Disillusioned by Bitcoin & Doge? Here are 3 altcoins that cryptopunters should look at   |  Photo Credit: Getty
Key Highlights
- Bitcoin slipped over 36% from over $53,000 on April 29 to $35,670 on May 28
- Most cryptocurrencies do not have any intrinsic value and are highly volatile
- However some stablecoins aim to eliminate massive fluctuations by pegging it with real assets
Nothing divides market experts more fiercely than cryptocurrency. The naysayers argue that cryptocurrencies have zero intrinsic value, not backed by any real assets and their prices swing widely.
While all three hold true for cryptocurrencies, investors on both side of the spectrum agree that trading these digital assets is more akin to betting than investing. And all of them agree that traders should put money that they can afford to lose.
With that out of the way, all major digital coins have taken a massive hit in the past few weeks. Bitcoin alone slipped over 36% from over $53,000 on April 29 to $35,670 on May 28. There are many factors such as the crackdown in China and environmental concerns raised by Tesla founder Elon Musk. This has led to growing disillusionment with the most popular cryptocurrency off late and investors are looking for alternatives to hedge their bets.
Here are three altcoins that crypto punters can look into if bitcoin is not their choice of poison:
Ethereum (ETH) builds on Bitcoin’s innovation, with some big differences. Both let you use digital money without payment providers or banks. But Ethereum is programmable, so you can also use it for lots of different digital assets – even Bitcoin. This also means Ethereum is for more than payments. It’s a marketplace of financial services, games and apps that can’t steal your data or censor you. It is scarce digital money that you can use on the internet – similar to Bitcoin. ETH-USD was at $2239.4585 on May 30 and has a market capitalisation of $259.95 billion.
Litecoin (LTC) launched in 2011, it was among the first digital tokens to follow the path of bitcoin. It is referred to as “silver to Bitcoin’s gold”. Created by Charlie Lee, an MIT graduate and former Google engineer, the digital currency is based on open-source global payment network free from any central authority. It has faster block generation rate and better transaction time. LTC was last seen trading at around $161 on May 30. It has a market capitalisation of 10.79 billion.
Tether is a stablecoin, another class of cryptocurrencies which aims to offer price stability and are backed by a reserve asset. Every Tether token is always 100% backed by our reserves, which include traditional currency and cash equivalents and, from time to time, may include other assets and receivables from loans made by Tether to third parties, which may include affiliated entities (collectively, “reserves”). Every Tether token is also 1-to-1 pegged to the dollar, so 1 USD₮ Token is always valued by Tether at 1 USD, according to Tether website.