the amount of power consumed by the full blockchain and provides a benefit to engagement. The system uses an array of stakeholders to form consensus and produce new blocks.

The initial elections for block generation resolve through randomized numbers. All electors have to reach consensus through the Ouroboros algorithm in order to generate the seed for that randomized number. In turn, a slot leader is designated to generate the next block and earn ADA. So long as there is not an adversarial majority within the system, the honest majority of stakeholders will continue to randomly generate slot leaders and reward stakeholders.

Cardano; Short Term Gains and Long-Term Potential

A strong governance system is only one of Cardano’s benefits. They are also ready, willing and able to comply with new government regulations through their soft fork ability. The addition of the control layer protocol will make them into a viable Ethereum alternative. As they roll out the platform upon which decentralized applications can be created, their market share will increase. While Cardano’s ADA token has stagnated in price since December, it is primed to rise – and effectively available at a discount.

At the same time, Cardano is a long-term project that has plans to truly use their infinite scalability. As technology increases, so too can the blockchain. They will switch out modules and implement soft forks to keep the platform relevant and performing at a high level. The staying power that this produces should keep Cardano in the top 10, and their control layer will help them seize more of the emerging cryptocurrency market.

2. Bitcoin (BTC)

The king of the crypto world, Bitcoin is now a household name; to many, it is synonymous with “cryptocurrency”. Its purpose is to provide a peer-to-peer electronic version of cash to allow payments to be sent online without the need for a third party (such as Mastercard).

The rapid rise in Bitcoin’s price has brought about an explosion of new Bitcoin investors. With the huge increase in interest has come a rise in merchants accepting Bitcoin as a legitimate form of payment. Bitcoin is fast moving towards its goal of becoming a currency accepted worldwide.

3. Ethereum (ETH)

Ethereum is the revolutionary platform which brought the concept of “smart contracts” to the blockchain. First released to the world in July 2015 by then 21-year-old Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum has quickly risen from obscurity to cryptocurrency celebrity status.

Buterin has a full team of developers working behind him to further develop the Ethereum platform. For more background information on Buterin, read our article, “Vitalik Buterin: The Face of Blockchain”.

Ethereum has the ability to process transactions quickly and cheaply over the blockchain similar to Bitcoin, but also has the ability to run smart contracts. For future reading on smart contracts, see “What’s the Difference Between Bitcoin and Ethereum”; but for now, think automated processes which can do just about anything.

4. Ripple (XRP)

Ripple aims to improve the speed of financial transactions, specifically international banking transactions.

Anyone who has ever sent money internationally knows that today it currently takes anywhere from 3-5 business days for a transaction to clear. It is faster to withdraw money, get on a plane, and fly it to your destination than it is to send it electronically! Not to mention you will be paying exorbitant transaction fees — usually somewhere around 6% but it can vary depending on the financial institution.

Ripple’s goal is to make these transactions fast (it only takes around 4 seconds for a transaction to clear) and cheap.

The Ripple team currently comprises over 150 people, making it one of the biggest in the cryptocurrency world. They are led by CEO Brad Garlinghouse, who has an impressive resume which includes high positions in other organizations such as Yahoo and Hightail.

5. Stellar Lumens (XLM)

On its website, Stellar Lumens advertises itself as an open-sourced, distributed payments infrastructure, built on the premise that the international community needs “a worldwide financial network open to anyone.” Stellar Lumens will fill this need, connecting individuals, institutions, and payment systems through its platform.

In doing so, the Stellar Lumen’s team wants to make monetary transactions cheaper, quicker, and more reliable than they are under current systems. In addition, their protocol would connect people from all over the world by allowing for more efficient cross-border payments.

Stellar Lumens bears that beautiful buzzword that has become the hallmark of blockchain technology: decentralization. The Stellar network runs on a web of decentralized servers supported by an international consortium of individuals and entities. These servers support the distributed ledger that keeps track of the network’s data and transactions.

In practice, the Stellar protocol will function like a more inclusive, more flexible PayPal. To start using Stellar, you would need to upload funds to an anchor on the network. Much like a bank or PayPal, this anchor then holds your money and issues credit to your virtual wallet in its stead.

If Ripple was built for financial institutions and banking giants, then Stellar Lumens goes to work for the common man. It has the potential to revamp how we process peer-to-peer transactions on a global scale.

Its versatility and use cases make it function like a financial Swiss Army Knife. With Stellar, you can handle micro-payments with nominal fees, send remittances without fretting over currency exchange or bank transfers, and settle payments in real time (2-5 seconds).

Website

Found Out More About Stellar Lumens (XLM) HERE

6. OmiseGo (OMG)

OmiseGo has released a roadmap for 2017 / 2018 year that shows various features and enhancements that will be to OMG users. In Q4 2017, first wallet SDK prototype will be released for workshop testing and development. This is followed by the release of wallet SDK public release in Q1 2018.

After that, public blockchain will be released to the OMG users which will make staking possible. Then in Q3 2018, cash in/out touchpoint interface with payment gateway will be released.

Plasma development and introduction are expected to be done in Q3 2018 as well.

Hence, 2018 will be the year of OmiseGo. Definitely, OmiseGo is a cryptocurrency to invest in 2018.

7. NEO



The “Ethereum of China”

Market capitalization: $ 3,029,058,500

$ 3,029,058,500 Price (12/14/17): $ 46.60

$ 46.60 Who created it ?: Da Hongfei, CEO of Onchain and blockchain evangelist in China, together with his co-founder Erik Zhang

Tung predicts that Neo, nicknamed the “Ethereum of China,” will explode if China eases its stance on ICOs and bitcoin. Ethereum is n. ° 2 behind the bitcoin in terms of market capitalization at $ 61 billion. So, obviously, Neo has a long way to go.

Founder Da Hongfei recently participated in CNBC to allay fears that cryptos will overheat. “I would say there is a bubble in this industry, but I would say it’s okay,” he said. “Any technology that is so disruptive, will definitely generate bubbles, as happened with the train or the car.” Neo has been around since 2014, when it was called “Antshares”. Yes, it has been changed to refer to Matrix.

The current NEO supply is currently at 65 million, out of a total of 100 million coins.

Official Site: https://neo.org/

8. Litecoin (LTC)

Similar to Bitcoin, Litecoin is a peer-to-peer transaction platform designed to be used as a digital currency. Due to some notable technical improvements, Litecoin is able to handle more transactions at lower costs. Litecoin has been designed to process the small transactions we make daily.

Litecoin is sometimes referred to “digital silver” while Bitcoin is known as “digital gold”. This is because traditionally silver was used for small daily transactions while gold was used as a store of wealth and was not used in everyday life.

The Litecoin blockchain is a fork from the Bitcoin chain. It was initially launched in 2011 when its founder, Charlie Lee, was still working for Google. Well-known as a cryptocurrency expert, Charlie Lee is backed by a strong development team who appear to be achieving what they set out to do. They have recently achieved a very notable accomplishment with the first successful atomic swap.

9. NEM (XEM)

The elevator pitch for NEM is simple: 1) Take what Bitcoin is doing for payments, and 2) apply it to all technological infrastructure.

It is very similar to the work Ethereum is doing with “smart contracts,” except that NEM bills its features as “smart assets.” Here are a few potential use-cases:

Health records

Supply chains

Notarizations

Stock ownership

Royalty payments

Legal records

Loans

Inspections

According to the company’s marketing materials, a handful of businesses have already adopted NEM. “Tests across millions of accounts have demonstrated why it is one of the best performing systems in the industry,” reads one of their presentations.

Part of that is just bluster. However, there are some intriguing aspects to NEM, such as its API interface. Without getting too technical, let me quickly explain what this API does.

Imagine that you are running a Fortune 500 company. You hear about blockchain–how it can increase security, lower costs, improve efficiency–and you decide to migrate some portion of your digital infrastructure.

In most cases, you’d need to hire a special programmer. Someone who understands the coding language of “smart contracts.” But then you discover NEM.

Your software team eagerly explains to you that NEM allows them to code in any language. There’s no need to tear everything down, no need to build it back up from scratch. It works with Java, C++, whatever they want, really.

“How is that possible?” you ask.

“Easy,” they answer. “NEM has a magic API.”

NEM (XEM) could outperform Bitcoin and its imitators. As such, many analysts are initiating a $1.00 XEM price prediction for 2018.

10. Siacoin (SC)

Sia is a cryptocurrency set to dramatically change the way we look at enterprise cloud storage, and the technology is no doubt set to transform data storage in the future. It has its eyes set firmly on a market currently dominated by Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Dropbox.

Traditional cloud storage services such as DropBox upload customer’s data to a central ecosystem. The data is controlled here and thus exposed to all sorts of shady shenanigans such as personal data misuse, accidental loss, and database breaches.

With Sia your uploaded files are encrypted, broken up into tiny pieces and then spread across multiple hosts. This means superior redundancy (multiple copies of your data are securely stored across multiple hosts) ensuring data loss and snooping is no longer a problem.

What makes Sia so great is that anyone can participate and get paid for leasing their spare storage space. This is something many of us have with the price of hard drives being so low. When a host and an uploader connect a contract is formed. This contract is called a ‘smart contract’. It allows the renter to receive payments in exchange for their storage space being used.

Given SiaCoin’s potential, we strongly believe it is seriously undervalued. In fact, there are hundreds of other coins out there without a fraction of the usefulness of Sia.

11. Bitcoin Cash (BCH)

Bitcoin Cash was created on August 1, 2017 after a “hard fork” of the Bitcoin blockchain. For years, a debate has been raging in the Bitcoin community on whether to increase the block size in the hope of alleviating some of the network bottleneck which has plagued Bitcoin due to its increased popularity.

Because no agreement could be reached, the original Bitcoin blockchain was forked, leaving the Bitcoin chain untouched and in effect creating a new blockchain which would allow developers to modify some of Bitcoin’s original programmed features.

Generally speaking, the argument for Bitcoin Cash is that by allowing the block size to increase, more transactions can be processed in the same amount of time. Those opposed to Bitcoin Cash argue that increasing the block size will increase the storage and bandwidth requirement, and in effect will price out normal users. This could lead to increased centralization, the exact thing Bitcoin set out to avoid.

12. IOTA (MIOTA)

IOTA is a cryptocurrency designed for the Internet of Things. Unlike other traditional blockchains, IOTA is scalable, decentralized, modular, and requires No fees for transaction.

Unlike the Bitcoin which uses a blockchain architecture for maintaining its ledger, IOTA uses the ‘Tangle’ which is a Directed Acyclic Graph, known as a DAG.

The Tangle is a blockless distributed ledger which is scalable, lightweight and makes it possible to transfer value without any fees. Tangle solves both the scalability and transaction fee issues faced by most cryptocurrencies by requiring the Sender in a transaction to perform a kind of proof of work which approves two transactions. The act of making and validating transactions are coupled, removing dedicated miners and makes the system fully decentralized. – those making transactions (the systems ‘users’) are the only actors who can affect the system (whereas in bitcoin miners are not ‘using’ the system, rather they are simply enabling it to operate).

Unlike many other cryptocurrencies which get slower with increased numbers of users as a result of miner’s confirmations, IOTA network transaction speed increases as the number of users increases, eliminating the need for users to pay ‘miners’ for doing the proof of work.!

To prevent most attacks especially the DDoS, IOTA as a data and settlement layer is able to create a system that relies on decentralization, data actuality, and temper proof algorithms.

The ratio of the positive mentions to the negative mentions on the social media is 7:1, implying that the project is being widely discussed, which is a positive signal with respect to its acceptability.

MIOTA has a current Market Cap of $8,551,363,892. If the rapid increase in the project completion is stable, the price of each MIOT can be predicted to be 20$ – 25$ before the end of the year.

13. EOS

EOS is claimed to be the most powerful infrastructure for decentralized applications. It is scalable, flexible, and usable for self-describing interfaces. Just like Ethereum in building decentralized applications, EOS goes further to building scalable decentralized applications in a public environment.

One of the key difference between EOS and Ethereum is in the blockchain consensus mechanism and overall blockchain governance approach. Whereas Ethereum uses Proof-of-Stake, EOS uses Graphene technology that utilizes the Delegated Proof-of-Stake (DPOS) consensus mechanism.

Another significant difference between EOS and the Ethereum network is in the design philosophy behind the networks. The Ethereum network is specifically designed as a neutral platform for all potential applications. This notion reduces bloat among applications, but it also requires many different applications to reuse code, and efficiency gains for app developers could certainly be realized if certain more common functionalities were provided by the platform itself.

In contrast to this approach, EOS recognizes that many different applications require the same types of functionalities and seeks to provide those functions, such as implementations of the cryptography and app/blockchain communication tools needed by many applications. With this philosophy, EOS introduced a generalized role-based permission, a web toolkit for interface development, self-describing interfaces, self-describing database schemes, and a declarative permission scheme.

14. TRON (TRX)

As stated in TRON’s whitepaper, “TRON is an attempt to heal the internet”. The TRON founders believe that the internet has deviated from its original intention of allowing people to freely create content and post as they please; instead, the internet has been taken over by huge corporations like Amazon, Google, Alibaba and others.

TRON is attempting to take the internet back from these companies by constructing a free content entertainment system. This will enable users to freely store, publish and own data, giving them the power to decide where and how to share.

The project is led by founder Justin Sun, who has been listed on the Forbes 30 under 30 list twice (in 2015 and 2017). In addition, Sun is a protégé of Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba Group, China’s former Ripple representative and the founder of Peiwo APP.

Sun has assembled a strong team with heavy hitters including Binshen Tang (founder of Clash of King), Wei Dai (founder of ofo, the biggest shared bicycles provider in China), and Chaoyong Wang (founder of ChinaEquity Group). Sun has also secured the support of a few notable angel investors such as Xue Manzi.

15. Substratum (SUB)

Substratum is an open-source network that allows anyone to allocate spare computing resources to make the internet a free and fair place for the entire world.

Substratum Features

Here are some of the key features of the underlying technology behind Substratum:

SubstratumNode: Network members that run the Substratum broadcast software will receive SUB coins by serving requests. This is the process mentioned above, where the node can run in the background to earn passive income from system resources. You get paid in microtransactions every time someone serves a request to your node.

CryptoPay: All sites on the Substratum network can process cryptocurrency transactions using any publicly-traded coin.

SubstratumHost: Businesses or entities that wish to host sites, databases, and applications on the network use SUB coins to pay network members.

Artificial Intelligence: Substratum has machine learning functionality that geolocates the right Substratum Network machine to serve up content with the fastest possible load times. In other words, Substratum finds the closest node to your location.

Easy to Use Software: Substratum claims its software can setup a node in one click.

Cryptography: Advanced cryptography algorithms rooted in artificial intelligence ensure all data on the Substratum Network remains secure.

Developer Tools: Substratum provides an API and SDK that can be used to develop tools on the network. These tools should accelerate growth of the decentralized web.

Compression Algorithms: Custom-developed advanced compression algorithms ensure low latency and fast load times for content.

16. QTUM (QTUM)

QTUM (pronounced Quantum) is an open-source value transfer platform which focuses on mobile decentralized apps or Dapps. QTUM is the world’s first proof-of-stake smart contracts platform.

QTUM is meant to be used as both a value transfer protocol, like Bitcoin, and a smart contract platform, like Ethereum. They have a number of technical innovations which some consider to make it superior to Ethereum, and they are focusing on mobile applications.

The platform itself is very new. It came about in March 2017, after a highly successful crowdfunding campaign raised them nearly 16 million dollars in only 5 days. QTUM has a small but strong development team and an impressive list of investors backing their ideas. QTUM’s development is lead by the Singapore based QTUM Foundation.

17. Stratis

Stratis is an end-to-end blockchain development platform that allows for complete sidechains that are non-disruptive to the primary blockchain. Stratis was one of the biggest risers in April and May of this year, and it is currently sitting comfortably at 8th position on CoinMarketCap.

The project opens up a world of possibilities for developers, and is seen as a direct competitor to Ethereum. Ethereum allows for smart contracts. However, they all exist on the primary blockchain. Smart contracts on Stratis eliminate this risk and live on their own true sidechain.

Its language choice is what gives this project a clear advantage. It allows developers to code decentralized apps in an existing, widely adopted programming language, C#, which is a huge advantage because it allows any current C# developers to begin exploring the platform, its uses and blockchain power with a minimal learning curve. This will undoubtedly lead to faster adoption and growth. Also, the project has backing by Microsoft and a very active development team. All these features make Stratis a winning project to invest in.

Stratis also recently announced its “Breeze Wallet”. This is a specialist wallet that aims to increase the privacy of both Bitcoin and Stratis platform users. This Bitcoin wallet will have Tumblebit built in, which is an incredible deal and will raise awareness of Stratis tenfold. This will likely trigger a price hike.

https://stratisplatform.com/

18. Lisk (LSK)

Lisk also ranks as an altcoin with the 14th largest community and 13th most active development Research-wise, Lisk has a higher ‘knowledge’ entry barrier for non-coders, so to fully understand and appreciate how it works, a background in programming won’t hurt. Like other altcoins, Lisk is also not immune to volatility. Since this cryptocurrency is very new, only time will tell if Lisk has what it takes to take off among mainstream Javascript coders, but there are certainly positive signals that they are heading in the right direction.

Furthermore, Lisk has entered into a partnership with Microsoft Azure, which means that developers worldwide can develop, test, and deploy Lisk blockchain applications using Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform and infrastructure. I would say LSK is a riskier investment than Ethereum’s ether as the demand for the development of smart contracts, especially from the financial industry, is huge.

Lisk uses JavaScript as a programming language, which is popular among tech giants such as Microsoft and Google, the likelihood of its developer base increasing and adopting Lisk as a network to build applications on is quite high.

2017 will go down in history as the year blockchain went mainstream. But so far, it’s also been the year cryptocurrencies grappled with lag and transaction times. Cryptocurrencies have rocketed up in value, but the downside has been stagnation on the blockchains, with higher transaction times and fees. There’s no easy fix yet, as the recent Bitcoin Segwit2x battle illustrated. But one up-and-coming token has made fixing this problem a pillar of their system, among myriad other features. Lisk is one of the most intriguing and versatile cryptocurrencies on the market today. It’s also currently in our list of top performing ICOs in terms of ROI.

https://lisk.io/

19. Ethos (ETHOS)

ETHOS – Universal Cryptocurrency Wallet

ETHOS aims to create an easy entry platform for the masses, consumers and businesses, into the crypto space. They want to make it easy and safe for “regular people” to trade cryptocurrency and also give them support to make informed decisions.

Currently the learning curve into cryptos with fairly high for the normal consumer.

Thousands of cryptocurrencies with no easy access (ALTs)

Many different wallets

Keeping track of Private keys

Crypto exchanges

With the ETHOS Universal Wallet the idea is to have access to a multitude of smaller cryptos together with the ability to directly buy/sell and transfer these coins anywhere in the world. The idea is also to include technical analysis support within the wallet to be able to study trends in the available coins.

20. TenX (PAY)

TenX is a payment platform which focuses on providing users with ways to easily pay for everyday transactions using cryptocurrencies. TenX currently offers a debit card option where users can put any of TenX’s supported currencies such as Bitcoin and Dash onto the card for later use.

That said, TenX’s main focus will be on mobile-based payment systems as they see this as the obvious future of payments. The mobile application will allow users to exchange fiat currencies for crypto in real time. This is a potential game changer in the crypto world and may just be the “killer app” which is needed for cryptocurrencies to become more commonly accepted.

TenX’s ICO was in June 2017. They successfully raised 245,832 Ethereum tokens, valued around $80 million at the time. They have assembled a strong team and have some notable backers such as Vitalik Buterin, Bo Shen (Managing Partner at Fenbushi Capital) and David Lee (angel investor and FinTech Professor at Singapore Management University).

21. Power Ledger (POWR)



PV solar arrays (solar panels) and electric cars are becoming much more common with each passing year. Power Ledger looks to capitalize on this fast growing market by enabling customers and businesses to sell their power without the need for a middleman.

Blockchain is an ideal technology to enable this trading platform because autonomous and trustless systems are easy to implement and are fast as well as efficient.

Power Ledger was at the 2017 Blockchain Summit where they got a lot of attention and they look to make many more strategic partnerships in 2018.

22. Verge (XVG)

Verge is a secure and decentralized P2P electronic payment system which is designed for sending transactions privately. Verge has a public ledger similar to Bitcoin, but unlike Bitcoin you won’t be able to see the public addresses of the transactions that are conducted. This privacy is achieved using the Tor (The Onion Router) and I2P (Invisible Internet Project) technologies to hide the IP addresses of users.

Verge was originally known as DogeCoinDark, and then rebranded to Verge in 2016. The creators of Verge wanted this coin to be thought of as a legitimate form of currency, not just a way to pay for illicit items.

Verge’s development is community-driven. Much of the development is done on a voluntary basis by various developers. More information on the team can be found here.

23. 0x (ZRX)

0x is a decentralized exchange built on the Ethereum blockchain that allows for ERC20 tokens to be traded. 0x’s intention is to serve as a building block from which others can easily create their own decentralized exchange.

One of the key differences between 0x and other decentralized exchanges is that 0x is fast. To reduce blockchain bloat, all orders are transported off-blockchain and later verified. In addition to making transactions quick, this removes the necessity of spending gas to pay for network transaction costs, like on other decentralized exchanges such as EtherDelta.

0x uses a open-source system of smart contracts which acts as an infrastructure for those wishing to build with the 0x protocol. A number of projects have already started building on the 0x platform already such as Augur, Aragonand Request Network.

24. Status (SNT)

As described in the their whitepaper, Status is “an open source messaging platform and mobile interface to interact with decentralized applications that run on the Ethereum Network.”

Just like how browsers provide the gateway to websites, Status provides a gateway to decentralized apps and services. Status wants to build a digital hub where you can use various services based on the Ethereum network such as Aragon and Gnosis.

Status launched in June 2017 after a very successful ICO where they raised over $100 million. Shortly after their ICO, Status announced the appointment of former Google product manager Nabil Naghdy as their Chief Operating Officer and released the Status Hardware wallet.

25. BitShares (BTS)

BitShares was founded in 2014 by Dan Larimer, a cryptocurrency visionary and early adopter. He first started working with Bitcoin in 2009. But after some centralized exchanges started to shut down for no apparent reason, Larimer realized that a decentralized exchange is necessary. From this idea, BitShares was born.

As Larimer explained in this blog post, BitShares is, amongst other things, a software, network, ledger, community and most notably a decentralized peer-to-peer exchange. BitShares aims to remove the need to trust a centralized authority to oversee transactions and handle funds.

Dan Larimer has an extremely impressive resume, and has been the lead developer on both EOS and Steem, in addition to Bitshares.

26. Golem (GNT)

Golem’s plan is to create a global, open-source, decentralized supercomputer that can be used by anybody who has internet access. Golem doesn’t actually supply the computational power itself. Instead, they allow people who have unused computational power to “lend” it out to users who need it, for a fee.

In that sense, you can think of Golem as the AirBnb of computing. Just about any situation where heavy computation is necessary – medical research, AI development, computer graphics, cryptography, etc. These are good potential use cases for Golem. All computation is done on virtual machines, so hosts don’t have to sacrifice security to offer their computing power.

Small Dogs- The Moonshot Coins

The small dogaroos- Smaller Market Cap Coins with a lot of spunk and the potential to do 100X their current price

One thing to consider is that we are still in a corrective market, so while these picks may have had a dismal March (like the entire crypto market) these are candidates for a moonshot when the market resumes it’s bull run.

Always do your own due diligence above and beyond what you read online, and never invest more than you can comfortably afford to lose. That being said, the one’s on this list that end up seeing widespread adoption and solving real world problems could bring investors several years worth of returns.

1. Deep Brain Chain (DBC)

Deep Brain Chain (DBC) Out of all the undervalued cryptocurrencies listed here, this one is the most likely to be big if you’re reading this article a few months from this being published.

DBC is a smart contract token based on NEO that’s already listed on KuCoin and soon to be listed on Houbi, a popular Korean exchange. It solves a huge problem in the artificial intelligence space, the training of new computers, and that’s one of the reasons DBC could be so valuable.

What DBC does is create a blockchain based neural network training platform that connects computers across the world. It’s essentially a distributed AI creation network that may or may not be used in the next Skynet.

Invested in by NEO

First mover in the artificial intelligence space in cryptocurrencies.

Team of top scientists and a whitepaper that actually makes sense.

Constantly shilled on reddit and /biz/

Where to buy DBC: Kucoin

2. DragonChain (DRGN)

The US based company, Dragon Chain has been gaining quite a bit of attention from both newcomers and veteran crypto investors. Dragon Chainoffers blockchain as-a-service, which allows businesses to implement blockchain technology to secure their databases and execute smart contracts – all without any technical expertise. All business data is retained by the owning company and with a server-less scalable platform, any further development can be done with ease.

In addition to real world use case, Dragon Chai also serves as a platform for exclusive ICOs that can only be participated in by holding the DRGN token. The ICO function of Dragon Chain is projected to be a crucial element as over 200 projects are planned to launch an initial coin offering exclusively through Dragon Chain. To make things better, any upcoming Dragon Chain ICO will accept United States investors and only one KYC (know your customer) is required.

To bring this all together, an incredibly talented team was formed that consists of some very accomplished individuals. The list of team accreditations is too long to include in this article but a noteworthy detail to note, is that the founder of Dragon Chain, Joe Roets – has 20 years experience in software architecture and has been involved with companies such as Overstock, Coinbase, and Walt Disney. Being a United States based company with infrastructure that is completely scalable, an incentivized HODL program, and exclusive ICOs being launched on the platform – Dragon Chain is gearing up to be a promising project.

With launch of the AWS server-less platform right at the end of March, we feel that when the market turns, DRGN is going to fly (or will it rise?)

Usually announcements like this are already priced in, but with the market in its current state, people don’t seem to have jumped on the Dragon’s back with quite as much enthusiasm as they may over the next few weeks.

Dragon is perhaps one of the best long-term hold of these picks as well, so now might be one of the best entry-points you’ll ever get.

Where To Buy DRGN: Kucoin 3. VeChain (VEN) VeChain is the very fast blockchain based application to grace the crypto-world with an innovative way of providing tamper free information around products. This is a future business distributed model that will create a reference point for all players in the supply chain management. The VeChain Foundation in Singapore started off as a supply chain company but has recently announced its plans to move into the decentralized platform and hence evolving to become Enterprise DApp (decentralized application) solutions similar to Ethereum. VeChain’s operations are similar to IBM’s crypto-anchors technology. VeChain functions as a mix of blockchain technology and their in-house built smart chip (tiny piece of code) to track items throughout their lifecycle and also to guarantee you’re receiving the same intended product at every node. VeChain’s strategy is beneficial in many ways and most importantly: By implementing the smart chip technology it helps remove the need for trust at every stage the item takes to reach the end user

It offers counterfeit protection by re-verifying items at every node

It improves logistics systems through simplified product tracking

Smart chip scan assists businesses to acquire current and accurate information on each item. It also helps with quality control VeChain Thor The upgraded platform will use twin tokens such as VeChain Tokens [VET] and THOR power

Businesses who hold more VET are given high priority and more rights on the new VeChain THOR blockchain

Rebranding does not mean re-launching of the main chain, but it will be upgraded to use THOR power and also for the creation of Dapps to do business on the VeChain platform

VeChain THOR mainly relies on nodes in the blockchain system. Nodes are rewarded with THOR for maintaining the network

Nodes are differentiated by their maturity, date and amount of VET they hold. They are named Strength, Thunder, Mjolnir, and Thrudheim

VEN tokens will become obsolete once these are fully converted to VET tokens The VeChain Foundation names this new big change as Apothesis. With VeChain Thor set to launch in June as per VeChian CEO Sunny Lu, the organization is accommodating new tie-ups to add to their already impressive list of partnerships. Where to buy VEN: Binance or Kucoin 4. Kyber Network (KNC) This is simply a case of a quality project being severely undervalued. Kyber Network (KNC) is a decentralized exchange built on a system of reserves. The project, which held its ICO in late 2017, is one of two projects formally advised and backed by Vitalik Buterin (Buterin has announced his support and advisement publicly for Kyber Network and OmiseGo). Kyber’s decentralized exchange model is unlike anything we have seen before because it provides guaranteed liquidity at all times. At its core, Kyber is also deflationary. The reserves must hold and spend KNC to execute these transactions, and a portion of the spent KNC is burned following every trade. As users and reserves increase on the Kyber Network, so will the demand for KNC. However, the supply of KNC will simultaneously decrease. High demand plus low supply equals positive price action. If you look across the market, you can see how exchange tokens have been bullish over the past few months. Tokens such as BNB, ZRX, KCS, and KMD have all found their way into the top 50 cryptocurrencies on CoinMarketCap. However, Kyber is currently sitting in the 70s, and it seems to have stabilized in that range. Based on the success of the other utility tokens in its field, KNC seems to be extremely undervalueD. Where To Buy KNC: Binance or Kucoin 5. Wabi (WABI) WaBi is a free floating blockchain based crypto-token with strictly limited issue and exponential transaction growth potential. It is an electronic cryptocurrency which supports Walimai’s anti counterfeit system backed by sales of products protected by Walimai technology. Consumers around the world can purchase products protected by Walimai technology with WaBi. Walimai has developed a solution that securely links a physical item to its digital representation at a cost that allows us to protect everyday consumer goods such as milk-powder, pharmaceuticals, alcohol, and cosmetics both physically and digitally. In another words, Walimai puts anti-counterfeit labels on consumer goods so the customers have a confirmable system of proving that good they want to buy is indeed what it claims to be and it has not been corrupted. Then users can buy goods by using WaBi token. Walimai and WaBi are domiciled in China, but their expansion on international level is remarkable. Where to buy WABI: Binance or Kucoin 6. QuantStamp (QSP) Ethereum (ETH) is one of those blockchain platforms that will survive in the long run. Even as countries are jittery about other cryptos, there seems to be a consensus that Ethereum will get adopted as a tool for enhancing operational efficiency. On top of that, it is through Ethereum that hundreds of highly innovative tokens are hitting the market with each coming day. Ok, so how does all this connect with the growth potential of Quantstamp (QSP)? Well, it’s simple! Quantstamp has positioned itself as the auditor to new coins, developed through the Ethereum (ETH) smart contracts platform. Essentially, it is designed to check for any security issues, before a coin hits the market. That’s a strong value anchor for Quantstamp. Where To Buy QSP: Binance or Kucoin 7. Simple Token (OST) It’s basically used to power and link niche token economies from mainstream consumer apps and build a network of Branded Tokens with OpenST protocol, which businesses can use to launch Branded Tokens without doing blockchain development of their own. Until now crypto has only been powering upcoming DAPPs and very few tokens have been looking to integrate the current app infra to blockchain. So in a way the OpenST protocol could be used to build things like Steem, MobileGo, Cryptokitty, DNT etc. Even one consumer app like Cryptokitty clogged the Ethereum network. ST can be a good solution to add scalability to the Ethereum blockchain with its sidechain solution. OST is to ETH what ARDR is to NXT. Soon people will realize that sidechains are the solution to scale mainchains like ETH and NXT and sidechain projects coulds blow up. Where To Buy OST: Binance or Kucoin 8. ICON (ICX) ICON team has released an official wallet, ICONex. It is still only a desktop version, introduced by Chrome extension, but it will be expanded to mobile Android & iOS in the near future. According to the official announcement, ICONex supports not only native ICX coins of ICON Mainnet, but also ETH and ethereum-based ERC20 tokens. Currently there are only ethereum-based ERC20 ICX tokens in circulation, distributed to ICON ICO participants at the end of 2017 as a temporary substitution for native ICX coins. Once ICON Mainnet is launched officially, there will be a swap of ERC20 ICX tokens to native ICX coins. ICON Mainnet, functioning now in a test mode, was launched in January 2018. The official launch will be announced soon (presumably in March-April, 2018), as well as information about the swap of ERC20 ICX tokens to native ICX coins. After several months after publish numerous announcements about the token swap, the ERC20 ICX tokens will be burned. ICON is at an absolute value down at these levels. Where To Buy ICX: Binance or Kucoin 9. Vibe (VIBE) Vibe Coin is a platform designed to combine the benefits of blockchain with the emerging trend of virtual reality. The developers want to create new virtual spaces, which, among other things, make it possible to hold business meetings, attend live events, take part in sporting events and meet new people. Vibe is at the forefront and already today builds a platform that can be used for the upcoming virtual universe, the Vibehub. Vibe Coin is based on the Ethereum blockchain and is an ERC20 token. The token is used in the context of payment transactions on the platform, so that artists and teachers have the opportunity to reach millions of users via virtual reality. Monetizing virtual augmented and virtual reality content plays a particularly important role here. In order to give users a good chance of success, they have the freedom to become active in unique marketplaces within the framework of the Vibehubs. In addition, all Vibe payments and transactions are completed through Vibehub. Performers are ranked based on their online popularity. Tokens can be used to purchase merchandise or get access to music industry contacts. Eventually, they are expected to be accepted for ticket purchases. Vibe’s initial coin offering (ICO) made history by selling out in less than 5 minutes, raising $10 million in the process. Among its backers is Charlie Shrem, one of the most visible members of the Bitcoin community. Where to buy VIBE: Binance or Kucoin 10. WANCHAIN (WAN) What is Wanchain? Wanchain’s vision is rebuilding financial services. Wanchain is a global financial platform that connects, and exchanges value between different blockchains. Simply put, Wanchain is a ‘decentralized’ version of traditional banks in the current and future financial landscape. Why do we need Wanchain? We are living in times of a major digital transformation, a time where digital assets are entering the financial ecosystem at an unprecedented rate. As the adoption of digital assets is increasing, we are witnessing an appreciation in the value of these assets. This necessitates the existence of a ‘digital bridge’ to transfer value, in the form of digital currencies and/or assets, between different blockchains. How is Wanchain achieving this? Wanchain’s distributed ledger allows: Cross-Chain Asset Transfer: Asset transfers would be possible across major blockchains, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, as well as across consortium blockchains developed based on Wanchain protocol. Community developers can create independent services. Any blockchain — private, public, or a consortium chain — can integrate with Wanchain to establish connections between different ledgers and perform low cost inter-ledger asset transfers. The protocol also ensures stability and security of all cross-chain transfers. Transaction Privacy Protection: Wanchain protocol provides the option to execute private transactions, similar to those provided on privacy coin platforms, based on one-time addresses and ring signatures. Wanchain also allows digital asset holders to remain anonymous on its protocol. Functional Extensibility: Wanchain protocol allows credit and lending facilities, for businesses and individuals, for different digital currencies. Also, once consortium blockchains are integrated into Wanchain protocol, it also allows the issuance and trading of brand new digital assets. Complex Application Support: Community developers can develop more complicated applications based on smart contract and universal protocols. The intra-chain and cross-chain connections provide more options for further application development. 11. SONM (SNM) SONM (SNM) is a decentralised Amazon Web Services. The name stands for Supercomputer Organized by Network Mining. With a partnership with HP in the bag and already being listed on major exchanges, SONM has the capability to be the cryptocurrency that eats into AWS’s market. What they call “fog computing” in their whitepaper is essentially decentralised cloud computing. This means anyone can host websites, develop applications, produce machine learning and perform calculations using SONM architecture. Their whitepaper makes so much sense that DADI, a hyped up pre-ICO, was found to have copied it word for word. Where to buy SNM: Binance or Kucoin

12. Oyster Pearl (PRL)

Oyster Pearl (PRL) solves exactly the sort of problem you would expect the new generation of cryptocurrencies to solve: ads. Now if you’re using this website without adblock, you’ll notice advertisements within the content and in the sidebar.. Someone has to pay the bills.

PRL eradicates that clutter and intrusiveness of display advertising while ensuring content creators like us don’t get punished for it. PRL uses the IOTA Tangle to store users’ files, and uses a website visitor’s GPU and CPU processing power to ensure those files are maintained on the distributed ledger. It also uses the Ethereum blockchain with its PRL ERC20 tokens to pay out content providers who have integrated this technology on their website.

Yes, I too have a lot of questions about the implementation of this tech over a wide variety of websites.. But internet ad revenue is growing every year, and if PRL can capture a small market of that, the potential is huge.

Solves a mass consumer problem with two existing technologies, IOTA and Ethereum.

High volume compared to market cap, which is a good sign for growth.

Where to buy PRL: Kucoin

13. Blockport (BPT)

Blockport, is another exchange. Though we think this exchange really stands out because it focusses on being a social exchange. We have seen tokens that support the exchanges do really well (in our January pick- KuCoin shares did 3500% in a month.) We think Blockport has a really solid team, it is also one of the first ICO’s from the Netherlands.

They successfully funded the project in their ICO with support of the AFM (Authority financial markets, sort of SEC for the US). So we think it is a good pick for the potential to see a big return. The token trades with discounted fees.

At the moment the token is trade-able on KuCoin. Blockport is planning to release their beta platform in March.

PROS: Social exchange

Supported by AFM

Good team

Beta in March 2018

Good communication

CONS: Another exchange Where To Buy BPT: Kucoin

14. Nebulas (NAS)

Nebulas (NAS) is so young that we don’t even know it’s market cap. It’s essentially Google for the blockchain, a distributed search framework.

It’s the first blockchain search engine, and it comes equipped with smart contract prediction, which is useful for people who want to… predict smart contracts. NAS is partnered with Tencent, and the testnet is already online. Mainnet is aimed to launch in Q1 2018.

The train hasn’t left yet in terms of valuation, so it’s definitely underbought.

Active dev team with constant updates on the Github repo.

Where to buy NAS: Gate.io or Etherdelta

15. EquiTrader (EQT)

A favorite of many that is currently under a $5 million market cap. EquiTrader is a social platform for traders where they can share their ideas and get rewarded by the community.

EQT comes equipped with trading charts, indicators, trading tools and other features which will make it easy to make technical analysis. You will also have the ability to shadow other traders and make automatic trades based on what they do.

Where to buy EQT: Crytopia

16. Mercury Protocol (GMT)

I’m sure you’ve thought someone would create a messaging app using blockchain. And someone has! The Mercury Protocol (GMT) is currently deployed in a messaging app called Dust. The project has Mark Cuban as one of their advisors.

In a cryptocurrency market predicated on hype, that gives GMT an edge over its competitors. Messaging using Mercury Protocol is supposed to be more secure and more private. It also allows for cross-platform integration of both services are using the protocol – if WhatsApp ever decides to use it, for example, you’d be able to use WhatsApp to send a message to someone on their Telegram.

First blockchain based messaging token (GMT stands for Global Messaging Token)

Mark Cuban being associated with this project generates hype, which is very important for the price of cryptocurrencies.

Where to buy GMT: Etherdelta

Cryptocurrency and blockchain technology have become incredibly popular amongst individual and institutional investors across the globe. Many have been leaning more towards investing in hedge funds relating to the cryptocurrency industry instead of the individual cryptocurrencies.

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Who Did We Miss?

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