These cryptocurrencies have a greater chance of surviving in the future than others.

Sylvain Saurel

Feb 28·10 min read

The month of February 2020 is coming to an end. At the moment, the CoinMarketCap website already lists more than 5,100 cryptocurrencies. That’s a pretty huge number that keeps increasing month after month.

By the end of the year 2020, the number of cryptocurrencies available on the market could well exceed 6,000.

If you are new to the cryptocurrency industry, this very large choice may scare you at first glance. I say at first glance, because in reality, you should know that 99% of cryptocurrencies will go towards zero in the future.

Having this first fundamental truth in mind will help you to understand that it is essential to invest in the right cryptocurrencies in order not to lose all your initial capital.

Next, you should know that the main criterion before investing is to understand what real-world user issues a cryptocurrency is trying to solve. This criterion is essential because only really useful cryptocurrencies are likely to survive in the future.

In the following, I propose you to discover 14 cryptocurrencies that address real-world user issues that you should consider when investing.

These cryptocurrencies are simply presented in alphabetical order.

Basic Attention Token — BAT

The Basic Attention Token project clearly aims to revolutionize the world of online advertising by promoting a brand new model that respects users’ privacy. In addition, this brand new model is intended to be more equitable for the various stakeholders involved: users, advertisers and publishers.

This theme has become more and more important in recent months and will inevitably increase in the future. Google’s advertising model is reaching its limits and other solutions may find a place in the sun in the future.

Basic Attention Token is clearly one of these solutions of the future, which justifies its immense potential.

At the heart of the Basic Attention Token project is Brave, a privacy-friendly browser created by Brendan Eich, who is none other than the creator of the JavaScript programming language.

Brave Browser is already a huge success with over 100 million downloads and a number of active users that continues to grow month after month.

The best is yet to come for Basic Attention Token, which also relies on the Blockchain Ethereum for its token.

Bitcoin — BTC

Bitcoin is a true revolution with multiple facets: technological, industrial, social and ideological. Bitcoin has already proven itself as a global store of value in times of crisis.

In the coming years, the adoption of Bitcoin is expected to continue growing, and the fully decentralized payment system invented by Satoshi Nakamoto is expected to be increasingly used as a means of payment.

More and more merchants will support Bitcoin in the coming decade. The final step in the mass adoption of Bitcoin will be to become a true unit of account.

There is no guarantee that Bitcoin will achieve this, but it is the only cryptocurrency that can do so by providing a real alternative to the current monetary and financial system.

Civic — CVC

Civic is building a decentralized identity management service for everyone. The goal of Civic is to enable everyone to use their identity in real time in a secure manner.

Civic protects your identity within its system and allows you to authorize access to third parties of your choice.

There is clearly a need for a decentralized solution of this type in the society of the future. So Civic has a card to play.

Ethereum — ETH

Like Bitcoin, Ethereum benefits from a kind of first-mover advantage in the field of smart contracts and dApps. Ethereum has a considerable advantage over its competitors by being the execution base for more than 80% of the decentralized applications running on Blockchains.

Ethereum is also the foundation of the DeFi market which looks very promising for the coming years.

More than one billion dollars are locked in via DeFi, and 95% of this amount is based on applications running on the Ethereum Blockchain. Maker, which has a 57% domination on the DeFi market, relies on the Ethereum platform.

Finally, the most promising Altcoins, from BAT to Nexo, via Enjin Coin, use the Blockchain Ethereum, which means that Ethereum can be seen as an index of the Altcoin market.

If these Altcoins take off, Ethereum will see the price of its Ether benefit as well.

Enjin Coin — ENJ

The Blockchain is a revolution that will impact many sectors in the coming years. Nevertheless, some sectors will be impacted before others.

Among the sectors that will be strongly impacted by massive adoption of Blockchain technology is the gaming industry.

Gamers are used to spending a lot of time online when they play. In most of the games they play, they are used to buying virtual items of any kind. The idea of tokenizing the economy seems natural to them. In addition, they are curious by nature, which will encourage them to test cryptocurrency projects that are part of their game world.

Cryptocurrencies targeting the gaming industry therefore have great potential since they are in a fast-growing market that already represents more than $150 billion in revenues in 2019 worldwide and could exceed $180 billion by 2021, according to some studies.

With its platform, Enjin is simply the leader cryptocurrency in Blockchain gaming.

The fact that Enjin is a leader in a field that is set to boom in the years to come will necessarily benefit the price of Enjin Coin that is used on its platform and whose usefulness will continue to grow.

The partnerships signed by Enjin with Samsung and Microsoft in 2019 are also strong signs that strengthen the company’s position for the future.

Factom — FCT

Factom wishes to provide notaries with a decentralized Blockchain platform to speed up the validation and security of official documents.

This area really needs a disruption as steps with notaries can be slow in the real world. With its solution, Factom addresses a real problem that could seduce many users in the future.

Golem — GNT

Golem is building a fully decentralized Peer-to-Peer marketplace for sharing computing power. Golem is often compared to an Airbnb of computing power.

Golem is based on the Blockchain Ethereum to function by allowing users to make their computing power available to other users for a fee paid with their GNT tokens.

The area targeted by Golem has real potential, and the company could continue to grow in the future by allowing users to earn money with their unused additional computing power.

IOTA — MIOTA

IOTA is a distributed ledger based on a different technology from the Blockchain: the Tangle. IOTA’s Tangle is based on a DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph). IOTA claims that its protocol is resistant to quantum computing.

IOTA targets the Internet of Things (IoT) market, which is set to explode with the arrival of 5G in the next decade.

IOTA’s technology enables transactions at no cost, which is essential in the IoT world. Finally, its Tangle offers almost infinite scalability since network capacity is normally expected to increase as network activity increases.

Monero — XMR

Monero is an open source cryptocurrency focused on privacy and decentralization that was launched in April 2014 under the name BitMonero. Its name was then quickly shortened to Monero.

Monero responds to the need for a secure cryptocurrency that is totally private and untraceable.

While Monero’s consensus algorithm is Proof-of-Work, it has been implemented in such a way that it is easier to mine new XMR than Bitcoins for example.

In its field of highly confidential cryptocurrencies, Monero is one step ahead of its competitors Zcash and Dash. With transaction blocks produced on average every 2 minutes, Monero has been designed to be a real medium of exchanges.

Finally, Monero has a strong community that allows the project to develop and move forward in the right direction.

Nexo — NEXO

Nexo is an instant credit line platform in cryptocurrency. You deposit your assets in cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Litecoin, Nexo, …) within your Nexo account. The assets deposited on Nexo are secured by the custodian BitGo, which is an SEC-approved institution.

Once these assets are deposited on Nexo platform, you instantly have a line of credit in fiat currency at your disposal without the need for any verification.

The whole process is automated with Nexo. You can then spend this line of credit as you wish via the use of a card or via a withdrawal to your bank account.

Nexo responds to a real-world user problem. The fact that the company is already profitable is proof of this, as is the fact that the $700 million in loans has been reached with more than 200,000 users.

Ripple — XRP

The first essential thing to know about Ripple is that it is, therefore, a real-time gross settlement system, but also a foreign exchange market and finally a remittance network. Secondly, it is important to note that many investors are confusing Ripple Labs, Ripple, and XRP.

Before going any further, I think it is important to define things clearly:

• Ripple Labs is the company that created and develops Ripple but now simply calls itself Ripple.
• Ripple represents the Blockchain system.
• XRP is the token used for exchanges on the Ripple network.

In the following, when I use the term Ripple, I will talk about the payment system and not the company unless it is specified.

Like the Bitcoin, the Ripple system is a secure Blockchain. Nevertheless, the comparisons stop there because the Ripple network is centralized.

Indeed, its consensus mechanism is based on the RTXP, which is based on a list of known servers.

Ripple controls more than 50% of the voting power for transaction validation. In addition, more than 75% of the available XRP tokens belong to Ripple or its creators, who generously granted themselves a large number of them during the initial pre-mining of 100 billion tokens.

This excessive centralization is a frequent criticism against Ripple.

Nevertheless, it offers Ripple a large number of advantages that appeal to banks because it is the banks that Ripple targets in the first place. Thus, Ripple aims to replace the SWIFT interbank payment system created in the early 1970s.

Ripple is therefore the perfect solution for convincing banks to give a chance to a competing SWIFT system.

From the point of view of the individual investor, like you and me, you should not go wrong when buying XRP tokens. They are not meant to be an investment, they are exchange tokens on Ripple’s centralized network.

On the other hand, Ripple is expected to make an IPO at the end of 2020 or in 2021 according to the latest information.

If you need to invest in Ripple, it is via the stock market when Ripple does its IPO that you will need to do so.

Siacoin — SC

Sia aims to provide a fully decentralized cloud storage platform. The Sia platform also supports file encryption. This private key system guarantees Sia users that no one will be able to access or control the data it stores on the network.

The token used on the Sia platform is Siacoin.

In a world where privacy and data security have become key issues, Sia may have a nice trick up its sleeve in the future.

Stellar — XLM

Stellar pursues a somewhat similar goal to Ripple but with a more specific focus on individuals. With its Blockchain, Stellar’s mission is to bank the unbanked.

People living in Western countries are not always aware of this, but opening a bank account is something very complicated, if not impossible, for many people in the poorest countries of the world.

With his solution, Stellar wants to change that. The project has major support from IBM in particular.

TRON — TRX

Founded by Justin Sun, TRON seeks to build the decentralized Internet of the future and a system of free content in the entertainment world. All based on the TRON Blockchain.

TRON has already acquired BitTorrent in 2018, and has just bought the Steemit platform at the beginning of 2020.

As a reminder, Steemit is the largest decentralized blog and social media platform based on the Blockchain. Steemit has more than one million users and a growing number of decentralized applications running on its platform.

D.Tube, a decentralized alternative to YouTube, was thus based on Steemit.

TRON wants to accelerate the development of Steemit in the future while continuing its mission to build a fully decentralized Internet outside the control of the GAFA.

Conclusion

The 14 cryptocurrencies that I have just presented to you all respond to real-world user issues. Of course, this does not guarantee that they will survive in the future.

Nevertheless, it maximizes their chances to survive because only the cryptocurrencies that are really useful for a majority of users are likely to survive.

You should consider this list as an entry point before you go and learn more about each of these projects, and then see whether or not you decide to invest some money in them.

This list is of course non-exhaustive, and if you have other projects in mind that address real-world user issues that you believe in very strongly, please feel free to use the comments so that we can discuss them afterwards.