The crypto market is notoriously volatile and unpredictable. Various factors such as country-specific regulatory frameworks, scam-related news, hacking scandals and rumours fueled by coin communities can all take a toll on the price of digital coins.
No-one knows for sure exactly how the crypto market will evolve, but experts often share their insights and opinions. With this in mind, let’s take a closer look at what some of the industry’s brightest minds think about the top 5 cryptos out there. To know more about cryptocurrencies and trading them, you can also visit the Crypto Zone by Blackwell Global.
1. Bitcoin (BTC)
Bitcoin started the crypto craze and continues to rule the roost with a market capitalisation of $113 billion as of July 3, 2018, trading at a price of $6,627. Experts predict that by the end of 2018, Bitcoin will reach a market cap of $268 billion, based on the fact that 1,800 coins are mined each day.
The past few months have been turbulent, with the coin showing a decline in prices. Blockchain influencers like Joseph Raczynski are hopeful, however. In an interview, Raczynski said: “Bitcoin is going through an existential crisis. A confluence of factors is dragging it lower — stories of whales manipulating, institutional exchanges trading, regulation around the world, institutional investor concerns. But this is familiar grounds for those long on the currency”.
Raczynski is a key blockchain influencer, entrepreneur and cyber-security specialist. He has over 169,000 followers on Twitter.
2. Ethereum (ETH)
The platform that has made unique blockchain innovations possible holds the second rank in terms of market cap and was trading at $476 as of July 3, 2018. Since Ethereum is the primary platform of choice for ICO owners to develop their projects on, their success and failure statistics drive the value of ETH.
Maria Susan, an active blockchain influencer on Steemit, says in an article: “Whereas Bitcoin is favoured by short-term investors and speculators, Ethereum is preferred and backed by major long-term investors. This means that, even though Ethereum has still not been able to catch up to Bitcoin, it’s only a matter of time. Indeed, if you look at the market capitalisation of the two, you will find that Bitcoin has lost about a half of its market share to Ethereum.”
Maria Susan predicts that Ethereum might reach the $1,000 mark by the end of 2018.
3. Ripple (XRP)
Ripple, the real-time gross-settlement system, which has gained significant mainstream adoption due to its relevance in the banking sector, occupies the third spot. It was trading at $0.50 as of July 3, 2018.
Samson Williams, the CSO of Ireland-based fintech firm SeedUps, says that the price could reach $16 by December 2018. He says: “Though not a cryptocurrency at all, it is the child of banks. So, it’ll get the natural bump from [the] 2018 recession,” according to an article.
Williams, who has been an active blockchain evangelist for the past 3 years, has also worked for institutions like Fannie Mae in the past. He has good knowledge of the banking and insurance markets.
4. Bitcoin Cash (BCH)
Bitcoin Cash is the result of a group of developers wanting to increase Bitcoin’s block-size limit. Although it came into existence as recently as mid-2017, it has kept up a steady momentum in the market for the past one year. Its community members claim that it is even better than its father coin, in terms of speed, volume, traction and adoption.
Roger Ver, also known as ‘Bitcoin Jesus’, has been an active member of the Bitcoin community since its inception and commands a follower base of 540,000 on Twitter. In an interview with CNBC, he says that more and more projects are being based around BCH rather than BTC, due to high-speed and scalability factors.
“All of these existing businesses are building their new products on top of Bitcoin Cash, just like myself as the CEO of Bitcoin.com. The economic path that Bitcoin Cash is on is the one that led to Bitcoin's original success. I'm incredibly bullish on Bitcoin Cash for the exact same reasons I was bullish on Bitcoin back in 2011,” Ver stated.
BCH, which was trading at $801 as of July 3, 2018, is predicted to rise as high as $1,500 by the time the year ends.
5. EOS (EOS)
EOS is believed to have the capacity to replace Ethereum as the authority in blockchain development due to its high-transaction speed and scalability. The altcoin holds the fifth position in terms of market cap and was trading at $9.07 as of July 3, 2018, having declined as much as 23% over the past few weeks.
EOS’ CTO, Dan Larimer, has admitted that the protocol needs some fixing. Despite this, industry experts are still bullish on EOS.
Kyle Samani, co-founder of Multicoin Capital, an Austin-based hedge fund backed by Andreessen Horowitz’s, Marc Andreessen and other VCs, said in an article on CoinGape: “People seem to forget, but Ethereum in its early days back in 2015 when the blockchain launched, it launched with no tooling, no infrastructure at all. People were really trying to beat this thing into the ground, and the system was pretty just as challenging to use for quite some time. EOS was better than that.”
He said that the platform is actively being used to build decentralized applications (Dapps) and it won’t be long before its price reaches $20.
Trading in cryptos entails risks due to market volatility, which is why many seasoned traders and beginners prefer to trade crypto CFDs as offered by leading brokerage Blackwell Global. With CFDs, traders speculate on price movements only and do not actually own any underlying assets. They can benefit from upward and downward trends.
This article appeared first on Cryptovest
