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3 Dark Cryptocurrencies to Watch
In December last year, bitcoin nearly hit $20,000 per coin for the first time in its history; but it currently stands at just under $7,000, as of March 31, 2018. Despite this whipsawing — and caution from some leading financial figures that bitcoin and cryptocurrencies more broadly could be a bubble — investors continue to pile inHowever, while those who bought bitcoin early on and while the price of each coin was low are enjoying huge gains at this point, not all investors are interested in buying when the coin has reached record highs. Fortunately for those investors, there are many other digital currencies available today.and indeed, new currencies are constantly emerging. Many of these currencies will fail, but there is a chance that some could become the next big thing in the digital currency world. Here are some obscure cryptocurrencies worth keeping an eye on for the rest of 2018.
Vertcoin
Many currencies in existence today owe their origins, as well as their underlying structures and networks, to bitcoin. Vertcoin is one such case. It was created to incorporate additional decentralization measures and the development team has a proven track record of improving the underlying network. According to Coin Market CapThere are currently over 41 million VTC in circulation, with a maximum supply of 84 million. It is currently trading at $1.64 per coin, as of March 31, 2018, but is highly volatile, trading at over $9 per coin in January of this year.
IOTA
IOTA is a digital currency that focuses on secure machine-to-machine payments in the Internet of Things. It is unique among cryptocurrencies in that it does not have an underlying blockchain backing network. Instead, it uses directed acyclic graph technology. Through this technological backing, IOTA transactions are always free, regardless of the size of the transaction itself. This technology also allows for scalability and faster processing times, as well as a theoretically unlimited number of transactions. All of these have been issues that have plagued industry leader bitcoin. If IOTA can capitalize on this technology, it could eventually come to dominate the industry. The current price is $1.09.
Cardano
Another completely open source project, Cardano is a cryptocurrency that aims to revolutionize smart contracts. According to the developer’s websiteCardano “seeks to offer more advanced features than any previously developed protocol.” As of March 31, 2018, Cardano tokens are selling for less than $0.15 each, and the total market cap of the currency is $4.83 billion. There are nearly 26 billion tokens in circulation out of a possible 45 billion, according to Coin Market Cap.
Will any of these cryptocurrencies surpass Bitcoin and lead the industry? It’s impossible to say, but investors interested in the space may want to keep an eye on them either way.