In a bear market it may seem strange to some to go hunting for alts to buy while everyone’s panic selling. I would argue that this is actually a very good time to go shopping around. There’s many coins at lows we may not see again when the market turns bullish.

No-one knows for sure whether or not the bleeding’s stopped, but as BTC has returned to the price it was before the crazy winter ’17 pump, it’s likely that many inexperienced investors (who’ve gotten cold-feet from recent, high-profile and calculated FUD) have now been shaken out and we’ll see a recovery soon. Cryptos are not going anywhere. Though the media, banks and governments would like them to disappear; the genie is out of the bottle now.

In this blog I’ll concentrate specifically on Privacy coins.

5) Particl (PART) $13.86 0.00201130 BTC

I have mixed feelings about Particl. On the one-hand the tech is great, on the other-hand they’ve struggled to find a community. This is not to be dismissed as trivial as one of their aims is to become a decentralised marketplace. For a coin that’s been on Bittrex for a long time now it really should be picking up more of a following.

Nevertheless the development side of the team certainly know what they’re doing. Particl has cold-staking, beautiful-looking wallets on various platforms and fantastic privacy features.

Now under $14, PART was recently trading at $47 and has lost almost half its BTC value from recent highs.

4) PivX (PIVX) $4.37 0.00067516 BTC

PivX is in some ways the opposite of Particl in that it has a very strong community behind it but the tech planned isn’t quite as sexy.

It’s now a very well-established coin with a large and committed following.

Originally a fork of Dash, PivX developers claim they have now: “completely customized PIVX’s own codebase”. There’s also some interesting items on the roadmap, including: A DEX, an iOS wallet and auto-back-up features.

2018 could be a good year for PivX

PivX is currently trading at under half its recent dollar value with a significant BTC drop, though it could possibly drop further in BTC in the short-term.

3) Dash (DASH) $418.73 0.06471960 BTC

Frankly, the tech behind Dash has been surpassed by many, much-younger coins. When you’re buying Dash however, you’re buying a battle-tested privacy coin that’s been around forever and has become a favourite among many.

As with PivX, it’s been both lower and much-higher in BTC terms in the recent past, so it’s difficult to call which way it will move against BTC in the event of a strong Bitcoin recovery. In dollars though it’s had a huge fall from trading at over $1600 in the recent past. It’s looking very undervalued right now.

2) Verge (XVG) $0.038816 0.00000595 BTC

XVG has had a huge fall from grace, both in dollars and BTC. However, it looks to be a top-30 coin that’s down rather than a coin that will fade into obscurity. This is perhaps the riskiest coin to buy on this list, but possibly the one that could be the most-rewarding to the brave buyer.

This is because of The Wraith Protocol — which was supposed to revolutionise privacy — arrived late on some platforms and there’s now a general feeling among some HODLers that it was a little underwhelming when it arrived (although this opinion may be tainted by people still angry at the tardiness of the devs).

If it can get back to near its recent highs, there’s a strong possibility of brave investors getting back their initial investment many times over. The crypto community has a short-memory when it comes to holding a grudge (see Ripple, once the work of Satan, it recently became everyone’s favourite coin).

1 ) Phore (PHR) $1.74 0.00027932 BTC

If you’ve read my blog before (thanks) you’ll know I’m very bullish on Phore. Over the past few days Phore has actually been holding up rather well and has been the only coin in the green in my Blockfolio on a few occasions.

Phore is actually like a hybrid of Particl and PivX, being forked from PivX and having a roadmap that’s somewhat similar to Particl. As with PivX it uses the Zerocoin Protocol.

As the youngest coin on the list, some may say it’s the riskiest. However, if you’ve been hanging out in the Phore community you’d know the development team is one of the most-hardworking and pleasant in crypto.

Phore’s decentralised marketplace has been in closed-beta for a while now and is about to go open-beta. I strongly suspect it may already be ready for prime-time but the devs are waiting for an opportune time to launch (not during a market crash ).

Aside from the marketplace, Phore has a lot planned that will make it stand out among privacy coins, inluding: smart contracts, atomic swaps and VR/AR functionality.

Of all the coins on this list I see it as having the most potential to increase substantially in price.