Investing in cryptocurrencies is more like buying a commodity like silver or crude oil than buying stock in a company like Apple. Having a stock or share in a company gives you certain rights within that company and allows you to benefit from company profits (known as dividends).
In cryptocurrencies, there is no dividend payment structure, except with a few coins like NEO and VeChain. This makes capital gains the desired end result of most investors. Capital gains means increase in value and in price.
While there are more than 1,600 cryptocurrencies today, most of them are investment guesses. A common philosophy in the crypto space is to buy when the value is very low and sell when high. However, buying penny coins comes with considerable risk, as the value can be substantially depleted or wiped out by market fluctuations. Take a look at some tips on how to analyze which one is worth your investment.
The cryptocurrencies considered in this article are those currently priced below US$0.50 that show good potential to grow considerably in the near term. However, there are no certainties in investing in crypto, and this should not be taken as investment advice; each investor is expected to conduct their own research and manage the risks themselves.
1. SONM
SONM is a fog supercomputer where miners (or anybody) can share their unused computer power and buyers who need the computing power can connect to it. Fog computing is a technological development over cloud computing that overcomes major issues like latency, mobility, network bandwidth, etc.
The major advantage of fog computing is decentralization and scalability. Learn more in our introduction to SONM.
The SONM Marketplace is a service provided by the SONM platform where users can buy and sell computational power. The SONM Application Pool can run on any smart device, including CPU, GPU, and smartphone.
The SONM token is basically the internal currency of the SONM marketplace, by which computing power is bought and sold. The SONM platform went live on June 30, 2018.
SONM is currently priced at US$0.06, but it shows promise of growth. The token has an impressive 80.99% of its total supply of tokens in circulation. This can be an advantage for investors, as a large number of non-circulating tokens can affect token price significantly when they eventually come into circulation.
The total supply of SONM tokens is 444 million, which is a great number that encourages demand and investing. The 24-hour volume currently hovers around $350,000 and the market cap is currently over $24 million. These facts show a coin that is still in its infancy.
As more and more choose the Proof-of-Stake consensus and mining activities are reduced, people will look for other ways to earn with their computational power. Computational power is always going to be needed as the world gets more and more digitized.
With the advantages of fog computing, SONM might be in the right place to take advantage of this change. As demand increases for buying computational power on SONM, so the value of the SONM token can be expected to go higher.
The SONM token can be purchased on Binance, Kucoin, HitBTC, and OKEx.
2. Dragonchain
Dragonchain is a blockchain project created by a team in Disney. The project was started in 2014 as a private blockchain platform, but it was released in 2016 as open source. Dragonchain is now owned by the Dragonchain Foundation.
Dragonchain is a secure, flexible, and developer-friendly smart contract platform (like Ethereum) that pays attention to interoperability. Development of smart contracts on Dragonchain can be done in Java, C#, Python, Go, and Node JS programming languages, making it attractive to a wide range of developers.
Also, there is the Marketplace where a pre-built library of smart contracts, qualified vendors, specialized experts and incubated projects can be leveraged on by developers.
Furthermore, anyone in the ecosystem can get early access to exciting projects in the ecosystem, supported by a range of subject experts and blockchain enthusiasts through the Dragonchain incubator initiative.
Dragonchain has a serverless architecture via Amazon Web Services, businesses are allowed to have their own chains, there is limited exposure to users’ smart contract data, and it supports multiple currencies on its chain. Learn more in our introduction to Dragonchain.
The Dragonchain platform has been making consistent progress with clear goals in their roadmap. The Dragonchain version 1.0 of the commercial platform was released on August 1, 2018. The commercialized dashboard and Marketplace is expected in September 2018, according to the roadmap.
The Dragonchain token is known as Dragons, and it is currently an ERC-20 token. There is no pressure to move the token to a Dragonchain native token because the blockchain is designed to accommodate multiple currencies.
It is currently priced at about US$0.16. The total supply is approximately 433 million, with over 238 million in circulation. The token is non-mineable. Dragonchain has a consensus model that allows trust, Proof-of-Work, and Proof-of-Stake with 5 levels of verification (because of the unique architecture of Dragonchain).
With the goals the project aims to achieve and the momentum they’ve had so far, demand for the tokens will likely raise the price of the tokens substantially.
Dragonchain hit an all-time high of $5.27 in January 2018. The price today is less than 10% that. The platform is a good one with a useful product and some unique features. The current price level might just be the lowest it is ever going to get. However, a significant uptick in price driven by true demand might take a while before becoming a reality.
Dragon can be purchased from Kucoin, Gate.io, and decentralized exchanges.
3. Bread
Bread is a simple and secure decentralized cryptocurrency wallet with a loyalty and customer rewards program. Bread has its app live on Google Play and Apple Store. It currently has customers in over 170 countries and over 100,000 downloads on Google Play.
The wallet is known for its simplicity and very responsive customer service. The Bread wallet is free and it requires no collection of personal information. It currently only stores Bitcoin, but is looking to extend to other cryptocurrencies soon.
The iOS app has already been announced to have ERC-20 token support, in-app trading, and BRD rewards program integrated.
The Bread token is an ERC-20 token that will be used to access perks such as discounts on fees and customer loyalty programs. The wallet service is free but more functions will be added with time that users will pay for. The customer loyalty program is a way of incentivizing users to stay in the Bread ecosystem.
The Bread token, which is a utility token similar in function to Binance’s BNB token, has a total supply of approximately 89 million. Almost 100% of it is in circulation today. The market cap is currently around $28 million, and the daily volume is about $419,000, at the time of writing.
The small supply and flexibility of the platform to induce demand by announcing special discounts, programs, and giveaways makes the token liable to a surge in value from time to time. Also, more people starting to use the wallet and Bread ecosystem, which will in turn create more demand for the Bread token.
The Bread token is currently priced at US$0.32. It had its all-time high of $3.22 on January 7, 2018. The token can be purchased on Binance.
Conclusion
The first factor to consider in cryptocurrency investment is demand. The price or value of any coin is the point at which demand meets supply. This is why coins with a small total supply ultimately drives good demand.
There are many cryptocurrencies currently valued below US$0.50. However, not many will sustainably stay above the 50-cent mark. The cryptocurrencies shared here show great potential to not only surpass, but stay consistently above US$0.50.
Remember, as always, do your own research before investing.
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