It’s cool to HODL with Bitcoin and be assured that you will make money in the future, but if you want to make quicker shorter term and medium term gains, then altcoins are the way to go.

And there’s definitely no shortage of altcoins in the market to make money off of(look at how Chainlink jumped up in price recently). If you’re smart, you can definitely make a decent amount of funds regularly on a weekly or monthly basis (then either HODL that or invest it in some tokens that you know will do very well in the future).

I’m going to list my personal set of tokens that I believe are some of the best altcoins to invest in. Some of these are probably things you’ve heard about - like BAT, which is extremely popular because of the news it has been making, like when people found it has been growing faster than Chrome. Others are probably more off the radar, but are really worth checking out.

Basic Attention Token (BAT)

I think Basic Attention Token should be in everybody’s investment portfolio. It is easily one of the most valuable altcoins that has proper reason to become one of the most recognizable applications of a decentralized economy.

I’ll give you a quick run-through of what BAT does: it is a three part economy that focuses on making advertising revenue distribution more fair, while also protecting users privacy and increasing web page speed times. It blocks ads and trackers by default. There’s more to it, but this is the gist of it.

The Brave browser and BAT project has made a lot of headlines recently because it has achieved some notable milestones over the past 6 or so months. I remember when I first used the Brave browser last year, my interest was piqued, but Chrome was still the better browser. Now, however, things have changed entirely.

It is super functional (though not quite as functional as Chrome yet), and many of the slated features have arrived, such as the Brave ads program, where people can view advertisements and earn money. It has also gotten attention because it is growing two times as fast as Chrome, and has surpassed Opera and Firefox in terms of users. Big stuff.

The project was founded by Mozilla co-founder Brendan Eich (who also created the Javascript language), so you know that there is someone with insight and experience working on the effort.

Maker (MKR)

Stablecoins are a big part of 2019. You hear so much news of banks considering releasing their own stablecoin, Tether and Bitfinex getting into trouble, Stellar working on a stablecoin etc.

It seems to be a trend that isn’t going to die down anytime soon. Assuming that stablecoins will become even more prevalent, I expect that the MKR token (which is one part of the MakerDAO ecosystem ) will be one to succeed.

DAI is your garden variety stablecoin, with the distinction being that the MKR token itself. MKR is a governance token that lets users participate in the decision making process, making it truly decentralized. It’s reassuring to know that users can vote on stability fees, collateral other than Ether and so on. The Maker foundation still plays a significant role in making decisions, but there’s no doubt that users have much more say here than with other tokens.

It’s transparent, in other words.

QASH

The QASH token has been launched by Quione, which runs the Liquid exchange. It is going to undergo a rebranding to the Liquid token in the upcoming months, but what’s in a name?

Liquid’s primary distinction is its focus on fiat pairings, and high liquidity. In fact, it says that it wants to bridge the fiat and crypto worlds. By solving the liquidity problem, Liquid hopes to remove the dependency on tokens like Bitcoin and make the altcoin prices in the market more fair, or at least less unpredictable.

It is also releasing a host of other features that ought to put it in a stronger position towards the end of 2019 - features for pro trader, for example. Another promising feature is Liquid’s World Book, which compiles trade orders from exchanges across the world into one order book, meaning you can trade crypto with any fiat pairing. This removes the isolation of certain tokens to certain exchanges.

Exchanges will have to improve as the market gets taken more seriously, and I think the Liquid exchange is one of those exchanges that is actively making an effort to improve their features.

Hydro (HYDRO)

Remember when I said that projects with applicable use cases would survive another purge? Hydro was particularly strong in my mind when I said that, because of the vision the team has for the platform. It’s not just a token with a single use case, but rather it is building an entire ecosystem of services that I think is necessary if a crypto wants to grow. It’s not just about payments, it’s about much more.

The suite of services that Hydro offers includes P2P payments, B2B payments, remittances, loans and tokenization. I like to think of it as a one-stop shop for several payments related crypto services. Why go for something else?

To integrate the whole platform for users, it is also building a new standard called ERC-1484 that is basically a digital identity management focused initiative. Through this, there is one single piece of data that connects it all together. This will form the basis for interaction with the various services and it’s a very smart way to go about it.

Of course, just because some team is claiming to build a comprehensive suite of services doesn’t mean it’s going to work out. So many crypto projects say that. But the thing about the Hydro project is that the team is actively completing their milestones. Their work ethic is very encouraging.

If the ecosystem can be fleshed out and attract users, I can imagine the token really jumping up in price by the end of the year.

Loopring (LRC)

Loopring is a protocol that is powered by zk-SNARKs, a cutting edge research that is also used by projects like Zcash. Like Liquid, the focus is on improving trading on exchanges. Like stablecoins, decentralized exchanges is another trend that is strong in 2019.

Loopring is building a new protocol for DEXs which is non-custodial, meaning that users are in control of their own assets. With some high-profile hacks happening in recent times, the need for secure and user-controlled assets is all the more necessary.

What’s great about it? Any exchange can use the Loopring protocol to become a DEX. Now that’s some game-changing stuff.

2020 is definitely an interesting year for the market. Not just because prices are rising, but because tokens are making usable platforms and forming new use cases for cryptocurrencies. I think that there will be another altcoin purge coming soon and only those projects and platforms with legitimate use cases will survive and I think that the tokens I listed will be some of them.