5 Coins to watch in 2018

1. Electroneum (ETN)

Electroneum is a coin created by British company Electroneum Limited and are aiming to bring crypto currency to the masses and make the coin accessible to less technically minded people. Their aim is to hit the mobile market and the estimated 2 billion worldwide smartphone users.

Electroneum has been developed by an experienced team of software developers lead by Richard Ells. Richard Ells has a history of building successful digital businesses. He founded and grew a successful digital agency, which is still running today, over 20 years later. More recently, he founded Retortal. com in 2013. As the CEO, Richard Ells has assembled a team of over 40 developers and created a social media management platform, used by global fortune 500 companies such as Herbalife and Avon. The Retortal software is used daily by hundreds of thousands of people. Retortal Ltd is valued at over $50m USD.

There mobile wallet is out now on Android and should be released soon on IOS. The app will allow users to earn free ETN (coins) by simulated mining allowing users to mine coins with their mobile, this is also expected to be released this month.

I see potential for growth with electroneum as soon as the small bugs are ironed out, making it a perfect time to invest.

2. Verge (XVG)

Verge Currency is a cryptocurrency designed for everyday use. It improves upon the original Bitcoin blockchain and aims to fulfill its initial purpose of providing individuals and businesses with a fast, efficient and decentralized way of making direct transactions while maintaining personal privacy.

Just like Electroneum, Verge is whats known as a ‘Privacy Coin’ meaning its focus is on privacy and anonymity.

The currency is virtually untraceable and the users of Verge can make instant anonymous transactions. This is achieved through using highly advanced blockchain technology built on top of services such as Tor and I2P that hides your personal data, such as IP-addresses and geolocation.

Verge has jumped a whopping 800% in December alone, now trading at a price of around 12p each (At the time of writing).

Due to the huge increase its hard to tell whether Verge has the potential to grow further, but the project is fully open sourced and the development team have been working relentlessly over the new year to get the new ‘Wraith Protocol’ up and running which seems to have been given the green light this evening (1st Jan).

What is Wraith Protocol? To paraphrase Dan Ariely, Wraith Protocol “is like teenage sex: everyone talks about it, but nobody really knows what it is.”

Before i explain its important to mention ‘ledgers’, a blockchain ledger is essentially a database which contains all the transactions made on the blockchain, some currency’s have a private ledger meaning the public cannot see what transactions have been made, others like Bitcoin have public ledgers, meaning anyone can see transactions made on the network.

Wraith is a technology that allows the user to seamlessly switch between public and private ledgers on the Verge Blockchain. For the first time, users are now free to choose which ledger they want to use.

In simple terms, when Wraith is turned ON, the transaction details remain hidden and cannot be found on the blockchain explorer. Users may wish to turn it off when transparency is required, in which now they can.

This has the potential to thrust Verge ‘To the moon’ as Verge provides total obfuscation of IP addresses, thanks to the most advanced version of TOR integrated in the Core Wallet. In combination with Wraith Protocol it makes Verge the only truly untraceable cryptocurrency. , Although XVG is currently down 20%, this makes XVG ‘One to watch’ as the focus turns to privacy in 2018 and governments begin to crack down on cryptocurrency.

3. IOTA (MIOTA)

IOTA or Internet Of Things Application differs from my previous two coins as its not mine-able and cannot be bought directly with cash. to purchase IOTA you must first purchase Bitcoin or Ethereum and trade it on an exchange, to do this you would have to sign up for an exchange that trades IOTA like Bitfinex.

IOTA has its own block chain technology called Tangle which allows businesses to trade in real time with zero fees.

In my opinion i don’t think the price of IOTA will rocket to much, as the whole concept of IOTA is to make cryptocurrency work in the real world, to do this it first needs to be adopted by the masses and not just those looking for a quick few quid.

The development team have already signed deals and agreements with huge companies such as Microsoft and Hyundai meaning the whole project has huge potential. As the ‘Internet of Things’ becomes the norm in our lives, and it already is doing, Think Hive Heating, Amazon Alexa, Ring Doorbel, how many Internet powered devices do we now have in our homes which a few years ago would seem silly?

As more and more everyday items join the internet of tings IOTA solves a big problem in ‘fee free’ trading between providers, for example you could soon be ordering a pizza via Alexa with your IOTA wallet, or paying for your fuel or parking via your internet enabled car which also accepts IOTA as a payment method.

Speedy transactions and zero fees put IOTA on my ones to watch list for 2018, i think we’ll see huge developments with it.

4. Basic Attention Token (BAT)

BAT has been developed and lead by Brendan Eich the creator of Java Script and cofounder of Mozilla and Firefox. BAT is part of the open-source security Brave browser which is privacy focused and blocks intrusive ads. I wont go into to much detail but BAT aims to allow advertisers to pay publishers and users in exchange for viewing ads, but also allow targeted ads based on users interests without revealing valuable private data like facebook and google do currently.

5. Zclassic (ZCL) / Bitcoin Private (BTCP) Fork

Bitcoin Private is a new upcoming coin with privacy in mind (see the trend here, privacy coins tipped big for 2018).

Zclassic plans to fork Bitcoin to create Bitcoin Private (a privacy focused Bitcoin that mashes up the features of Bitcoin Gold and Zcash/Zclassic).

Developers have come out and stated Zclassic holders and Bitcoin Holders will each get Bitcoin Private ( BTCP) in a 1:1 ratio. In other words you get one BTCP for every full Bitcoin or Zclassic you hold.

It will be interesting to see where bitcoin private ends up, the fork is planned for sometime mid-end of Jan 2018 and has already caused the price of Zclassic to rise from 4$ last week to 105$ today.

Luckily i purchased before the news went mainstream when the price was at £22 each, meaning i’ve more than tripled my investment should i chose to sell now (£75 each), however i’m holding out to the fork and taking my chances with bitcoin private.

With all forks, you can never be 100% sure that the fork will occur until the snapshot is taken, the chain is live, and everything is confirmed as stable and workable. This fork is no different. Sometimes we get a Segwit2x (a fork that didn’t happen / didn’t happen as planned), sometimes we get a Bitcoin Cash (a fork that did happen has planned and ended up being a rather valuable asset). You must be prepared for both the best and worst in the crypto world.

The developers could turn round and say its not happening anymore and the price go from 105$ to $0 overnight.
Rumours suggest the price could reach upto 300$ for one Bitcoin Private, especially with the focus on privacy and new tax laws coming into play in the US.