You wouldn’t be faulted for thinking Vertcoin is a brand new Cryptocurrency.

If you only heard about Vertcoin recently, you may be surprised to find out that the currency was actually created way back in early 2014.

After initial highs of over $5, the coin tapered off and stagnated under a few cents per coin for over 2 years.

Then in 2017 Vertcoin finally started fulfilling its potential and roared into life, rising to values of over $1 per Vertcoin.

This was not a surprise to those who have followed Vertcoin and are aware of its impressive feature set.

Vertcoin is often compared to, and considered a potential successor to Litecoin.

This stems from the fact that the two coins share similar technology. Both Vertcoin and Litecoin adopted Segwit before Bitcoin did, both have 2.5 minute block times and both may ultimately have similar supplies.

These similarities are due to the fact that Vertcoin is a fork from Litecoin based on Vertcoin’s ability to foresee issues arising from ASIC mining.

Vertcoin also is the first coin to offer stealth addresses, offering users more privacy than Litecoin can.

So why the massive difference between the market caps of Vertcoin and Litecoin? Noone can tell you for sure- but what you can do when assessing the coins is to check if there is anything technical preventing Vertcoin from rising up the ranks of the coins by market cap.

Are there any fundamental issues with Vertcoin that are the reason the market cap is currently under 35m?

In my opinion, the answer is a resounding no: Vertcoin is fundamentally an excellent coin- some could argue superior to the overwhelming majority of the coins you might see when checking Coin Market Cap.

Does that give credibility to people who argue that Vertcoin simply needs better marketing- maybe a branding overhaul? Perhaps the only reason, they argue, that Vertcoin hasn’t yet reached its market cap potential is that the marketing is simply not there.

Perhaps. And the publicity surrounding a re-branding could cause massive price action for Vertcoin.

If the Vertcoin community went through 3 phases where they 1) accepted proposals for a new name artwork, 2) voted on them down to some finalists (Only allowing coin holders to vote) and 3) did a final vote to pick a winner, they could get massive waves of headlines and incoming interest from people hearing about Vertcoin for the first time.

This is, however, a strategy that Vertcoin will almost certainly not take. The Vertcoin community are stout believers in the coin and its properties. They are against doing anything purely for show. They are not a community looking to get new users based on a hollow publicity stunt.

In other words, the Vertcoin community are the type of folks who are committed to substance over style.

Vertcoin is the nerdy unassuming girl who didn’t catch your eye at first, but once you finally did meet her and started talking to her and discovered the nuances of her personality, you immediately fell in love with her.

User D4wn0ff473 on r/Vertcoin comments:

Rebranding is a scheme and nothing more it has absolutely no meaningful contribution and changes nothing about the coin or environment.

This reflects the prevailing attitude in the Vertcoin community. That if your coin is good enough- if the features are solid enough, the market will find out about it and get involved based on those fundamentals rather than any sort of “scheme”.

This seems to be working.

Mentions of Vertcoin have gone up dramatically over the last few months.

And it seems when people find out about Vertcoin, they are all asking the same question: “How had I not heard of this before?”

A coin with a feature set and ecosystem as solid as Vertcoin should be a lot more famous- and in my opinion, much higher up the market cap charts.

It seems that Vertcoin is very sticky. When people find out about it, they recegnize its quality and they are likely to have a positive view of Vertcoin and be more willing to get some coins themselves.

The increased attention that Vertcoin is getting has been noticable- from many Reddit posts to even token sales (mine) accepting Vertcoin directly. You can expect to see more and more attention for Vertcoin in the coming months.

I believe in Vertcoin, that’s why I bought a bunch of coins and have chosen to make Vertcoin one of the main ways to contribute to Ethercade’s tokensale.

The fact is that when people hear about Vertcoin, they LIKE it. They recognize its quality and they want to add it to their portfolio. As Vertcoin’s popularity begins to grow, so too will its marketcap. I believe Vertcoin can surpass its former all time highs- if it stays the course of putting quality above “schemes”.