The Best Cryptocurrencies Plays for the Week Beginning Feb. 12, 2018 (BNTY, ETC, GAS, STRAT, and ZCL)

To read our Top Coins for the Week for January 29, click here.

This week has many important events from five conferences on three continents along to Bitcoin future expirations occurring on the CBOE. Each week there are coins that should outperform that standard return of bitcoin (BTC). This week similarly has many specific events that will drive demand for certain unique cryptocurrencies.

The Week’s Events

The week ahead is full of both future expirations on the CBOE while major conferences are taking place in St. Petersburg, Dubai, Calgary, Acapulco, and Silicon Valley. Beyond the standard conferences and futures expiration, there are also multiple cryptocurrencies that should benefit directly from the week’s events. On the back of positive events, and the entire crypto market should continue its current rebound from the bitcoin low of under $6,000. Specific coins such as; BNTY, ETC, GAS, STRAT, and ZCL should all continue to outperform BTC while events like the CBOE future expiration and major conferences drive the entire market North.

CBOE Future Contract Expiration

The CBOE future contracts on bitcoin for the month of January expire February 14, 2018. This is the first month there are more contracts going “long” or betting BTC will appreciate than going “short” and expecting BTC to depreciate in value. This is a very positive sign for BTC’s price in the short term as last month when the future’s traders betting BTC will depreciate they clearly manipulated the market downward the day of futures expiration for the CBOE and CBOT. This month if they do use their invisible hand in the market to move it up or down, at least it will be with their future’s positions, moving the value of BTC higher. The futures traders are clearly the “whales” in these markets, and their influence impacts the markets greatly. Their betting BTC will appreciate heading into the five major conferences this week is a very positive occurrence.

Five Major Conferences

To keep it short because the King wrote a piece on this week’s conferences already, there will be a major expo or conference in; St. Petersburg, Dubai, Calgary, Acapulco, and Silicon Valley. Each conference has a slightly different focus with the main technology behind all of them being the blockchain. Some conferences are choosing to focus on the financial anarchists that have helped build the crypto community from the beginning while others are focusing on blockchains integration into mainstream commerce. Regardless of the purpose of each individual conference what is important to note is:

How many there are and, The sheer amount of publicity they will produce.

Sentiment controls the cryptocurrency markets, and with so many investors being scared off by last month’s 60 percent correction, positive news stories are a very important piece to this market’s continued recovery. Having five conferences on three continents in under seven days will provide the much needed positive publicity the blockchain sector has been lacking for over a month now. January was a month of FUD, from China to India and South Korea. February will hopefully be the opposite providing positive news, increasing sentiment overall while driving the cryptocurrency markets higher again.

BNTY: Bounty0x

Bounty0x (BNTY) is one of the few coins not on this list for their conference participation in the upcoming week. This makes BNTY an outlier as most of the coins listed are presenting at conferences driving their value and publicity in the coming days. BNTY is trading at $.147 with a market cap of approximately eighteen million. On January 7, 2018, BNTY approached the $1.00 mark. Currently, it sits at a price point almost eighty-five percent lower than it’s all-time high set only one month ago.

A bounty is a reference to the Wild Wild West when there would be bounties for arresting outlaws. On the BNTY platform, a “Bounty Host” will list an assignment with an attached value. “Bounty Hunters” can attempt to fulfill that assignment and once complete “Bounty Sheriffs” verify that it was an honest transaction by both parties. These bounties can be anything from designing software, assisting a dev team, marketing, job consulting to actual bounties for finding bad guys! BNTY’s first bounty was for hacks that have occurred in the crypto world. Think Dog the Bounty Hunter meets the blockchain.

This week is a very exciting week for BNTY. February 15, 2018, they are finishing a complete redesign of their platform; integrating social media automation, an enhanced bounty host dashboard with campaign stats and much more during their Alpha 2.0 Launch. Alpha 2.0 is being launched within the next 48 hours, and the price of BNTY is responding accordingly. BNTY has risen steadily the last three days, significantly exceeding returns of BTC. BNTY is also being listed on COBINHOOD, February 14, 2018. This is less likely to impact price as this is old news and should be built into BNTY’s current valuation. However, more volume and more exchanges is never a negative thing!

BNTY has a few opaque Twitter messages regarding upcoming partnerships they are going to announce, but of course, this is not 100 percent confirmed, and they have yet to announce any new partnerships. With the listing of a new exchange and a complete revamp of their platform with the Alpha 2.0 launch, this should be an exceptional week for BNTY, even without conference presence.

STRAT: STRATIS

STRATIS (STRAT) has been on the conference tour of late. Publicity drives the value of a cryptocurrency coupled with its utility. The publicity has been gaining steadily as STRAT has begun spending money advertising and sponsoring conferences. This generates awareness regarding the STRATIS platform and provides the necessary publicity to drive the price of their coin, STRAT. The advertising and publicity have slowly been increasing the past month for STRAT but what is most interesting is STRAT’s platform to release ICOs was released in January with two flagship ICOs announced. Instead of rising as expected the value of STRAT dropped significantly, similarly to the rest of the cryptocurrency markets. ETH at one point was in the process of releasing their first ICO, approximately a year ago today. STRAT is nowhere near as advanced or adopted as NEO or ETH, but if it can penetrate any of the ICO market already dominated by these major players, it will also become a very valuable cryptocurrency.

STRAT specializes as a Blockchain-as-a-Service (Baas) platform focusing on the .NET software framework and the C# type-safe, object-oriented language that enables developers to create a variety of different applications that run on .NET. The result STRAT has the ability to have a real use case for businesses. The C# language and .NET platform allow businesses to integrate themselves on to the blockchain using an already familiar language and platform. STRAT this quarter is releasing their new Breeze wallet with TumbleBit. This technology makes transactions completely private and unlinkable. What is most significant about this technology is it can be used on the Bitcoin network making the transferring from your TumbleBit wallet a private transaction. STRAT’s ability to release ICOs as a BaaS platform and TumbleBit wallet is what makes them a strong long-term play.

STRAT is on this list not because of its long-term potential but because of its current likelihood of outpacing the market this week. STRAT is smallest market cap coin that is on the front page of sponsors for the Dallas SuperConference. The most common comparison is between STRAT and ETH. ETH on February 16, 2017, was trading at $12.50 per coin and is currently trading at $860, down from an all-time high of $1,326 on January 15, 2018. If you purchased ETH and held for one year you made approximately ten thousand percent (buy price $12.50, sell price $1,250). STRAT was trading at over $20 per coin multiple times throughout January and is currently valued at $7.47 with a market cap of $740 million. ETH is one of the main sponsors of the Dallas SuperConference, but so is STRAT. It is unlikely ETH has another year of ten thousand percent returns, which is why finding alternatives like STRAT which can yield 20-50x returns in the year if the ICO market continues to grow is very important. ETH and NEO will always have their places solidified in the cryptocurrency space, but entrants like STRAT can very easily take a significant market share from them.

STRAT intends to discuss the turnkey solutions they have created for businesses to implement the blockchain at the Dallas SuperConference. They also intend to describe their new partnerships, ICOs, how they utilize C# and .NET development frameworks in these turnkey solutions which are blockchain based. Having shed sixty percent of their market cap in the last month even though they have two flagship ICOs beginning, a great wallet, and sponsorships of major conference is illogical. Yes, there are many scam coins. STRAT is not one of them. Many coins should go to zero for having no utility or real value. STRAT now has utility and provides value to already formed businesses resulting in what should be their continued appreciation in value. This weekend’s Dallas SuperConference should provide a catalyst for STRAT’s ascension to its former glory.

ETC: Ethereum Classic

Ethereum Classic, ETC, not to be confused with its forked cousin ETH. ETH has stolen the spotlight of late from ETC becoming the primary ICO platform and one of the top three most valuable cryptocurrencies by market cap. The Dallas SuperConference has Bitcoin and Ethereum in its name. However, the ETH they are referring to is slightly different than ETC. Sharing the same name will provide ETC many benefits ETH will receive from the huge publicity of the Dallas SuperConference. Although, “Ethereum Classic” is not in the name of the SuperConference they are still one of the top coins sponsoring it. Many coins are going to be present as it is a major conference, but very few are listed on the main webpage. ETC is present on the homepage next to the likes of BTC, ETH, LTC, NEM, DASH, ZEC, and STRAT. This conference will provide significant publicity but also share with the world another very exciting reality for ETC holders.

ETC will be having an airdrop of Callisto (CLO) at block 5,500,000. A snapshot will occur on approximately March 2, 2018, and every holder of ETC will receive one coin of CLO. Callisto is a separate blockchain that is based on ETH protocols with its own cryptocurrency, the CLO. What is unique about CLO is it introduces a Cold staking protocol that rewards coin holders for being network participants. Between January 13 and January 15 ETC jumped to above $46 per coin as the airdrop was announced. Currently, ETC is sitting at $29.30 with a market cap of approximately $3 billion. The King expects ETC to approach and most likely exceed the $46 price that was set following the airdrop announcement as the date of the CLO airdrop approaches.

ETC will have a continued upward trend North, greatly outpacing BTC, as it approaches block 5.5 million. The SuperConference should provide added momentum to what has already been a week of Northern trends. Following the SuperConference the momentum will not die as the airdrop is less than three weeks away. Expect ETC to possibly take a small dip between the SuperConference and the airdrop but with the final price approaching the all-time high that was achieved when the airdrop was originally announced.

ZCL: ZClassic

ZClassic (ZCL) is not presenting at the SuperConference but their fork, zcash (ZEC) is! This does not guarantee ZCL will receive much exposure, but it is very likely there will be some overlap. ZCL is a privacy coin that removed the founder’s tax from ZEC. This provides more incentive to the miners without further providing an income for the founders. ZCL has promised a “co-fork” with Bitcoin (BTC) on February 28, 2018. They have yet to state the specific block they intend to take the snapshot at. However, all holders of ZCL and BTC will receive one Bitcoin Private (BTCP), a Bitcoin branded privacy coin, directly following the snapshot. BTCP will be provided in an equal ratio of 1:1 per coin of BTC and ZCL held at the time of the snapshot. ZCL broke $235 on January 7, 2018, as anticipation rose for the upcoming ZCL fork. Originally it had been planned to take place in January but has since been rescheduled to February 28, 2018. ZCL has a meetup occurring February 21, 2018, in the technology capital of the United States; San Francisco. By the time of the BTCP fork, the team will have held meetups in New York, Austin, and San Francisco demonstrating their ability to launch a forked coin successfully.

ZCL is currently trading at $106 per coin with a market cap of $350 million. The market cap of NXT soared to over a $2 billion as the IGNIS airdrop approached. BTCP is a fork of BTC and ZCL that adds the privacy components BTC is currently lacking. If there was going to be a successful fork to pay attention to, BTCP would be it. The team has been promoting this fork for months and at a price less than fifty percent of where it was one month ago, ZCL should have a rapid price ascension. The San Francisco developer meetup coupled with the Dallas SuperConference should shed significant light on ZCL immediately preceding a major fork. The fork is providing, in essence, a massive dividend in the form of BTCP. The dividend is the same value for BTC as ZCL holders which is why the King expects the value of ZCL to trend North at a rate much faster than BTC leading up to the fork. This week provides two catalysts for ZCL with the final catalyst being the fork on February 28, 2018.

GAS: GAS

This week and the prior week are the weeks each month you should be accumulating GAS on exchanges (particularly Binance). The delivery structure Binance has chosen to provide its NEO holders with their GAS payments is awkward, to say the least. If you hold NEO in a separate wallet, not on Binance, you receive GAS payments daily. However, if you hold NEO on the Binance exchange your GAS payment is almost identical, except it comes in one lump sum at the beginning of each month. Most people do not possess enough NEO for their GAS dividend to be substantial. This leads many to flood the market with GAS at a very low price as they unload two, three, or ten dollars’ worth of GAS. This crashes the GAS market on Binance to dip dramatically for the first weeks of GAS being released each month. By the middle of the month the price has stabilized, and by the end of the month, the price is peaking.

To send transactions on the NEO blockchain GAS is required as a payment for those who supply the computational power to host the blockchain. As the end of the month approaches the available GAS to Binance users becomes less and less as most have sold their minuscule portions when rates were lowest to clear their portfolio of annoying of small holdings. Those that chose to purchase all those pesky little portions of GAS now have the ability to unload them at the end of each month before the next grouping of GAS payments being released. The price of GAS has not risen expeditiously yet, which means there is still time to accumulate GAS prior to the monthly spike. This spike is most likely to occur between February 22 and March 2, providing the investor between one and ten days to take advantage of the price climb.

Conclusion

The market correction that has recently occurred provides plenty of buying opportunities in the cryptocurrency markets. This week, in particular, will see a significant rebound from a multitude of factors. The CBOE futures expiration coupled with numerous major blockchain conferences provide catalyst after catalyst for market growth. Individual cryptocurrencies also have many important dates in the coming weeks which is why it is important to be aware of the calendar and focus on the upcoming few weeks.

The cryptocurrency markets are extremely volatile, but part of that volatility includes both corrections and rebounds. We have now lived through the correction. Hopefully, you are still holding and accumulating for the rebound!

To read the King’s prior articles, to find out which ICOs he currently recommends, or to get in contact directly with the King, you can on Twitter (@JbtheCryptoKing) or Reddit (ICO updates and Daily Reports).

To read the entire series of ‘Top Coins for the Week,’ click here.