The bear market started last year. There is hope that the market will recover by mid-2019. There are many projects that died last year, more will die this year but projects that have strong fundamentals are here to stay. Our investment theme for 2019 would be security token offering, mass user adoption and scalability. Here are our top 20 picks for 2019.

Payments/ Store of Value

Bitcoin

Fundamentals:

1. Lightening Network Nodes Rapid Adoption reduce time in confirming transactions.
2. Blockstream Satellite launch will enable users to send/receive bitcoins without internet.
3. Institutional investment in Bitcoin Custody products will create more demands.
4. Mass user adoption through Coinbase and Cash App.
5. Bitcoin Halving in 2020. Block rewards will be reduced to 6.25 BTC

Price to buy Bitcoins: Aim to buy bitcoins in parts, average dollar cost. Best price to get in will be in the range of $1500 – $3000 USD.

Price Target in 2020: $15000 – $20000 USD.

  Useful links;

How to buy bitcoin using credit or debit card

Top 5 Bitcoin Hardware Wallets

Litecoin

Litecoin is a better and faster version of bitcoin which is faster and lighter. It is often called as Digital Silver. Litecoin is recently caught eyes when they advertised in a UFC Boxing event, Litecoin is looking to execute an aggressive marketing plan to get more acceptance amongst users. Litecoin halving event is approaching after 208 days, which is the most bullish factor for litecoin to start a new bull run this year. Overall Litecoin looks a decent investment option for 2019, which is supported by a very strong bullish catalyst.

Currently, Litecoin is trading at $35.74 USD, which is extremely affordable and also a great investment in 2019.

Useful Links:

What is Litecoin

Ripple

Ripple is the most popular cryptocurrency in the market. They have launched their most anticipated payment settlement solution- XRapid last year. XRapid is fast and suitable for financial/ Payment industries. Ripple has tons of partnerships with banks from across the globe who would start using its offering in 2019. If we don’t get stuck on its centralization debate, I think Ripple is the safest investment option in 2019. Which could at-least double your investment.

Why? Because Firstly, Ripple has huge demands coming up from banks/Institutes and Secondly, Ripple also able to generate huge demands from people who wanted to invest in crypto. Ripple is the right fit for them considering its low price and high liquidity.

Ripple’s token at this point is expensive at all and is trading at about $0.36 USD. And given the partnerships its striking, this is definitely a coin and a company that is worth your time.

Useful Links

A Guide: How To Buy Ripple Across The World

Top 5 Ripple Wallets

Scalability

Ethereum

According to Vitalik Buterin – Cofounder of Ethereum, Sharding and plasma implementation will help Ethereum to reach 1 million transactions per second. The vision looks really big on the table, 8 teams have already started working on this technological upgrade in the Ethereum network. Ethereum will transit into Proof of stake coin by end of this year, They recently announced the updated roadmap which showcases a grand and scalable vision for Ethereum network.

Ethereum after a year-long low, managed to reclaim its position as the world’s second largest cryptocurrency because of the updates that were announced. The most anticipated update is supposed to come into play by the 16th of January. Incidentally, there are three more hardforks that are coming Ethereum’s way. These two have people very interested. And this is something that has everyone excited and people are more willing to bet on Ethereum now.  

Useful Links

Top 10 Ethereum WalletsWhat is Ethereum?

What is Ethereum?

Quarkchain

Quarkchain had a great hype when they came out from ICO stage and listed on binance last year. They have delivered based on the hype in terms of both product development and price growth. Quarkchain was one of the few altcoins which did pretty well in terms of price growth in the bear market of 2018. Quarkchain recently released their testnet and currently handling over 10,000 Transactions per second. They are scheduled to release the mainnet by Q1, 2019. Quarkchain is also implementing Sharding technology to achieve 1 Million transactions per second. Quarkchain is new, Its market cap is low as compare to Ethereum, TRON and other competitors, All these factors makes Quarkchain a good investment for 2019.

Zilliqa

Zilliqa has been one of those few blockchain companies that have been working on scalability and have managed to do that successfully. Zilliqa was one of the pioneers in the scalability market that added sharding technology into their blockchain to increase the scalability of the blockchain itself. In preparation for their mainnet launch, Zilliqa launched a testnet and the results of which were very good. Ziliqa has also developed its own language- Scllia for programming smart contracts. The USP of Ziliqa is its assembled team of Research scholars who are well versed with both science and technology.  

Security Token offering

Polymath

Polymath is a security coin that allows many people to transfer their securities onto the blockchain. It uses the ST-20 token standard and ensures government compliance using the same. Polymath is one of the first coins in the cryptocurrency market to establish the difference between the ICO and STO (Security Token Offering).

Polymath focuses heavily on anti-money laundering, KYC processes and other legalities so that they stay within government norms for the cryptocurrency industry. As a security cryptocurrency coin, the company has many great partnerships. To name a few; MintHealth, Corl, tZero, BlockEstate.

In the past one year, the token has faced the brunt of the bear market. Although it did manage to set an all-time high this year, it is still the coin’s very first year in the cryptocurrency market. The coin is currently trading at $0.141708 USD.

Polymath 101 – A platform to tokenise securities

Ravencoin

Ravencoin is another Security Token Offering cryptocurrency. The main focus of Ravencoin is to make a peer-to-peer platform for asset transfer and also enable the creation of assets to be used for whatever purpose the creator deems fit. Like other coins focus on particular things, Ravencoin is a coin that is solely focussed on fund transferring. The Ravencoin has different types of tokens that the user can choose depending on their requirements.

Ravencoin is a Proof of work coin, backed by one of largest online retalier – Overstock. Overstock has a roadmap to focus on Blockchain business in 2019, They have plans to use Ravencoin as a protocol to issues securities on blockchain.

Ravencoin has a large community base, its current market cap is around 40 M$, Considering the ongoing demand for security token and overstock envolvement, The future seems bright for ravencoin.

Coin Review : Ravencoin

Waves

Waves is a platform that allows users to make their own tokens and distribute them too. The platform allows users to create tokens. The Waves platform also has its own exchange on which these tokens can be distributed. The exchange is called DEX.  According to waves 2019 roadmap, they are working to launch security token offering soon. Waves has recently launched smart contracts on their mainnet.

The Waves platform has a bigtime partnership with Delloite. And also has a partnership with the Russian National Settlements Depository.  Waves is the nativ token for waves platform, it performs really well lately, currently it’s consolidating below 3$.

Tron

Tron has recently acquired Bittorent – leading peer to peer application, They have to plan to launch Bittorrent token on tron blockchain. Tron and Bitorrent will complement each other to become biggest blockchain network in the world, which tron is already on its way to become one.

Tron has been very successful in maintaining the price in bear market, The founder behind tron project – Justin sun is the another reason you should consider buy this project. Justin sun built a hype around project last year and over delivered so far in terms of network usage, dapp adoption and user base. Tron is currently leading the dapp platform industry with 1 Million users and over 100+ Dapps created.

Considering the mass adoption of Tron network and its continuous price growth, It’s a safe investment choice for a retail investor.

Useful Links:

Why you should buy Tron?

We will release the next part of this list next week, follow us on twitter to get updates

Hitesh Malviya

Hitesh Malviya is the Founder of ItsBlockchain. He is one of the most early adopters of blockchain & cryptocurrency enthusiast in India. After being into space for a few years, he started IBC in 2016 to help other early adopters learn about the technology.
Before IBC, Hitesh has founded 4 companies in the cyber security & IT space.