The Top 3 Cryptocurrencies You Should Buy Today

Bitcoin is the original “proof of concept” cryptocurrency. It was the first one, released in 2009 by an individual (or possibly a group) known as Satoshi Nakamoto.
What bitcoin’s success demonstrated was that it is possible to build, deploy and support a fully decentralised digital currency that doesn’t rely on any centralised issuing authority.
More importantly, the technology behind bitcoin’s distributed ledger (lots of copies of the bitcoin ledger are running 24/7 all over the world) means that there’s no single point of failure. There’s no “server” that can fail and bring down bitcoin. People have often asked me, “Well, what happens to bitcoin if the Internet goes down?”.
Well, the entire U.S. could go offline, and bitcoin would carry on trading regardless, because there are bitcoin “nodes” operating all over the world that support the bitcoin network. It’s completely global.
But the point I want to make here about bitcoin is that it was specifically designed to be a secure, fully transparent platform for storing and moving digital value. That’s it.
Bitcoin is a bit like “digital gold”. But there are hundreds of cryptocurrencies out there, and they certainly aren’t all digital gold. In fact, plenty are worthless. More importantly, all cryptocurrencies offer the holder very different characteristics, from digital currencies to digital businesses to digital platforms (more on each of these below).
You see, the term “cryptocurrency” gets thrown around, supposedly to describe all the various digital assets out there. But it is wildly misleading. The majority of these “cryptocurrencies” aren’t currencies at all in the way we associate the word in traditional finance. The yen, dollar, pound, euro… these are currencies. They are simple mediums of exchange. Bitcoin is a digital currency, and there are a handful of other competing digital currencies.
But the technology behind bitcoin has led to businesses that are built on blockchain technology being distributed to investors as a cryptocurrency. These cryptocurrencies give investors exposure to that particular business.
These kinds of cryptocurrencies are a lot more like securities. They’re like digital equity instruments.
I’ll make up an example here. Let’s call it “Bettingcoin”. Let’s say the team behind Bettingcoin decided to build a global sports betting platform on blockchain. They decide to create a million Bettingcoins, and sell them to the public in return for some bitcoin. They do this in an “Initial Coin Offering” (or ICO). And these Bettingcoins give the holders an economic interest in the Bettingcoin business.
For example, the Bettingcoin platform takes a small commission on all the sports bets, and then every month distributes that out like a dividend to their Bettingcoin token holders.
As you can see in this simple example, a Bettingcoin isn’t really a digital “currency”, it’s really a stake in an underlying business.
There are hundreds of these kinds of “tokens” in existence (token is another word for cryptocurrency), covering all sorts of different business ideas and models.
We’ll call these digital businesses.
The final category of cryptocurrencies is one of the most exciting, the platform plays.
You see, if you have an idea for a blockchain- based business that you want to issue tokens for, you have two choices. You can either build your own blockchain from the ground up, or you can use a platform.
Let’s put it another way. Let’s say you wanted to build a software program (it could be anything).
Now, would you want to focus your energy on building an entirely new computer operating system first (i.e. your own version of Microsoft Windows or Apple’s OS platform), and then build your iTunes software on top?
Or would you just want to use an existing operating system, and then build your software application on top of that?
Of course, you’d want to build your application on top of an existing platform, right?
Well, it’s the same for blockchain businesses. Building your own blockchain platform from scratch just to build an application on top of it is a hugely inefficient process. So if you can use an existing platform that’s already out there to build on, a blockchain version of Microsoft Windows for example, then of course it makes sense to use that.
We are calling this final category of cryptocurrencies digital platforms.
Please understand that not every cryptocurrency token out there will fit neatly into one of these three categories. Some of them will potentially overlap. But these categories will help you understand the ecosystem a little better.

The top 3 cryptocurrencies you should buy today
#1 Bitcoin (digital currency)
Frankly speaking, if you just buy and hold bitcoin and never end up buying any other cryptocurrencies, you’ll already be far ahead of the pack.
Bitcoin is still the granddaddy of all cryptocurrencies. As I’ll explain in a moment, it’s the reserve currency for cryptocurrencies. And even if you wanted to buy other cryptocurrencies and not bitcoin, you’d still need to buy bitcoin because bitcoin is the main currency paid.
To give some context, most regular global currencies are quoted against the dollar. When you see any comments about the yen or the euro or the British pound in the media, you always see them compared to the dollar. It’s always “dollar-yen” or “dollar-euro”.
Bitcoin is the “dollar” of global cryptocurrencies. All major cryptocurrency exchanges, where billions of dollars of cryptos are traded every day, use bitcoin as their reserve currency.
#2 Ethereum (digital platform)
As discussed earlier, digital platforms are cryptocurrencies that allow businesses to build and deploy their blockchain ideas easily, without having to build an entire blockchain protocol themselves from scratch.
Example: Music royalties
A music industry artist (or their record label) is entitled to receive royalties every time their content is used for commercial purposes, i.e., sold through Apple’s iTunes or streamed on music-on-demand service Spotify.
When you pay to download music from iTunes, Apple takes a 30 percent cut before paying the remainder to the record label, who pays their artist accordingly. But the Berklee College of Music estimates that anywhere from 20 to 50 percent of royalties never make it to the musicians themselves.
Now imagine if you will, a blockchain-based version of iTunes where artists upload and sell their own copyright-protected music.
Your smart contract can define any kind of revenue split you want. If there’s no record label and the band is independent, then the smart contract can apportion an equal third share between the singer, drummer and guitar player.
When a customer buys an album, the money is automatically and immediately sent into the three separate bitcoin wallets specified in the smart contract.
If there’s a record label, the smart contract can define that 30 percent goes to the label and the rest goes to the singer, drummer and guitar player.
So, if you wanted to build a decentralised blockchain-based version of iTunes, you could look at an existing smart contract platform to build it on.
And that’s where Ethereum comes in…
#3 STEEM Power (digital business)
Social media isn’t free.
You may not have to pay a subscription fee to use the world’s preeminent social media platform. But you pay in another way. You pay by giving up your privacy. Facebook can track your Internet browsing history, even if you’ve logged out of the platform.
If you’re a regular user of Facebook, rest assured they know everything about you, your personality traits, your politics, sexuality, interests… you name it. Every click, every like, everything you read, your Facebook friends… you are the product.
And Facebook, like every other social media platform out there, strongly encourages you to create your own content. These platforms want you to write posts and share photographs. Content is king, and the more content you create, the more people will use the platform, and the more you and your friends log in to check on each other. Every action allows them to build a more detailed profile of you, and every moment you spend on the platform is an opportunity to deliver you highly specific targeted advertising.
It’s big business. Facebook’s market capitalisation is now nearly half a trillion dollars. And it was only founded less than 14 years ago, in a Harvard University dormitory room.
It’s not just social media that has created billions of dollars of value for shareholders on the back of user-generated content. Look at travel review website TripAdvisor, for example.
The value attributable to this company originated entirely from the reviews of individuals of their travel experiences, in particular their experience and opinions of hotels, but also restaurants, attractions and other travel-related businesses.
There are now over half a billion reviews on the website. Did TripAdvisor pay anyone to write these reviews? No. But if you type in the name of pretty much any hotel on earth into google, the second or third search result is likely to be a TripAdvisor page.
Social media meets blogging platform meets blockchain
Last year, a developer team headed by Daniel Larimer and Ned Scott launched a decentralised social media platform, built on blockchain, that actually rewards people for making worthwhile contributions.
This platform is called Steem, and its website is www.steemit.com.
Steem’s core premise is that “everyone’s meaningful contribution to the community should be recognized for the value it adds”. What Steem has sought to build is a platform that provides monetisable incentives for users to participate not only in creating content, but in reading and voting on the content of others.