Last week, I've been discussing platform tokens that I think will be successful this year. You can read up on those in part 1 here and part 2 here. Now it's time to have a closer look at the "money" tokens.

Money tokens?

With money tokens I mean coins like Bitcoin which are primarily used to transfer value. They've been the first application for blockchain and are still one of the main purposes of cryptos. While the Ethereum blockchain is now processing a lot of value (e.g. through ICOs, decentralized exchanges and lending platforms), I think the classic money tokens will regain a lot of "market share" in that respect once wider adoption in banks and traditional institutions is achieved.

So let's get started with my bets for 2018.

LTC

Litecoin is basically the better Bitcoin when it comes to use as a means of payment. Faster and cheaper, with a more risk-taking approach to adopting new technology (this is not a complaint about Bitcoin, just the fact that Litecoin doesn't store as much value and can therefore easier make decisions).

IMO 2018 will be the year where LTC decouples from BTC and will become the most widely used money token, also for smaller payments and possibly even for Amazon and ebay. I think a price development similar to BTC in 2016 is possible, ending around 1000$ towards the end of the year.

XMR

Monero has been outperforming the market during the latest bloodbath and there are good reasons in terms of adoption - even if this is induced by black market and illegal transactions. Technology-wise (in terms of privacy) it's superior to what Bitcoin mixers and Dash are offering and can be effectively used to anonymously transfer value.

Similar to LTC, XMR will probably make a turn towards 1000$ in 2018.

ZEC

Just like with Monero, I think that the zero-knowledge proof model of Zcash is really the technology to provide privacy for transactions which should rather stay anonymous. ZEC has the "advantage" of only producing up to 21 million units, so its price should grow much faste than the one of XMR.

We should probably see 2000$ through the course of 2018.

XLM

Stellar is kind of Ripple's little brother. XRP also dragged XLM along during its year-end rally in 2017, but XLM still has a lot of potential to catch up. XRP is very centralized, as has been recently shown and price can easily be manipulated by those whales. Lumens are much more distributed and the network is generally more decentralized and open.

I think XLM could surpass XRP and reach 3-4$ or more in 2018.

XVG

Since John McAfee's recommendation of Verge it has skyrocketed, from less than 0.01$ way past 0.20$, but is now available at around 0.10$. Funnily enough, people aren't talking that much about what you can do with Verge and how, but more about that price development.

There is, however, some potential in the technology. Fast transactions, a lot of flexibility, anonymous transactions. If they can deliver on the promises of a stable network, the price will see 1$ and more in 2018.

Closing thoughts

There's a couple of obvious candidates I haven't mentioned. This is mostly because I don't think they'll have as positive a price development as the ones mentioned above. I still believe in Bitcoin and I also have a lot of respect for the adoption of Dash and Ripple. This leaves, however, less room for bigger price movements on a mid-term basis.

Let me know which money tokens you hold for 2018 in the comments.