It looks like 2021 will be a glorious year for the crypto markets. Read our breakdown of the best altcoins to invest in.
Bitcoin is becoming a hedge for big financial players against currencies that are being devalued. Having recently set a new all-time high of $42.000 and the Biden administration intending to be printing billions of dollars out of thin air, it doesn’t look like this trend is going to stop.
The biggest cryptocurrency of them all has proven to be a good investment over the past decade. The thousands of other tokens (“altcoins”) are a riskier play. Most of them experience rapid price increases but fade to black just as quickly.
However, the crypto space is maturing. Some projects are building unique services with blockchain technology. Services that can change the world forever.
In this overview, you will find our favorite investment opportunities in the crypto market. We have divided them into four categories: Sure Bets, Promising Bets, Risky Business, and the Safety Zone.
Disclaimer: none of this is financial advice.
SURE BETS
The following projects we consider to be safe picks. It would be very surprising if you won’t make a profit on these.
* Energy Web Foundation (EWT)
Would you invest in a startup that has the likes of Shell, Siemens, Vodafone and Centrica using its services? If so, then the Energy Web Foundation might pique your interest. They intend to become the global base layer of the energy grid.
Governments all over the world are investing heavily in so-called “Green Deals”. It requires societies and businesses to drastically reduce their carbon footprint. Increasing the consumption and production of renewable energy is one of the ways to achieve this. The current energy grid cannot handle this. So… what to do? Energy Web Foundation has the answer to this with its blockchain solution. A trustless network that allows energy suppliers to exchange data seamlessly. Check out the video Shell made on how they will be using it.
Founded in 2016, the Energy Web Foundation is not your typical crypto project. So don’t expect any shilling efforts from the team (they are SEC approved after all!). It just happens to be that the EWT token is needed to execute transactions on their chain. A chain that will produce trillions of transactions on behalf of the biggest companies in the world. For years to come.
One company is missing from the already impressive roster. One that will make the whole crypto crowd market buy EWT once they are signed up. That’s the one and only Tesla. Will that ever happen? Well, there are some breadcrumbs that make us believe that.
A former EWT employee was personally hired by Elon Musk last fall. See this LinkedIn screenshot (note: his name has been cut off on purpose).
It seems to us that Tesla Autobidder could benefit from connecting with the Energy Web. What if there is an integration project in the works? Time will tell.
EWT price prediction
When the crypto community discovered EWT, its price rose from $1 to $12 in four months. It’s currently moving around $6.50. Once bigger exchanges list the token, staking methods are announced (diluting the already tiny circulation supply of 30 million tokens) and their own wallet is developed, the EWT price will skyrocket. Or to quote their CEO Walter Kok “why moon if Mars is doable?”
* Ocean Protocol (OCEAN)
Followers of this blog know that we are big fans of Ocean Protocol. Our interviews with founders Trent McConaghy and Bruce Pon have been illuminating.
These guys both had hugely successful careers in their pre-blockchain days (like setting up 18 banks all over the world, selling a start-up to Siemens). In 2014 they ventured into the crypto space. Heads down they began experimenting and based on the needs of businesses they came out with Ocean Protocol. A privatized data exchange marketplace.
It’s not just that companies like Toyota, Unilever, Roche and Daimler are working with Ocean; or that political bodies such as the UN, the EU and the Central Bank of Germany are closely collaborating with them; it’s the fully realized vision of McConaghy and Pon that makes us damn excited about the future of Ocean.
They understand that developer usage and a thriving crypto community are the driving force behind making a project successful. Ocean works closely together with a huge crowd of enthusiastic tech nerds, the software is open-source and product feedback finds its way back on their product roadmap. Combine that with a unique proposition for the fastest growing industry in the world (AI & data), and you got a recipe for success here.
OCEAN price prediction
After the Binance listing and release of the data marketplace, the Ocean price dropped from $0.72 and now sits at $0.40. The data marketplace still needs a lot of UX improvements for it to find mass adoption. The staking model is also very hard to understand. Once that becomes more straightforward and more businesses start sharing data, there is no doubt the Ocean price will surpass $1.60.
* Polkadot (DOT)
Every year the crypto industry sees tens of new projects presenting themselves as a better version of Ethereum. That it ain’t so easy to dethrone the smart contract platform headed by Vitalik Buterin, can only be proven with the clusterfuck called EOS. With over $4 billion in ICO funds, the extremely shady team – that included people like Daniel Larimer and Brock Pierce – produced shit zero.
The only person we trust to produce something that can rival Ethereum, is one of its co-creators. Gavin Wood invented the Solidity language and was Ethereum’s CTO. He left the project in 2016 because he recognized the flaws in its design (when scaling!?). This led the Englishman to create the Polkadot network. Next to faster and cheaper transactions than Ethereum can process, it allows dAPP developers to create their own blockchain and to easily integrate with others.
More and more projects are building on Polkadot. The excitement around ICOs on Ethereum in 2017 has shifted to launches on the DOT platform.
DOT price prediction
Within a couple of months after the token release, the DOT token made it into the top 5 of coinmarketcap in 2020. We don’t see it ever topping Ethereum, but the current price of $8,55 is surely undervalued. This will cross $25 rather sooner than later.
—————————————————————-
PROMISING BETS
A bit riskier, but the rewards can be immense if these projects take off.
* Sentivate (SNTVT)
Sentivate is a project we picked for our Best Altcoins of 2019 (Dutch only). It has been a bumpy ride ever since. The price not doing anything, announcements being mismanaged, and failed hires. We only hang on by a bare thread because of Tom Marchi.
Marchi is the co-founder and CTO of Sentivate. A project that aims to create a new, faster and open internet. Yeah, sounds crazy and overly ambitious. But if there’s one person in the world who can pull this of, is this twenty-something coding genius hailing from the swamps of Jersey.
Sentivate is about to unlock their Universal Web soon. An infrastructure that can save the tech world billions of dollars by increasing bandwidth availability, replacing the slow HTTP protocol and addressing the security vulnerabilities of DNS.
Another major milestone will be getting Nina Simosko to join the team as an advisor. A former CEO of one of the biggest IT firms in the world, NTT, she knows all the big players in Silicon Valley. If she’s able to sign up one recognizable company, then Sentivate is off to the races.
SNTVT price prediction:
Q1 will determine the long term success of Sentivate. Marchi can’t back down on his promises. If he delivers, we are expecting the SNTVT price to go up 5.000% – at least! If not, play it safe and set a stop-loss order and get out as fast as you can.
* Verasity (VRA)
The video game industry is worth $160 billion. Tons of blockchain projects are doing “something” in this space. Like selling digital assets (NFTs), offer rewards for players and viewers, purchasing games via their own tokens, host tournaments, etc. It’s still mostly more miss than hit.
Verasity is different. They combine all of the above but excel at offering a seamless UX. Very important if you want to be taken serious by gamers. Next to their impressive tech stack, the business development strategy is also ahead of the competition. Take a look at their plans for 2021 and you cannot be not impressed.
VRA price prediction
The VRA token is already listed on several big exchanges. Even more are coming in Q1. It is surprising that the market cap is only $3 million. The token price is $0.00091. It can easily reach its all-time high of $0.00225 in no time again.
—————————————————————-
RISKY BUSINESS
These are high risk, high reward opportunities. Only invest with “small change” and when you can follow the price movements on a regular basis.
* Connect Finance (CNFI)
Connect Finance offers a crypto credit card. What else is new, aren’t Crypto.com, NEXO and Swipe doing the same thing already? No, these players only offer a debit card. Meaning you have to exchange your crypto assets to fiat when you want to pay for something.
With Connect Finance you will actually be extended a line of credit when you deposit cryptos on your account. It gets even better: you also get to open IBAN accounts and use virtual cards (Apple Pay, Google Pay) if you don’t have a need for a physical card.
Holders of the CNFI token will benefit from receiving lower transaction fees, access to rewards and yields on various crypto tokens.
(source of most of this information: here)
CNFI price prediction
This project has just been released, so there’s a lot of potential here. Especially when you compare it to the market caps of Crypto.com ($1.4billion) and NEXO ($310 million). CNFI sits at $5 million. You do the math… The biggest risk here is that half of team is (still) anonymous. We know they come from Canada, but a financial service like this needs to be 110% legit to attract more investors.
* Freemarket One (XRC)
Not only crypto is booming because of hyperinflation rearing it’s ugly head. The precious metal markets are also seeing more investments. Anything that can’t be minted is gaining in value it seems.
So combine the two, and you get Freemarket One. An anonymous marketplace where one can trade precious metals. Anonymity is guaranteed by utliziting the TOR network and payments are done via the XRC token.
This project has been in the works for three years now. This doesn’t boast well. How hard is it to develop this type of an application after all. We do believe in it’s use case, so it’s worth a mention.
XRC price prediction
In the coming months, the team will release the beta version of their exchange. Outreach to new merchants should then follow. It’s a high risk play, but if they can attract the attention of the crypto crowd a x5 from the current price of $1.71 is certainly doable.
* Shopping.io (SPI)
So what can you buy with Bitcoin? You’ve been probably asked that by friends and family if you have some of that precious BTC. You also probably find it hard to answer this. With shopping.io you can now finally tell them, that you can pay for stuff online with it.
Shopping.io is a gateway to shop with hundred types of cryptos at Amazon, Ebay and Walmart. The process is surprisingly straightforward. You sign up at their platform and search for products. You pay with crypto by connecting with coinpayments.net. A 10% discount is given on all purchases automatically when you hold more than 2000 SPI tokens.
SPI price prediction
The business model is so obvious, that you wonder why hasn’t this been done before. The execution is simplistic in a good way and the token model is attractive for investors. If the team succeeds in scaling its services, we expect the SPI token price to rise from $8 to $40. The current market cap of $8 million is very undervalued.
—————————————————————-
PLAYING IT SAFE
Not interested in investing in altcoins, and you just want to sit back and watch your crypto assets grow? Then storing them with a cryptocurrency custodian might be a good idea. You can earn interest between 6 to 10% on various coins such as BTC, Ethereum but also stable coins like USDT, USD and DAI.
The yields given tremendously exceed what you can earn with a savings account. Consider the fact that the interest is compounded monthly and the proposition is hard to reject. There is higher risk involved as these custodians aren’t secured by national agencies. On the other hand, you can withdraw your funds at any time.
We find that Blockfi and Celcius are two of the most secure ones out there. The interest rates at Celcius are slightly higher, but they only offer their service on a mobile app. We prefer to do our finance still the old fashioned way on a computer, so the web interface of Blockfi works best for us.
When you sign up with Blockfi, please use this referral link:
https://blockfi.com/?ref=0f8172f4
You will receive $10 when you deposit $100 worth of tokens.
When you sign up with Celcius, please use this referral link: https://celsiusnetwork.app.link/1192755a72
You will receive $20 when you deposit $200 worth of tokens.
—————————————————————-
How to buy the tokens mentioned here: look up their ticker on CoinGecko and you will find the markets the tokens are traded on.
If you want to stay up to date with our views on crypto, follow us on Twitter.
For the Dutch speaking audience, we have an exclusive Trading Channel on Telegram. Join us there if you like.
—————————————————————-
Bonus
if you want to understand why we are so bullish on EWT and OCEAN in particular: watch this lecture by Jeremy Rifkin on the Third Industrial Revolution.
