Is Bitcoin still a good investment after the fall this year? We have our concerns, the primary one being that the current crackdown on illicit dealings using digital currency will have a drastic impact on Bitcoin valuation.
In fact, we see a lot more promise in a few altcoins that are trying to rectify the problems faced by Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin. The fact that these coins are super cheap, at less than $2, makes them all-the-more attractive. Let’s take a look at these.
Cardano
Price: $0.27
Coin Market Cap rank: 6
Cardano works similar to Ethereum and reflects the small-contracts usage within its system. It uses Haskell program language, which is highly flexible and has a high tolerance level for mistakes. This language is otherwise used in critical systems in the banking and defense industries.
Cardano strives to solve most of the issues faced by its bigger rivals. Bitcoin transactions are slow, while protocol limitations and vast demand make it expensive. On the other hand, Cardano uses a kind of cryptocoin treasury that could fund projects long-term.
Stellar (XLM)
Price: $0.32
Coin Market Cap rank: 8
The similarity between Stellar and Ripple is one of the primary reasons why this coin is likely to follow the uptrend seen by the latter. Apart from this, the Stellar profile will be boosted by partnerships with major banks and tech companies, as well as the backing of IBM. The tech giant will add eight validators from around the world to the Stellar network, and about 30 banks are expected to join this project.
The fact that these coins are super cheap, at less than $2, makes them all-the-more attractive.
IOTA (MIOTA)
Price: $1.67
Coin Market Cap rank: 11
IOTA is focused on the internet of things; and it has started a data marketplace in partnership with Microsoft, Fujitsu, Bosch etc. The coin works on tangle concept, which requires users to approve two other transactions instead of miners approving a blockchain transaction.
The tangle concept makes the coin infinitely scalable, besides enabling it to offer zero-fee transactions and no fixed limit on transactions per second. The coins can’t be mined as all tokens have already been generated and circulated. Despite the price movement remaining down during the short term, IOTA has a 95.13% growth rate over the 200-day period.
Also read: 3 crypto-related securities that are benefiting from the Bitcoin surge
NEM (XEM)
Price: $0.32
Coin Market Cap rank: 13
NEM is called the new economy movement and has a fixed supply of 9 billion coins. The blockchain-based cryptocurrency is not mined but rather, harvested. That is, when an account has a particular amount or above, the money will naturally become vested by NEM’s algorithm.
NEM also boasts of a cold wallet feature, whereby the coins are stored in offline mode so that it can never be stolen. This cold wallet feature is particularly useful to those who are buying the coins for investment purposes. Meanwhile, for trading and other transactions, a hot wallet or ordinary wallet is used.