Top 5 Cryptocurrencies List (Review)

In our previous article on investing in cryptocurrency we covered some of the fundamental principles of investing in the finacial markets (including cryptocurrency) that EVERY investor, trader or speculator should know if they’re considering putting their money into these very volatile markets. It’s highly recommended if you haven’t already, you read that article before this one as this one will moreover focus on our top Cryptocurrencies and why we believe these are good investments. As was noted on the aforementioned article, we chose the below tokens/coins based on the value we believe each token/coin represents. This list may in-fact change periodically, but for the time being at the beginning of January 2018 – these are our top 5 cryptocurrencies list of companies and their respective currencies we have an eye on – and why.

CAS – Cashaa LTC – Litecoin ETH – Ethereum BTC – Bitcoin NEO – Neo

Besides reading this article, one should of course do their own due diligence by reading the respective white papers, visiting the companies websites, and of course looking at their historical price performance on places like CoinMarketCap.com (or the exchanges they’re listed on as well). With all that being said, let’s go ahead and jump into looking at each company for what it is.

See the Top 5 Cryptocurrencies List of Company’s We’ve Analyzed Below

Cashaa (CAS Token):

When it comes to Cashaa, with their CAS Token we considered a few things including:

Summary of Why We believe Cashaa Earns Its Spot on the Top 5 Cryptocurrencies List

All in all, it’s easy to look at Cashaa and say that “they’re just doing what a handful of other companies have done”. However, this type of observation only considers the surface level of what Cashaa as a company means for the entire industry. If we look at their “competitors” who exist to provide similar platforms in different markets, such as: OmiseGO (OMG) or Populous (PPT) why talk about competitors to Cashaa?

Any company with a solid value proposition will have competition in their market. This is not always a bad thing, and in most cases (for early stage company’s) can be a good thing as it indicates to investors ‘market feasibility‘. Meaning: there wouldn’t be businesses that are growing and thriving in an industry where there weren’t people who desired the product/service they offer. And, with that being said you can see from looking at OMG, and PPT that they were able to capture a large amount of market capitalization ranging from: $826M (PPT) to $1.6B (OMG). Will Cashaa become as big as the two aforementioned companies? No one knows for sure, but based on what we’ve seen – they’re off to a good start. We expect Cashaa’s (CAS) Token to be trading on a good number of exchanges in the next 2-3 months, and will be sure to post an update when that time comes.

Litecoin (LTC):

There have been more than a good handful of industry analysts (FIAT markets and Crypto) who have valued LTC at 1/10th of what BTC is worth, on any given day. If that is true, then it means that at time of writing when BTC is valued at: $10,240 per-bitcoin – Litecoin should be valued at $1,024 – whereas, instead it is currently valued (as of writing) at: $164. If what financial analysts have to say has any merit, then it means that there is a huge growth potential waiting to erupt with LTC. With that being said, it may be a good time (now that most cryptocurrencies are bearish to consider getting your hands on some Litecoin.

If Litecoin is to be considered the “Silver” to Bitcoin’s “Gold”, then we can however see how Gold is still, even in the commodities and precious metals market to be valued much more than silver. So, with that in mind – is what these analysts have to say really worth the face value of which the analysis is based off of? Based on what we can see when comparing Gold (left) to Silver (right), we don’t think so.

What is does mean however is that, one could accurately make the comparison that BTC’s price differential compared to LTC’s (62x greater) is not too far off in comparison to Gold vs Silver’s price differential of 79-times (greater in value).

What we can deduce however is that LTC’s price performance over the last 12-months, has had much greater increases than Silver has over the same period of time YOY. If you’re looking to invest over a longer-term time frame, then you may consider LTC as a good option to BTC because of the price being much lower, and returns over longer periods of time still outperform silver in the precious metal markets. To learn more about Litecoin (LTC) visit their website here.

Summary of why Litecoin (LTC) deserves its spot on the Top 5 Cryptocurrencies List.

All in all, Litecoin (LTC) is one of the original cryptocurrencies that began around the same time Bitcoin did, but did not garner as much popularity due predominately to lack of driving product/brand awareness to Litecoin itself.

Bitcoin on the other-hand certainly understood the importance of marketing of the cryptocurrency for which it is trying to increase adoption for. One could say with all things considered, Bitcoin is like Apple – where, Litceoin is more like Samsung.

They’re both good companies who make great products, but as most will agree – they prefer an iPhone, or an Apple product over a Samsung the majority of the time – even though it’s more expensive. We hope this comparison and analysis of Litecoin has given you some more reasons to consider why you may want to purchase some for yourself, or perhaps #HODL on to the Litecoin you already own.

Ethereum (ETH):

Some could say that: Unlike Litecoin, which didn’t have/do much to push their currency and drive awareness/adoption for Litecoin, Ethereum was capable of doing the opposite. The creator, Vitalik Buterin tells his story like so:

He first discovered blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies through Bitcoin in 2011, and was immediately excited by the technology and its potential. He cofounded Bitcoin Magazine in September 2011, and after two and a half years looking at what the existing blockchain technology and applications had to offer, wrote the Ethereum white paper in November 2013. He now leads Ethereum’s research team, working on future versions of the Ethereum protocol.

Needless to say, since Ethereum’s inception in 2013 it has skyrocketed to surpass even the likes of Litecoin to snag the #2 spot for market capitalization in only 5-years, whereas Bitcoin has been around since 2009, which is almost twice as much as Ethereum. Arguably, because Ethereum’s founding team understood the competitiveness and importance of establishing a brand presence for what is considered by many to be a: better, faster, more secure form of decentralized applications in addition to being on a decentralized platform. What this really means is: complete, instant, transparent, cryptocurrency exchanges.

If this is your first time hearing about Ethereum, I’d suggest going to their website. They have a great developer ecosystem, and as a result have attracted more: Entrepreneurs, Innovators, Developers, and Creators. Because of this, here at CDN we suspect that in 3-5 years, Ethereum may not just compete with Bitcoin, but perhaps even rival it. To reference their mission statement:

Ethereum is a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts: applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third-party interference. These apps run on a custom built blockchain, an enormously powerful shared global infrastructure that can move value around and represent the ownership of property. This enables developers to create markets, store registries of debts or promises, move funds in accordance with instructions given long in the past (like a will or a futures contract) and many other things that have not been invented yet, all without a middleman or counterparty risk. The project was bootstrapped via an ether presale in August 2014 by fans all around the world. It is developed by the Ethereum Foundation, a Swiss non-profit, with contributions from great minds across the globe. Recap: Why Ethereum (ETH) deserves its Spot on the Top 5 Cryptocurrencies List.

With the refresher in mind, this is why we consider Ethereum one of our best considered cryptocurrencies to invest in. And by the way, if you’re fearful of the markets in its present time (January 2018) just remember this famous quote by Warren Buffet:

Note: this is not financial advise, and CDN does not provide financial advise.

Ironically, when it comes to Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency markets Warren Buffet is not a supporter, or endorser and can be seen in several interviews expressing his doubt on the cryptocurrecy markets and their ability to exist, let alone thrive. Watch the video below, to see the interview.

Warren Buffett thinks cryptocurrencies will end badly from CNBC.

Bitcoin (BTC):

Interestingly I forecasted that near 6.5% of the global population knew about Bitcoin, and that because of this as well as the increase in adoption, education of its utilization’s for the same things described above with Cashaa, Litecoin, and Ethereum. What did make Bitcoin the clear choice initially however is not its speed, or efficiency but rather the idea of the Blockchain it allowed others to see a use and create alternative currencies and tokens to utilize on the Blockchain as well.

If you’re not familiar withe the Blockchain, then please refer to the image below:

So, as can be observed from the image above this is the 2nd reason we believe that Bitcoin will continue to thrive until more people are drawn to Ethereum. However, with all things considered there’s no reason there can’t be multiple cryptocurrencies, as again – it’s not about the cryptocurrencies as much as it is the underlying technology which is the Blockchain verification and transparent ledger. To quote from the image above:

At time of writing, Bitcoin is secured by 3,500,000 TH/s!

That’s more than 10,000 largest banks in the world – combined. Ethereum, which is still more mature, is secured by about 12.5TH/s, more than Google! And, it is only two years old and still – basically in test mode.

For reference and context, the most expensive available GPU in the world for mining cryptocurrency and super computing costs $40,000 and only produces 94/mhz. What this means is that the computing power that Bitcoin has established is simply phenomenal. Despite how much time goes on, Bitcoin will likely remain one of the major cryptocurrencies for at least the next decade to come. It was after-all founded in 2009, whereas Ethereum was conceived in 2013 and raised nearly $18.4-million nearly the same amount as Cashaa with $18.7. What’s most interesting is that many of the cryptocurrencies that were built on Ethereum have raised far more capital than they had, and in consideration of Bitcoin – which didn’t have funding, but rather just support through adoption and education.

Why Bitcoin (BTC) Deserves its Spot on the Top 5 Cryptocurrencies List (it’s Bitcoin)

The last and final reason we believe Bitcoin (in our own opinion) may be considered to be one of the best cryptocurrency investments is because it being one of the “founding coins” of the cryptocurrency industry. When the FIAT world no longer exists and Banks crumble like the end of the movie Fight Club. The reality of the matter is, in less than two decades there’s no reason with all the tremendous upward mobility in multiple verticals that car manufacturers may not even make cars anymore. Flying over the earth to get somewhere long distance may take longer than going underneath it. Drones are likely to be more commonplace once increased adoption is established and autonomous vehicles won’t exclude taxi-drones. Many companies like Airbus are already testing this, and can be seen in the video below. In the video below, it’s easy to imagine how cryptocurrency will make digital payments seamless.

NEO:

It would appear to anyone that Neo has only recently picked up major growth and expansion in market capitalization, because of this we can assume this growth is likely to continue, however what is more telling is the actual Githubs submits frequency. As can be observed from the image below however, there was and is active submits and commits taking place, which is a good sign that the team is working to improve the ecosystem to attract more: developers, entrepreneurs, and innovators.

Until next time, these have been our top 5 cryptocurrencies list and why we think they may be considered to be some of “the best cryptocurrency investments” that you can make. But don’t take our advice (really) – please do your own due diligence.