Crypto is a new kind of investment. It’s hard to predict, and it can go up or down. But if you have $100 and you want to buy $1000 worth of Crypto, here are the five coins that make sense right now.
This is not investment advice. It’s an opinion piece. If you’re interested in learning more, I recommend this guide to crypto investing by journalist Alex Hern: https://medium.com/@exodus_io/the-top-5-coins-for-2018-an-easy-to-follow-guide-to-investing-in-cryptocurrencies-3e7e639ecb37
What is a cryptocurrency? What are the top 5 coins to invest in for 2018? And what will the future of cryptocurrency be?
In this simple yet comprehensive guide I’ll give you my personal recommendations for the best of the best. All of these coins are currently sitting in the top 10 at CoinMarketCap.com, meaning they are gaining momentum and moving up fast.
The reason that cryptocurrencies have been able to gain so much traction so quickly is because they provide such a revolutionary solution to problems that governments and banks have failed to address in any meaningful way.
As mentioned earlier, one of Bitcoin’s greatest advantages over fiat currencies was its decentralized nature, allowing anyone to transfer money anywhere in the world without any central authority or middleman, meaning there are no fees involved and transactions are almost instantaneous. This is what makes it such a revolutionary technology.
However, as with all new technologies, Bitcoin comes with some risks and potential dangers. In this guide I’ll explore what those risks and dangers are and how you can minimize them.
You don’t need to understand cryptocurrency or blockchain technology. You just need to know what the most popular cryptocurrencies are, how they work, and why you should buy them. I will tell you the best ones to buy* in 2018.
There are hundreds of cryptocurrencies, with at least 50 currently being listed on coinmarketcap.com (https://coinmarketcap.com/). But these are the top five I believe have the best chance of making big gains this year (https://www.coindesk.com/top-5-cryptocurrencies-to-invest-in-2018/).
*It’s important to keep in mind that while I am including coins that were previously not very popular, I’m not including coins that have a lot of hype and promise that may be overhyped. There is no way for me to predict if any particular coin is a good investment or not; there are many factors that influence price movements, and most people don’t have enough information about all of them to predict which ones will go up and which down. Only people who have done their research can reliably predict which ones will go up and which down. Any money you spend on an unknown coin is money you can’t spend on something safer.
The biggest factor lots of people miss when investing in cryptocurrencies is liquidity. If a cryptocurrency is not liquid, an exchange will have trouble buying it up and selling it to you. And if the price doesn’t move up quickly enough, people will stop buying it, which can make it even harder to sell.
This is why I strongly recommend XRP for 2018. It’s the best cryto to buy now
The most important thing you can do if you want to make money from crypto is to get a wallet. You need one because you need to store the crypto coins. You also need a crypto exchange account, preferably with a good reputation, if you want to trade them. The reason for the wallet is that once your crypto coins are in there, it’s safe: no one can steal them from you without access to your wallet.
The reason for the exchange is that it will let you buy and sell crypto coins easily with cash or other crypto coins. It will let you buy bitcoin, which is known as “the gateway coin.”
The reason for the reputation is that, although some exchanges are more reputable than others, it’s better to deal with an exchange with lots of positive reviews than an exchange with no reviews at all. This is because a lot of things about exchanges are hidden from users; for example, there are fees for buying and selling on most exchanges. You don’t know what these fees are until after you’ve bought crypto coins or sold them. If the fees are low and the exchange has positive reviews, these positive reviews will be telling people about the low fees and good performance
The best cryto to buy now is probably bitcoin. But before you buy, there are a few things you should know.
Bitcoin is the oldest and most famous crypto, but it has been around for only nine years. Its price has fallen and risen many times, so it pays to keep an eye on it. The same goes for other crypto that have been around longer, such as ethereum and litecoin.
The number of crypto coins is growing fast, but there are probably only a few hundred that will still be worth anything in five or ten years. So if you want the chance of getting rich from just one or two cryptos, you should do your own due diligence before buying anything.
Crypto coins are hard for the average person to buy and sell, which makes them good for speculators who want to make money quickly by moving in and out of them. That’s why exchanges like Coinbase have sprung up where you can buy and sell coins easily with fiat money (dollars or euros). And it’s also why there are so many “pump-and-dump” schemes aimed at drawing people into buying low and selling high.
The first thing to know about crypto is that it’s a very young industry. Cryptocurrencies had their start in 2009, and now they are the hottest investment class on earth. There are more than 1,000 cryptocurrencies and tokens, and almost any new coin you see will have a ballooning valuation within months.
Understanding what is going on is hard, but it’s not impossible. The best way to understand the industry is to understand the key players. They are like big companies in the usual world of business: IBM, Apple, Google (GOOGL), Cisco (CSCO), Microsoft (MSFT), Facebook (FB), Amazon (AMZN). For example, Bitcoin became a big deal in 2013 because it was developed by one person — Satoshi Nakamoto — and because there were no central banks or regulators who could take it away from him.
The cryptocurrency space has many companies with well-financed teams behind them. A few examples are Gemini (which owns coins like Litecoin and Ethereum), BitMex (which runs a trading platform for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies), Circle Internet Financial (which offers a cryptocurrency exchange), Coinbase (which offers services like setting up digital wallets and buying/selling bitcoin), Bitmain Technologies (which makes mining hardware for bitcoin)