Nowadays, there seem to be about as many ICOs as there are corrupt politicians, making it hard to find projects that deserve your hard-earned fiat. Especially given the bearish horror of the last 6 months, we eager cryptocurrency investors are undoubtedly more cautious about where we invest our money.
Still, ICOs haven’t lost their appeal, so we looked through the seemingly endless list of ICOs to find some potential gems.
After all the research conducted, we do feel it’s necessary to emphasize the importance of doing your own research, and lots of it, before investing. The number of projects without credibility, developers or any implementation of blockchain technology is staggering.
That being said, there are still plenty of diamonds in the rough, and these are our 9 favorite ICO picks for the 3rd quarter of 2018.
Disclaimer: This is not professional financial advice and you should always do your own research by using multiple sources for information. Investing in ICOs is highly speculative, and therefore, highly risky.
Qravity
The Qravity platform will become a space for creatives to collaborate on creating content and monetizing their productions.
Creators immutably own their works through the implementation of blockchain technology, and are able to sell their creative products such as writing, music and video through the platform.
Qravity places an emphasis on collaborative projects and employs a fair distribution of revenue based on added value. Every time a work is sold, the distribution of revenue is ensured through the use of smart contracts.
The Ethereum-based Qravity token (QCO) will be used to distribute stakes among team members, stake on projects, bring projects created on the platform to the market, track the created digital content and most importantly, to pay for works.
The Qravity platform has an interesting take on creative works as it focuses on streamlined creative workflows and collaboration.
The Qravity presale begins on July 1, 2018, followed by Round 1 of the ICO on July 17. For information regarding the Qravity project and ICO, visit their website, read their whitepaper, and follow the team’s blog.
Coti
Coti is an acronym for “Currency of the Internet” and has set out to compete with traditional payment processors such as Visa, Mastercard and PayPal.
The team behind COTI aims to do this by leveraging the advantages of decentralized ledger technology without the disadvantages of blockchain such as the absence of buyer/seller protection, volatility and scalability.
This cryptocurrency project isn’t based on a blockchain but on a DAG structure, similar to IOTA and Nano. By using this structure, Coti claims its network can execute transactions instantaneously, at a very low cost, while remaining decentralized — thus solving many of the current problems with the financial industry.
These are some hefty aspirations, yet the mid-sized team possesses the experience and expertise and has the potential to create something big. The Coti payments platform will run on the team’s proprietary Trustchain Protocol, and will include wallets, payment processing tools and currency exchange facilities.
The project has already managed to attract a little over $3 million in funding during the presale, and is looking for $27 milion more during their ICO which starts on August 15, 2018.
For information regarding the Coti project and ICO, visit their website, read their whitepaper, and follow the team’s blog.
Akropolis
The Akropolis website clearly points out what niche the team aims to disrupt: pensions.
Pension funds control unfathomable amounts of money globally, making them centralized behemoths. The Akropolis team points out the many flaws in the current pension system, with which they legitimize their business proposition.
The Akropolis platform will be based on transparent, smart contract infrastructure that controls the Akropolis pension funds. All users can observe what’s happening with their old age funds, and third parties are removed from the equation, allowing for high overhead efficiencies.
The team’s ambitions aren’t modest, as they are aiming to “be largest alternative pensions infrastructure in the world.”
The official whitelist for the presale has ended, but the Akropolis public sale is still open for waitlisting. The exact date for the public sale is still unknown, and the team recommends that interested parties sign up for the waitlist which will also double as the application form for the public ICO.
For information regarding the Akropolis project and ICO, visit their website, read their whitepaper, and follow the team’s blog.
ImmVRse
Don’t let the unpronounceable name scare you away because there is a serious project behind it: ImmVRse is creating a decentralized platform for sharing VR content. The platform will connect content creators, brands and advertisers of the new virtual realms to create quality VR content.
Transactions on the ImmVRse platform will enjoy the security of smart contracts. A strong technological feature of the platform is its intelligent cloud & file distribution system. This system cleverly leverages blockchain technology to enable distributed network storage, allowing for the ImmVRse network to be self-sustaining.
The native IMV token will be based on Ethereum’s ERC-20 protocol and will be used for content payments, payments for services, and platform governance. This will create a natural demand for the token once more people start using the platform.
The VR space is still unknown territory and ImmVRse is building a platform to gain footing in this industry, making it an innovative, yet high-risk high-reward project.
The ImmVRse ICO starts on July 7, 2018 and you can participate here. For information regarding the ImmVRse project and ICO, visit their website, read their whitepaper, and follow the team’s blog.
Pool of Stake
As the name might already reveal, the Pool of Stake project focuses on creating pools for Proof-of-Stake-based cryptocurrencies.
Even though the king of crypto Bitcoin employs a Proof-of-Work algorithm, the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism is becoming increasingly popular due its increased speed and much lower environmental footprint.
Moreover, PoS opens up mining and governance to the entire network instead of concentrating these to only a select few organizations with massive mining enterprises.
In most PoS mechanisms, token holders can stake their tokens in their wallets and earn a passive income, depending on the size of their stakes. The bigger the size of the token holdings, the more staking rewards.
Enter Pool of Stake, a platform for staking enthusiasts that allows them to form a pool for PoS blockchains. Members of the Pool of Stake can start staking together for coins such as Neblio, Qtum, and Stratis, ensuring bigger staking rewards through unity and cooperation.
The Pool of Stake public presale is live now. The ICO will officially run from July 20, 2018 to August 19, 2018. For information regarding the Pool of Stake project and ICO, visit their website, read the whitepaper, and follow the team’s blog.
AITrading
The AITrading team is about to launch their decentralized, Artificial Intelligence-based trading tool.
This tool was created to make the trading process easier and potentially more profitable for cryptocurrency enthusiasts. Instead of having to go through the entire steep learning curve of Technical Analysis, figuring out how exchanges work and all traditional theories on trading, cycles and markets, traders can implement the AItrading tool to help.
The AI behind the AITrading platform receives all the data from the world’s largest exchanges. It then uses this information to analyze trends, assess risk and offer suggestions for investment strategies.
There is also a social element to the platform as you can follow strategies generated by other users or choose from several AI trading bots provided by the AItrading platform.
There are also options for people that want to trade manually with the help of AI in only specific areas of expertise. Finally, you can also set the platform’s AIs to alert you in specific situations.
The platform will not only focus on cryptocurrencies, but on trading as a whole. Users can also trade stocks, commodities, currencies and even specific derivatives.
The AITrading ICO will start on September 4, 2018 and whitelist registration is already open for interested parties. For information regarding the AITrading project and ICO, visit their website, read their whitepaper, and follow the team’s blog.
Arround
Arround has set out to become the world’s first decentralized advertising solution in Augmented Reality (AR).
AR is still having difficulties with making its way into the mainstream market, yet most experts agree that there will be a sizeable AR market sometime in the future. In contrast to Virtual Reality, AR is a mixture between the real and the virtual. This combination allows for the creation of completely new models of advertising which is what the Arround project is jumping on.
The Arround platform will provide its users with beautiful, personalized virtual worlds through which they are connected with advertisers. Advertisers on the platform will not only include traditional advertisers but also AR developers. This will allow them to directly advertise their AR creations to AR users, without an intermediary.
The Arround platform will predominantly focus on the smartphone sector, as the team is convinced that these devices will kickstart the adoption of AR. Through the use of their smartphones and Arround, users will be able to see and interact with AR objects and applications, and to communicate with each other with a certain degree of AR involved.
The Arround ICO will run from September 15, 2018 to November 15, 2018. For information regarding the Arround ICO, visit their website and read their whitepaper.
Free Market Token
As stated on the project’s website, the team mission is simple: “be the world’s no.1 cryptocurrency buy/sell platform.” Their ICO is directly linked to the newly-founded ecommerce platform, Ecryptostore.com. This e-commerce website will enable peer-to-peer buy/sell using cryptocurrencies, connecting buyers and sellers to buy/sell products of their choosing.
The Free Market Token (FMT) is a token that will become the payment system of the e-commerce platform. Through the use of smart contracts, both buyers and sellers are protected and can trade securely on the platform. One of the biggest selling points of the project is that FMT is a NEM Mosaic, which will enable it to handle all the transactions it needs to handle.
Transactions on the platform can be conducted in a variety of cryptocurrencies and sellers can choose which cryptocurrencies they’d like to receive for selling their products. To prevent any tax issues, the platform created compliant invoices for all crypto purchases.
The FMT coin itself will be used to incentivize desired behaviors on the platform and to pay for transactions and services. These services are, for example, listings and search rankings. A neat feature of the platform is that users can stake their FMT to reduce or completely discount transaction fees, or receive a premium membership.
The 2nd presale is currently live, and the Free Market Token public ICO will commence on July 7, 2018. For information regarding the Free Market Token ICO, visit their website and read their whitepaper.
Hedera Hashgraph
Hashgraph’s founders have been making a name for themselves by calling blockchains outdated next to their decentralized ledger technology.
The Hedera Hashgraph platform aims to become a serious competitor for the likes of Ethereum, EOS and NEO, and it has thus far highly impressed its following with its potential capabilities. The team promises a lightning-fast, secure, fair and highly efficient network that will allow for smart contracts, dapps and a token.
The Hedera platform’s native token will serve as the lifeblood of the network, used for governance, access to (d)apps, staking, and running nodes.
The team has already managed to establish a growing network of businesses and tech startups willing to use Hashgraph’s high speed, decentralized platform. Moreover, the technology has been vetted by experts.
The platform will initially allow for of smart contracts, shared storage and microtransactions through its token, but more functionalities are to be expected.
The exact date of the Hedera Hashgraph ICO is still unknown, yet we’re expecting an announcement soon. The platform is highly anticipated, with the project already receiving $18 million in funding during the presale, an indicator of how big this project can go.
For information regarding the Hedera Hashgraph platform and ICO, visit their website, read their whitepaper, and follow the team’s blog.
To see a full list of upcoming ICOs, check out Initial Coin Addict. If you’d like to keep track of how your ICO investments are doing, you can use the ICOstats.
