Best Cryptocurrencies to Invest in Now
Are you looking for a list of the top cryptocurrencies in circulation with a simple explanation of why they have been successful and what differentiates them from the others? Or maybe you’re looking for only the best cryptocurrency to invest in?
Then welcome to our top 14 of the best cryptocurrencies to invest in today.
In this post you will find:
- The list of the 14 best cryptocurrencies to trade or to invest in
- A simple explanation of their characteristics and their main uses
- Why they have been successful
Top Cryptocurrency List 2023
Since the launch of Bitcoin in 2009, thousands of projects have been launched to develop new virtual coins. Many of these have failed miserably, others have, in turn, established themselves and are growing steadily.
The cryptocurrency market is surely one of the new frontiers of investment, but also a new way of thinking about exchanges:
- Without intermediaries
- With reduced or no brokerage costs at all
- Very fast
Cryptocurrencies are interesting because they offer the speculative traders a very volatile asset, which can potentially be very profitable on a daily basis (in this regard, cryptocurrency charts can be very useful). However, they are also equally interesting for long-term investors who seek not to exploit the large short-term fluctuations, but rather to allocate their capital on a commodity that is likely to appreciate a lot in the future.
On the web, it is easy to find interesting success stories related to this type of investment. In some ways, we are witnessing a new gold rush.
How to invest in the best cryptocurrencies and digital coins
Before, to invest in a cryptocurrency, you’d need to buy it physically, as you would if you wanted to invest in gold or any other conventional currency.
Normally, you would buy gold, physically or you’d exchange your euros or Dollars to buy another currency in which you would like to invest.
As you can imagine, this approach can be quite awkward, particularly when it comes to cryptocurrency, as buying and maintaining this asset requires several steps and a good level of technical know-how.
For anyone wishing to physically own the good, this is the only way. Basically, you need to go to the official website of each individual cryptocurrency, and follow the instructions to buy and preserve it, usually through a digital wallet.
However, if you simply wish to invest in the highs (and lows) of the intrinsic value of cryptocurrency, there are far easier and more comfortable ways.
Here’s what we think works best.
The best way to invest in the top cryptocurrencies
The most convenient and simplest way to invest in cryptocurrencies is through CFDs.
CFDs (Contracts for Difference) are derivative contracts, managed by financial brokers.
This means you’ll be able to invest or speculate on the cryptocurrency’s value, without having to physically own it.
The CFD will reflect the actual price of the good (in this case Bitcoin, Ethereum, and all other cryptocurrencies), and you’ll be able to sell or purchase the contract, just as you would with any other stock, with all the benefits of the case.
Here are some interesting features:
- Since financial brokers manage CFDs, you’ll probably be allowed to use financial leverage. If used properly, financial leverage allows investors to open positions on goods with significantly higher values than those which would otherwise be only affordable with the capital of many investors;
- CFD contracts can be bought and sold short. This means, for instance, that you could speculate and bet on a fall in cryptocurrency values, such as the boom of speculative bubbles (Bitcoin being the most famous);
- There are several trading tools that can increase security and convenience, such as pending purchase and sale orders, which become active automatically in certain conditions; or Stop Loss and Take Profit orders, to automatically manage losses and profits.
The best broker to invest in the major cryptocurrencies today
In our opinion, the best broker to invest in the cryptocurrencies via CFDs is certainly eToro.
Click here to open a demo account with eToro and test what we are saying first-hand, with virtual money.
66% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.
eToro doesn’t just offer all of the above-mentioned benefits, but so much more.
On eToro, you can take advantage of their Social Trading Network, i.e. a network of thousands of traders who share ideas, thoughts, and strategies on markets and trading, daily.
Furthermore, you can actively employ this network manually copying or even automatically replicating these trader’s operations on cryptocurrencies.
That’s not all.
eToro has always been renowned for its spirit of innovation and for the creation of new investment products.
One of their latest, and most successful, is certainly the Copy Portoflio. While there are several of these portfolios, eToro has created one which is entirely devoted to cryptocurrencies, named eToro CryptoPortfolio.
To keep it short, the most important cryptocurrencies are grouped in one portfolio where you can easily invest by purchasing a share, just as you would for the CFDs we described above.
By investing in a portfolio you can benefit from diversification and minimize risk. Purchasing the product just once is a convenient and favourable solution for anyone wishing to invest in cryptocurrencies with a long-term perspective.
So, let’s take a detailed look at the cryptocurrencies on eToro which have established themselves in the international scene, and which distinctive features have gained them their supremacy above all others.
1. BITCOIN – The first and inimitable (but perhaps a little outdated) cryptocurrency
- Intro: Bitcoin is the most famous and most widely used of all The reason for its success is due to it being the first to officially appear on the free market. Thanks to Bitcoin and a new technology called “blockchain” (the technology behind how Bitcoin functions) cryptocurrency was born, a technology that has opened up a new world of possibilities and where many companies and start-ups are investing.
- History: The creation of Bitcoin dates back to January 2009, when the first version of the open source client was released. The creator of Bitcoin is Satoshi Nakamoto, a mysterious figure with a secret identity who became famous in the online cryptography Bitcoin’s rise has been incredible since. In April 2016, Australian entrepreneur Craig Wright came out and declared he was the true identity behind Satoshi Nakamoto and provided several pieces of evidence to support this, though there are still many who doubt this to be true. Here you can find the full history of Bitcoin.
- Features: Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer implementation of Nick Szabo’s b-money project and Wei Dai’s Bitgold. The principles of the Bitcoin system are described in the “white book” written by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. The official client, Bitcoin Core, is a free software that comes directly from the code written by Satoshi Nakamoto to implement the communication protocol and its peer-to-peer network. When talking about “bitcoin” (with lowercase b) it’s about the actual currency; when talking about “Bitcoin” (with uppercase B) it’s the open source system.
- Main Use: Being a currency in all respects, bitcoin can be used for any type of virtual transaction. The first uses were simple exchanges of money between people (with the advantage of having tiny commissions). With time, more and more entities began to accept payments in bitcoin. The anonymity allowed by Bitcoin also makes it the preferred coin for criminal activities of various kinds. Today, bitcoin is everywhere, from ATMs, to even (almost) ETF funds.
- Opinion: Bitcoin is definitely one of the most exciting innovations of our time, and the potential it has created is endless (especially thinking of blockchain technology). Some pros and cons? Among the pros, there is the protection of transactions, anonymity, accessible from anyone anywhere in the world, low commissions. On the cons’ side: the immoral or criminal activities that can be carried out more easily, the risks of physically losing bitcoins (since they can be lost like cash), and the high volatility the price is still subject to.
66% of retail CFD accounts lose money
2. ETHEREUM – Not just a digital currency, but an entire Smart Contract platform
- Intro: The second top cryptocurrency for notoriety is definitely Ethereum. To be precise though, Ethereum is not simply a cryptocurrency, but a decentralized smart contract platform, within which the Ether digital coin is used.
- History: The Ethereum platform is the brainchild of Vitalik Buterin, an experienced cryptography programmer initially involved in The Bitcoin Project, where he supported the need to create a new programming language for creating a new application. In the end, he decided to create his own separate project, which was named Ethereum Project, initiated and supported by a crowdfunding collection that totalled 31,591 bitcoins, about $ 18.4 million (2 of September 2014).
- Features: Ethereum is a decentralized blockchain platform, created in the Turing complete programming language, through which anyone can create and manage Smart Contracts. To run into this network, contracts “pay” to use the computational power of the platform through a cryptocurrency called Ether, which indeed is used both as cryptocurrency and fuel.
- Main Use: Ether is not designed to function as a normal digital currency, such as bitcoin. In fact, Ether is spendable and can be earned only within the Ethereum network and is used to execute specific actions, such as paying for using the computational power of the network to run an application.
- Opinion: Although Bitcoin and Ethereum are often compared, the path that these two have taken is different. In particular, Ethereum is laying the foundations for becoming an infrastructure with endless possibilities and this certainly makes it very interesting, especially for investment purposes. To get an idea of the scope of this platform, here are some of the things you can “build” with Ethereum: electoral systems, domain names registrars, financial markets, crowdfunding platforms, intellectual property management, all of which, obviously, without the need of lawyers, notaries, and other similar legal entities.
66% of retail CFD accounts lose money
3. RIPPLE XRP – The currency of international trade also loved by banks
- Intro: Ripple (XRP) is the third largest digital currency in terms ofmarket capitalization and trading volume. But unlike Bitcoin, which was born with the aim of completely bypassing banks and any kind of financial institution for any kind of transaction, Ripple was created specificallyfor “working with banks to change the way they send money to the world.”
- History: The Ripple protocol was developed by Chris Larsen and Jed McCaleb, founders of the OpenCoin company, and both known faces in the open source community.
- Features: Unlike previous cryptocurrencies, the Ripple name represents both network and currency. Through the Ripple network, you can send not only the corresponding cryptocurrency but also other non-digital In addition, you can send money and exchange them directly. In other words, you can transfer euros to a recipient who will automatically receive dollars. The exchange will take place by buying and selling ripple at the respective ripple exchange rate between the two currencies.
- Main Use: Ripple is defined as a “Global Settlement Network”, its end users are the banks and it tries to be a good alternative to Clearing Houses and the Swift Network. The main focus of the Ripple project is international payments. With the implementation of blockchain logic, it has been possible to eliminate a whole series of intermediaries, thereby reducing costs and reducing execution times to a few seconds. This is a vast improvement in comparison to the average 10 minutes of Bitcoin and to the several days needed by banks.
- Opinion: The Ripple project, among today’s top cryptocurrencies, is the most integrated into the current banking and financial infrastructure. So far it has received the interest of several renowned banks, such as the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan.
66% of retail CFD accounts lose money
4. LITECOIN – Bitcoin’s little brother trying to recover ground
- Intro: Litecoin (LTC) was the second cryptocurrency to be made accessible to the public and in a short time it gained the reputation of being Bitcoin’s main rival.
- History: Litecoin was launched on 13th October 13 2011, by Charles Lee, about two and a half years after the creation of Bitcoin and in short time 20 million tokens were mined. In terms of trends Litecoin has always followed the highly popular Bitcoin and for a long period of time was considered among the top cryptocurrencies available. In 2016 it went from second to fourth in terms of capitalization, surrendering to Ethereum and Ripple. However, it is still the second most accepted currency on websites that accept virtual currency payments.
- Features: In some respects, Litecoin is a copy of Bitcoin, but with some technical improvements, including the use of the Segregated Witness and Lightning Network. These features allow the Litecoin network to process more than one transaction in the same amount of time, reducing the bottleneck effect. It takes about 2.5 minutes on average for transactions to be processed by Litecoin compared to the average 10 minutes for Bitcoin. This is, in fact, one of the main reasons why Litecoin is so well-known. In short, the Litecoin network has virtually zero commissions and allows you to send and receive payments at a rate five times faster than Bitcoin.
- Main use: Like the cryptocurrency from which it took inspiration, i.e. Bitcoin, Litecoin is a well-used currency and can be used for any type of transaction.
- Opinion: Litecoin grew over time and was considered the “silver” to Bitcoin’s “gold”. Over time, however, it has lost ground in the race for growth and expansion and at the moment its creators are working to reenergise this cryptocurrency, which still remains one of the most accepted after Bitcoin. Despite general scepticism, many believe that the value of Litecoin is very underestimated.
66% of retail CFD accounts lose money
5. DASH – More privacy, speed, and security
- Intro: Dash is another top cryptocurrency born on the wave of Bitcoin, but trying to differentiate itself from the latter with features to make it better and more functional.
- History: Launched in January 2014, the Dash platform has been rebranded over time. Initially, it was called XCoin, then in February of the same year it was renamed DarkCoin, and then in March 2015, it was finally renamed to Dash.
- Features: The logic of the Dash network is similar to the other top cryptocurrencies, however, some improvements have been implemented in terms of privacy, speed, and security. PrivateSend technology allows users to send private transactions and for decentralized DGBB governance. InstantSend technology makes transactions much faster than Bitcoin. The two-level architecture allows Dash to achieve excellent levels of security and reliability. The first level consists of miners, which allow the network to write all transactions within the blockchain network. The second level of the structure allows dash, through the main nodes, to perform the advanced features.
- Main Use: Dash Coins can be used as a coin in all respects, however, most retailers still do not accept it yet.
- Opinion: The Dash project is very ambitious. In addition to expanding its own digital coin, the goal is to create a kind of PayPal for cryptocurrencies, called Wallet Dash Evolution, a very interesting project.
66% of retail CFD accounts lose money
6. ETHEREUM CLASSIC – The purists of the original blockchain stuck (maybe) at a dead end?
- Intro: As you can imagine, the official version (if we want to call it) is Ethereum and is maintained by its original developers. Ethereum Classic, instead, is the “alternative” blockchain maintained by a different team.
- History: Both platforms offer the same technology. Ethereum Classic came into existence when a problem occurred in the original Ethereum project. Following the intervention of the Ethereum Foundation, the Ethereum project was divided into two parts: Ethereum on the one hand, working on the platform with the problem solved, and Ethereum Classic on the other, working on a platform based on the original blockchain, and thus maintaining the initial embedded problem. This project is maintained by a new team and is supported by all those purists with a strong and determined position on the blockchain’s immutability.
- Features: Ethereum Classic is essentially a clone of Ethereum, so features and usage are the same.
- Main use: as above.
- Opinion: Ethereum Classic (ETC), to date, seems to be a dead end. The question of what Ether Classic (ETC)is worth is still open. In any case, this platform and its currency still have value because people believe in the project and people interested in supporting it can invest in it by buying and/or selling ETC on an
66% of retail CFD accounts lose money
7. BITCOIN CASH – More than a clone, a different approach to scaling
- Intro: Bitcoin Cash offers traders up to four times faster transaction speeds than its brother Bitcoin, however, it may come at the price of a potentially less secure network.
- History: Bitcoin Cash was made when a group of Bitcoin miners hard-forked the Bitcoin blockchain. They did this because they were concerned that Bitcoin would be unable to overcome the problematic issue of scaling.
- Features: The primary difference between Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin is that the blocks are four times larger. This means that they can fit four times as many transactions in one block, which speeds up the entire transaction process. As side from this, Bitcoin Cash works more or less in the same way as Bitcoin, though as time goes by it is possible that more differences between the two may occur as they grow and are developed in different ways.
- Main Use: Bitcoin Cash has the same uses as Bitcoin – to handle transactions faster and more securely than traditional fiat currencies. The primary differences between them are more to do with how they operate than what they offer. It should be mentioned though that Bitcoin, as the most dominant coin, is more widely used than Bitcoin Cash.
- Opinion: To some Bitcoin Cash is a kind of like a Bitcoin 2.0, a potential solution to scaling and transaction speed. However, it should be remembered that it is still early days and we won’t necessarily see how well Bitcoin Cash compares to Bitcoin until one or the other is pushed to the limits. It is also worth mentioning that some have highlighted that by attempting to increase the block size and, therefore speed, Bitcoin Cash has sacrificed security. Bitcoin, on the other hand, despite being slow, is renowned for being excellent in terms of security. Bitcoin Cash can be a good side option for those who usually trade Bitcoin but are looking for a slight variation on the trusted recipe. If you are stuck between the two, you should consider which you value more – transaction speed or security.
66% of retail CFD accounts lose money
8. CARDANO – Stepping on Ethereum’s toes with improved smart contracts
- Intro: With its innovative Ouroboros algorithm, Cardano seeks to speed up transaction speeds by separating general transactions from smart contracts with two interconnected blockchains.
- History: Launched in 2017, Cardano is one of the (slightly) younger cryptocurrencies available today. Coming along later, it benefits from being developed by IOHK (Input Output Hong Kong), a team that already has a great deal of knowledge about blockchain technology and what problems it faces. Since its launch, Cardano’s Ouroboros algorithm has received notable recognition from a number of academics, an intellectual backing that is not always seen with lesser-known cryptocurrencies. IOHK, whose team have experience from working on Ethereum and Ethereum Classic, have also shown significant interest in experimenting further with the platform and educating people on the uses of blockchain technology, releasing plenty of educational material.
- Features: Cardano’s primary feature is its Ouroboros proof-of-stake algorithm which acts as a two-layered blockchain, separating smart contracts from general transactions in order to increase transaction speeds and smart contract processing. The separation of the two may also lead to more complex innovations in smart contract abilities. Cardano also claims that separating the two will make updating the system easier. For example, if they need to make a change to the smart contract feature, they can simply isolate that blockchain while the general transaction blockchain can continue running without downtime.
- Main Use: Cardano can be used to fulfil transactions, create and execute smart contracts and build dApps, ideally for financial applications.
- Opinion: The concept of a multi-layered blockchain is definitely a game changer, which may potentially make it a better option for smart contracts. That said, Ethereum is still the king of dApps and it may take a while to knock it from its spot. Despite this, Cardano has an excellent team behind it that is perhaps one of the most educated on the uses of blockchain technology. It is most likely Cardano will be used primarily by those who want to implement solid smart contracts as Ethereum is already well-accepted for dApps. It is also worth noting that IOHK’s experimental attitude may mean that Cardano has the potential to adapt to industry changes more than some of its rivals.
66% of retail CFD accounts lose money
9. IOTA – A viable alternative to blockchain technology?
- Intro: IOTA is a highly innovative cryptocurrency that has the potential to be an alternative to blockchain technology. In a sense, it is like blockchain, but without the blocks. The principle idea behind it is to utilise the IoT (Internet-of-Things) to overcome many of blockchain’s challenges.
- History: IOTA was developed by The IOTA Foundation, a non-profit foundation from Germany, founded in late 2017. Aside from developing IOTA, they are highly interested in researching how their technology may impact the IoT and in educating the public on how it works.
- Features: Unlike most cryptocurrencies, IOTA uses an algorithm called the Tangle, instead of blockchain. The Tangle has removed miners by creating a system that in order for your transaction to be validated, you must first validate two previous transactions. The team behind IOTA claim that this drastically lowers the amount of computing power needed to process a transaction, which means that transactions can be made via much less powerful devices and speeds up transaction times.
- Other benefits include no transaction fees, as there is no need for miners, and the possibility of infinite scalability, with transaction speeds potentially becoming faster as more users adopt it, instead of the reverse.
- Main Use: IOTA has the potential to be widely used not just on peoples’ computers and phones, but by any device that has the ability to connect to the internet, hence the name IOTA. This has a wide range of uses that could impact how information is shared and, more importantly, how things are paid for. For example, cars could pay for their own fuel or parking, homes could pay for their own utility bills.
- Opinion: IOTA has put an interesting spin on cryptocurrency. Just as we have gotten used to blockchain, the Tangle may have designated it to the history books. However, before getting too excited, it is hard to see how much of an impact IOTA will make until the IoT becomes more of a reality and has more practical usage. On top of that, some critics have highlighted the possibility that IOTA may not remain without fees forever.
66% of retail CFD accounts lose money
10. Stellar – A potential bridge between crypto and fiat currencies?
- Intro: Stellar shares Ripple’s unique ability to make transactions between different cryptocurrencies and different fiat currencies, however, as an organisation, it has very different end goals.
- History: Stellar is another blockchain that originally started out as a fork from another well-known cryptocurrency, this time Ripple. The fork took place back in 2014 and since then Stellar has been developed by the Stellar Development Foundation. Unlike Ripple, which has been developed for use by large financial institutions, Stellar has remained open to the public. Stellar, like Ripple, was co-founded by Jed McCaleb, who has masses of experience in cryptocurrency and was also a founder of Mt. Gox, the former Bitcoin exchange platform.
- Features: Technologically speaking, Stellar shares the most similarities with Ripple (its big brother), both sharing the ability to not only make transactions with its own coin (Lumens), but also facilitate transactions between different cryptocurrencies and between cryptocurrency and fiat currencies. While some have disregarded Stellar as Ripple clone, others have embraced its decentralized and open-sourced nature, which has won over crypto enthusiasts.
- Main Use: Despite Stellar’s numerous similarities with Ripple, the two are significantly different in what they hope to achieve. While Ripple has achieved superstar-crypto status working with some of the world’s biggest banks, stellar has gone an entirely different path. Stellar has instead remained open source which opens the possibility for dApps as well as a wide variety of different uses.
- Opinion: In a world still dominated by a humungous variety of different currencies and, particularly now, a huge choice of cryptocurrency, Stellar is an excellent option to bridge that gap, allowing not only people from different parts of the world to do business without banks (which is what cryptocurrency was initially supposed to do!), but also, potentially, unite the different fractions of the cryptocurrency world. It is built for now with applicable uses that can be taken advantage of now, not just promises of being a better cryptocurrency in a few years, which is quite refreshing. However, it is worth mentioning that this may only be a temporary solution.
66% of retail CFD accounts lose money
11. EOS – The crypto most likely to solve the dreaded issue of scalability
- Intro: EOS’s promise of solving scalability is a make or break scenario and is definitely a cryptocurrency to watch as time goes on. With a key focus on dApps, EOS has the potential to dominate that niche if successful.
- History: Turning 1 year this June, EOS or EOSIO, is a lot younger than most of its rivals. As a cryptocurrency that was developed later than most, it benefits from hindsight and can see precisely what the biggest challenges are for cryptocurrency in order to go mainstream. Like EOS, the team working behind it are also relatively young; one, a private company, is headed by Brendan Blumer, who has tonnes of business experience, despite his age.
- Features: The primary problem EOS is attempting to resolve is that of scalability. They claim that EOS will be able to grow in accordance with the number of users on its network by using horizontal scaling instead of vertical scaling, which is used by most cryptocurrencies today. This supposedly can improve their scalability dramatically, as it involves adding more machines into the network as demand increases, not just increasing the power of the machines already within the network. On top of this, EOS’s algorithm delegates the percentage of the network’s bandwidth in accordance to the percentage of EOS tokens you own.
- Main Use: Currently, the biggest application of the EOS blockchain is dApps, which puts it in direct competition with Ethereum. In many senses, EOS’s goal is to become an enhanced version of Bitcoin and Ethereum.
- Opinion: While EOS is pretty strong today, it must uphold its promises of fixing the scalability issues that the majority of cryptocurrencies, particularly Bitcoin and Ethereum, suffer from. If it is unable to get past these obstacles, we may see EOS being designated to the pile of ‘dead cryptocurrencies’. However, if it does succeed in this lofty goal, EOS may very well become one of the top cryptocurrencies in the next few years. If not, it still may have plenty of uses as a supporter for dApps.
66% of retail CFD accounts lose money
12. NEO – Smart contracts made accessible to the masses?
- Intro: NEO is primarily focused on smart contracts, allowing developers to build on their platform in a variety of different coding languages.
- History: Formerly known as Antshares, Neo was developed by Onchain and launched in 2014. It is the first cryptocurrency launched from mainland China, with many referring to it as a potential Ethereum killer or even the Chinese Ethereum. NEO showed great promise in its early days with the potential to rival Ethereum with its ability to create easy-to-build smart contracts with a range of additional features. Unfortunately, funding the project has been difficult for Onchain as the Chinese government banned ICOs in 2018.
- Features: NEO has two tokens – the NEO token and the GAS token – both with different purposes. The NEO token is specifically for investing in the blockchain, while the GAS token is used for actions within the blockchain, for example, fulfilling smart contracts and completing transactions on dApps. Every time a new block is created, new GAS tokens are made. NEO is primarily interested in exploring different ways for smart contracts to operate. Specifically, new ways for them to be created and validated. With NEO, users will be able to use smart contracts to convert real currency into digital currency. But perhaps the most interesting area NEO is exploring is digital security, where they plan to create tools to verify the identity of users using voice and facial recognition.
- Main Use: NEO has made smart contracts more interesting by exploring new ways to create and validate them. But the real reason why people are so interested in it is because it can be coded in Java, C#, VB.Net, F#, and Kotlin, which means it is so much more accessible to developers than Ethereum.
- Opinion: Technologically speaking, NEO holds great promise. However, unless the Chinese government lifts its ban on ICOs, NEO will have a lot of trouble finding funding and prospering to a level where it will be able to challenge those at the top. If NEO is allowed to flourish, it may dominate the smart contract niche by offering developers an easier coding language to adopt than Ethereum and potentially more uses and tighter security.
66% of retail CFD accounts lose money
13. ZCASH – Another privacy coin hoping to dominate the privacy niche
- Intro: In recent times, Zcash has come out as one of the most dominant privacy coins available. The privacy niche is a tough area to compete in and Zcash may need to do more to stand out from the crowd.
- History: Zcash was created by forking the Bitcoin blockchain. They did this in order to try to improve on Bitcoin’s privacy, primarily by adding a feature that allows transactions to be hidden, something you cannot do on the Bitcoin blockchain. They are led by founder and CEO Zooko Wilcox, who has over 20 years of experience on decentralized systems, security, and cryptography.
- Features: As a fork of Bitcoin, technologically it is very similar. Aside from enabling private transactions, Zcash uses a technique called zero-knowledge proofs which ensures that all information about the transaction is correct, without exposing the value, the sender or receiver. Aside from protecting the users involved in the transaction, Zcash also claims that this protects the value of the coin as well. This is because if a particular coin was used for illegal purposes in the past, there will be no proof of this, which means its value is the same as any other coin.
- Main Use: The primary use of Zcash is its optional privacy feature, which allows users to choose to hide their transaction information from the public.
- Opinion: It is important to bear in mind that it is difficult for cryptocurrencies that strive to offer privacy to be viewed as legitimate as they can potentially be used by criminal purposes. This increases the possibility of government regulators shutting them down in different parts of the world. Another thing to mention is that Zcash is entering a niche that already has plenty of competition from Monero and Dash, both of which are already looking to be the dominant privacy coin. For Zcash to continue being one of the top contenders, it needs to educate the public on why they are better than the competition. If privacy is something you are interested in and a feature you see worth investing in, Zcash is a good contender.
66% of retail CFD accounts lose money
14. BINANCE COIN – A cryptocurrency launched by a successful crypto exchange
- Intro: Binance Coin is an interesting choice for traders as its value lies almost entirely in one specific place it can be used; the Binance cryptocurrency exchange. While it isn’t attempting to dominate any particular area in cryptocurrency, it has been noted for being very stable, which is a plus for some.
- History: The Binance Coin was launched by Binance in 2017, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, which is based in Hong Kong. The Binance cryptocurrency exchange is hugely popular with the most cryptocurrencies to trade in plus a large variety of cryptocurrency pairs, it is a behemoth. All this means they have an exceptional amount of knowledge in cryptocurrency and trading as well.
- Features: At the moment, Binance Coin doesn’t necessarily offer anything unique in a technical sense. That said, Binance Coin does have a coin cap of 200 million, which dwarfs Bitcoin’s 21 million and potentially could mean that it may outlast Bitcoin in years to come.
- Main Use: The benefit of using Binance Coin is to use it on the Binance exchange. Traders that use the coin as payment for trades will receive a 25% discount (50% last year). By doing this Binance is able to keep traders coming back for more. In a sense, Binance Coin is kind of like a discount coupon for its traders and is highly attractive as the Binance exchange already has incredibly low fees and offers traders access to more cryptocurrency pairs than anywhere else.
- Opinion: As a coin launched by a cryptocurrency exchange, the value of the coin is linked to how well Binance does as a company. While this means that the Binance Coin may be protected from external influences, such as activity in the cryptocurrency market in general, the company must prosper for you to make a profit. Binance Coin has been noted as being one of the more stable coins available today. If you are someone who is put off by the volatility in the cryptocurrency market, but are still interested in trading cryptocurrency, Binance Coin may be a good option for you.
66% of retail CFD accounts lose money

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