In this article, we will look at some of the best performing coins in the crypto market listed. Of course, we will not include top crypto currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. Instead, we will look at the rest of altcoins and projects with a big potential to do well during this year. They were chosen based on their previous performance including past year as well as other important factors such as use cases, community activity, team members and their credentials and, of course, the technology at the fundament of each project. However, the list will not be in any particular order as all of the assets here have equal opportunity to succeed in today’s market. Let’s dive in!
Bitcoin Cash (BCH)
Bitcoin Cash was established on August 1st, 2017 as a fork of the first cryptocurrency – Bitcoin. It enabled the increase of the block size to have the ability to process a large volume of transactions. Currently, BCH is confidently placed in the top-5 on CoinMarketCap. This project stands out due to its wide-spread adoption: the team prioritizes the ecosystem over all. That is why they are offering great conditions for merchants and there are more than 70 applications or projects built around the BCH chain which includes third party support and protocol development.
Last year, Bitcoin Cash announced the launch of the developers portal so programmers can develop and build on BCH. It will help to further advance the infrastructure and third-party services. Currently, more than 4,300 businesses worldwide accept BCH as a payment including telecom giant AT&T, cosmetics chain lush, retailers Overstock and Newegg and many others.
In 2020, the Bitcoin Cash community expects more advancements of the infrastructure. For example, there are plans on testing a beta Telegram tipping bot — Tipmebchbot, which enables Telegram users to tip other users using BCH. There is also a trend of a growing ecosystem due to great conditions for merchants: low transaction fees, fast and secure third-party payment gateways and, of course, high demand from the BCH community.
Technical analysis of the price chart also shows a positive trend. Currently, the crucial level for BCH is $644. During the last year, that price level was acting as both support and resistance. At the moment, the price of BCH is moving in the rising wedge formation towards the mentioned $644, and it could very well reach it in late July. Towards the end of December, it is highly possible that BCH will drop down to $356 as that is the price which acted first as resistance then as a support when the wedge was forming. However, since the crypto market is going for a rebound, we might see an all-time high for Bitcoin Cash during 2020.
ChainLink (LINK)
Chainlink has been the talk of the crypto community for most of 2019. The LINK ICO was organized on September 19, 2017, and reached the fundraising goal of $32 million. Since then, this open-source decentralized cryptocurrency uses its technology in blockchains and smart contracts to access data feeds, web APIs, and traditional bank account payments to operate as real-world agreements which require external proof of performance. The ChainLink network utilizes the LINK token and ChainLink Node operators to retrieve data, compute it, format it and guarantee payments from off-chain data feeds.
This project has great advisors on board: blockchain technology specialist Ari Juels from Cornell University, Hudson Jameson, a senior executive in the Ethereum community, and Andrew Miller contributor to the Zcash and Tezos projects.
LINK recorded a massive 1000% growth in May and June last year. During the same time, they also announced a number of partnerships including some big names such as Google and Oracle. It’s safe to say that ChainLink growth is continuing to be fueled by massive partnerships and outstanding technology behind the project.
The Chainlink showed great performance in 2019, especially after the launch of the mainnet on the Ethereum network on May 30. It had a major positive effect on the price and it had reached an all-time high of $4.51 on June 29. Currently, there are certain rumors regarding Chainlink’s potential partnership with Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), an American corporation that is considered the biggest player on the market of computer microprocessors. There is no official confirmation of this partnership yet, but if it becomes official, LINK would once again reach a peak of investing interest.
According to technical analysis of the price chart, levels around $3 has been proven to be a very strong resistance. Should the upward move happen, it is likely to take the price to the next Fibonacci level, which stands at $2.66 that should serve as resistance in the meantime. Currently, nearly all technical indicators are showing a bullish trend for this coin.
Tezos (XTZ)
Tezos was developed by ex-Morgan Stanley analyst Arthur Breitman. Just in two weeks its ICO collected $230,000,000 in contributions, which made Tezos the biggest ICO ever in terms of raised funds. After initial legal issues with SEC, the project hired professional auditors and successfully released its mainnet on 17th of September in 2018. Last year, Tezos enacted its first on-chain upgrade called Athens A. The upgrade proposal was the first to undergo the network’s “self-amendment” process in which bakers on Tezos – equivalent to miners on Bitcoin or Ethereum – stake tokens bundled into “rolls” to show their support for or against competing upgrade proposals.
Right now XTZ is listed on major exchanges such as Binance, HitBTC and Kraken. Another major crypto exchange and brokerage Coinbase offers Tezos baking investment solutions to institutional clients. The Coinbase Tezos solution has gained interest because it offers offline staking and governance participation. The interest in Tezos over recent months has been sustained and significant. In February of 2020 the price of the XTZ reached its all-time high of $3.90 and is now placed at 9th spot in the CoinMarketCap ranking.
Most of the prediction algorithms are showing positive outlook on Tezos in 2020. For example, Walletinvestor, a popular website that does technical analysis-based price predictions on cryptocurrencies and traditionally has a skeptical outlook for most coins, is expecting XRZ to surge by almost 3x – from the current $1.33 to $3.17 by the end of the year.
Binance Coin (BNB)
Developed under a wing of the largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance Coin became the best performing digital asset of 2019. After its first appearance in 2017, BNB quickly got the attention of the crypto community due to its functionality on the Binance exchange: acting as a trading asset as well as being used to lower the commissions. However, one of the main reasons for the initial success of the coin is its scarcity. Every quarter Binance destroys 20-percent of the BNB it accumulates in fees. The plan is to continue removing Binance Coins out of circulation until there are only 100 million left. This action adjusts BNB’s demand against a limited and steadily depleting supply, causing the digital asset’s price to surge.
In such a short time, BNB already managed to take a leading position in the crypto market. Currently, Binance Coin is paired with more than 400 other currencies, making it one of the most liquid options for trading.
All technical indicators on the chart are pointing to a bullish trend including a bullish divergence with the MACD and RSI. If BNB/BTC remains above the last low of 0.0018010, consolidation can happen until the next bullish move. If this low is broken, we can expect lower prices.
Maker (MKR)
Maker (MKR) token was launched in 2017 by the Maker DAO project based on the ERC-20 Ethereum smart-contract standard. As a decentralized autonomous organization on the Ethereum blockchain, the Maker project aims to create stable digital assets (such as DAI) and reduce their volatility relative to the U.S. dollar.
Maker is one of the very few platforms that is known to have a two-coin system. It is what sets Maker apart from the rest of its competitors in the crypto market. Because MKR is the utility token behind the DAI stablecoin, it fundamentally follows a stablecoin concept. However, MKR isn’t plagued by the same issues which limited the growth of many stablecoins. Instead, it employs a second-layer governance platform and the coin is removed from the direct trades. This unique system creates a cryptocurrency that is both decentralized and fit for every day use as well as margin trading of the DAI token.
In 2019 Multi-Collateral Dai (MCD) was enabled as a result of MKR holders vote. They approved the addition of the Basic Attention Token (BAT), opening the door to countless additional collateral types in the future.
As for the technical analysis, most indicators are currently bearish, most likely due to a recent market crash. The MACD has turned bearish on the daily chart and pretty much all moving averages, including SMA’s and EMA’s, are all indicating to sell. The RSI is still in the oversold area on the daily chart and really close to it on the weekly chart. However, because of the current circumstances of the global economic crisis, technical indicators are not as reliable and another massive sell-off could happen at any time.
Cosmos (ATOM)
Cosmos is a secure and scalable ecosystem of independent parallel blockchains, each based on BFT consensus algorithms such as Tendermint consensus. Its ICO was completed on April 6, 2017 raising $17 million in less than 30 minutes. Last year, Cosmos was added to TrustWallet causing the ATOM token price to surge. Binance also added the token without any listing fee by endorsement of platform’s CEO Changpeng Zhao and his belief in the project’s solid track record. Currently, it is also listed on more than 40 exchanges including Kraken, Poloniex and HitBTC.
Cosmos offers a platform for making payments and exchanging information between blockchains. The problem of interaction between blockchains is highly relevant and its solution allows not only to make payments between blockchains but also to exchange information in full. The future of the Cosmos project depends on its further development.
Price predictions are also difficult to make due to uncertain market conditions and the coin’s less than a year lifetime. Therefore, for now, trends are neutral according to most price predictions.
Basic Attention Token (BAT)
BAT is an ERC-20 token designed to be exchanged between publishers, advertisers, and users. The founder and CEO of BAT Brendan Eich is also the creator of Javascript and co-founder of Mozilla and Firefox. The token is designed to put a value on user attention.
The BAT ecosystem includes an open-source, privacy-centered Brave browser designed to block trackers and malware, decrease page load times by blocking ads and provide an alternative to ad-based revenue streams. Users of Brave Rewards are seeing Brave Ads and earn BAT, which they can claim on a monthly basis via the integrated wallet. Users can donate the accumulated BAT to their favorite websites, YouTube creators, or Twitch streamers. In 2019, BAT has teamed up with TAP Network, Starbucks, Amazon, and Apple. The project has also enjoyed a period of strong publisher growth from platforms such as YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, Reddit, Vimeo, Github, and other websites.
However, predictions based on the technical indicators aren’t all positive: only the 5-day SMA is suggesting a buy, whereas SMA and EMA are hinting at a sell. The 14-day RSI is at 54, which is closer to the oversold region. Basic Attention Token needs to break the resistance at $0.2 to confirm its intention to move uphill.
What’s next?
If you decide to acquire some of the assets in the list, choose one of the exchanges recommended by the project. Most of these assets are available on a global reputable exchange Binance. They can also be found on HitBTC, a leader by the liquidity metric. Crypto-to-crypto trades can also be made on BKEX and Coinex.
Overall, there are a lot of potentially profitable investments to be made during this year. It’s best to pay attention to interesting new projects. According to the past events in crypto, early investors get the most benefits from their portfolio. For some coins, current low prices may indicate a chance to buy cheap for a long-term investment. Of course, it’s important to do your own research and only invest what you can afford to lose.