The world has come to take notice of Blockchain technology in tandem with the rise of Blockchain’s pioneer application i.e. cryptocurrency Bitcoin.
However, Blockchain is a vast technology which is not limited to Bitcoin and other emerging altcoins; the revolutionary technology is a method of tracking transactions and while it is still in its infancy, different industries and businesses have started adopting Blockchain technology and the future promises a much wider array of purposes in which the technology will likely serve.
The crypto revolution has caused a rethink of the concept of money and facilitated distributed ledger system (Blockchain) adoption, making digital money feasible.
At the same time, there has been a rise in Blockchain-linked company and businesses. The Blockchain technology market is projected to experience explosive growth (despite the current dip being experienced in the crypto market), with experts predicting the Blockchain technology market cap hitting as much as $2.3 billion (USD) by 2021.
Blockchain technology is on the rise with banks and financial institutions particularly adopting the technology much faster than expected.
Of course, cryptocurrency remains the most popular application of Blockchain technology, however, it would be folly to limit the technology to bitcoin and altcoins. Blockchain technology can be used for everything and is already being leveraged by different industries for a variety of uses ranging from data management to regulatory compliance.
The future is Blockchain with the technology’s full potential still far from being fully harnessed. The technology presents a wealth of opportunity for businesses as well as investors and the projection of the Blockchain technology market cap hitting as much as $2.3 billion (USD) by 2021 is on track to being realized.
This piece will, however, be focusing on emerging Blockchain technology businesses that increase the token economy and total cryptocurrency ecosystem.
- Ripple (Market Cap: ~ $30 billion)
Ripple, founder by the former Senior VP at Yahoo, Brad Garlinghouse and partner Stefan Thomas in October 2012, is a real-time gross settlement and currency exchange platform. The platform is totally dedicated to money transfers i.e. real-time transactions between the banks.
At the time of writing, Ripple is already in collaboration with over 75 banks worldwide, with the company announcing in December 2017 that banks in Japan and South Korea have initiated Blockchain tests in a bid to make international inter-bank payments cheaper.
2. IOTA (Market Cap: ~ $15 billion)
IOTA, launched in July 2016 by serial entrepreneur David Sønstebø and his partner, Dominik Schiener is an open-source distributed ledger focused on the IoT (Internet of Things). The IOTA system is void of transaction fees, boasts low confirmation time and with the use of it’s innovative ‘Tangle’ consensus model, offers stability regardless of the bulk load of transactions being performed.
The IOTA model does not have the traditional blocks, chain, and miners we have come to associate with Blockchain technology. Instead, to make a transaction, users are mandated to approve two previous transactions which the system allocates. These actions establish the fact that all nodes have the same current state. Compared to Ethereum and especially BitCoin, IOTA is capable of handling handling many more transactions per second. In fact, one could say IOTA is playing in a completely other league.
Over time, IOTA has partnered with big guns such as the Bosch Group, Deutsche Telekom, Microsoft, PwC etcetera for their data monetization program.
3. Qtum (Market Cap: $5 billion)
Qtum, launched by the trio of Patrick Dai, Neil Mahi, and Jordan Earls in March 2017, is the first UTXO-based smart contract system with a proof-of-stake consensus model.
It combines both Bitcoin Core and Ethereum Virtual Machine using AAL (Account Attraction Layer). Qtum’s proof-of-stake model limits computational difficulties while increasing scaling possibilities.
Qtum announced its partnership with China’s largest video hosting, Baofeng in December 2017 with the duo looking to transform the movie and music industry.
4. Coinbase/GDAX (Market Cap: ~ $2 billion)
Coinbase, launched by Brain Armstrong and Goldman Sachs in July 2011, is one of the renowned crypto wallet and exchange platform. The platform transformed to the Global Digital Asset Exchange (GDAX) in 2016 and was one of the 3 Blockchain projects that received the New York State Department of Financial Services issued-business license (BitLicense).
GDAX currently boasts over 14 million platform users.
There are other exchanges we could add in this category with Coinbase. One of them, and actually one that potentially can overtake Coinbase is the Gibraltar Blockchain Exchange (GB) Located in Gibraltar who also offers the possibility to apply for a Distributed Ledger Technology License (Dlt License), which means that the companies listing their tokens will be licensed to operate their business. This point alone could be the reason why GBX can take over as the worlds leading exchange. Adding on top of that, the fact that GBX will likely list many more tokens that is available on Coinbase could lead to GBX becoming the preferred place to exchange as there are certain complaints that there are to few tokens listed on Coinbase I have no problem with saying that Coinbase may loose their position as the industry leader.
As there are several countries who are in the process to become crypto friendly and a heaven for companies operating in this industry it can be expected to be more contenders in this category.
5. OmiseGO (Market Cap: ~ $1.7 billion)
OmiseGO, launched by Donnie Harinsut and partner, Jun Hasewaga, is a decentralized financial technology for crypto exchanges and payment services.
An Ethereum Blockchain based platform, OmiseGO links payment systems, gateways, and financial organizations. OmiseGO boasts a team of high profile advisors which include Ethereum founder; Vitalik Buterin, Gavin Wood, Joseph Poon, Roger Ver amongst others while enjoying support from Thailand’s Finance Minister.
In August 2017, OmiseGO hit a market cap of over $1 billion, becoming the first Ethereum based token to achieve this feat.
6. Augur (Market Cap: ~ $1 billion)
Augur, founded by Jack Peterson and partner, Joey Krug in August 2014, is a prediction market platform for real events.
Users buy shares for predicted outcome of real events, once prediction is made and shares bought for the chosen outcome, it cannot be changed since these predictions work on ‘public’ Blockchain. The platform being Ethereum based ensures that payments are processed using smart contracts.
7. Steem (Market Cap: ~ $850 million)
Steem, founded by Ned Scott and BitShares creator, Dan Larimer in March 2016, is a decentralized social publishing and reward network. Users get rewarded for published content based on the amount of “likes” the published content garners.
There is also the added feature of users being able to create new tokens in the Steem network for the purpose of fundraising.
8. Golem (Market Cap: ~ $500 million)
Golem, launched by Julian Zawistowski and partner, Piotr Janiuk in November 2016, is the first open-sourced decentralized supercomputer.
The Golem network is powered by the platform users’ computers.
With a lot of industries requiring gargantuan computing power for processes such as big data, cryptography, DNA analysis, discrete logarithm, machine learning etcetera, Golem provides this required computing power.
As at the time of writing, the system boasts over four million users.
9. Brave (Market Cap: ~ $340 million)
Brave, founded by JavaScript programming language creator and Mozilla co-founder, Brendan Eich and his partner Brian R. Bondy in May 2017, is a secure web browser that blocks ads and trackers.
This results in websites working faster while causing a significant decrease in traffic. Brave saves users time and money and also protects them from malware in a case of an accidental click on an ad.
Brave had one of the fastest ICO Crowdsale, raising $35 million (USD) in just 27 seconds! At the time of writing, the browser has approximately three million users (myself included).
10.SALT (Market Cap: ~ $150 million)
SALT (Secured Automated Lending Technology) led by CEO, Shawn Owen, was originally founded in 2016, before having a successful ICO in August 2017.
Salt is a membership-based lending and borrowing network where users get fiat currency loans using their crypto assets as collateral.
The SALT platform comes very welcomed at a time when crypto asset holders would love to have fiat currency for their needs without having to sell off their cryptocurrency assets.
In such a case, you simply join the SALT network and apply for a loan using your digital currency as collateral.
Although SALT is taking the 10th place in this list. It is hard to not talk a bit of another company called Lendo. At first thought Lendo was the choise, but since they are only about to launch their Pre-ICO SALT got the headline. Lendo is another example of a blockchain based lending platform which is set to revolutionize the fiat-loan-for-crypto-collateral industry. Lendo comes with added features that makes it a complete CryptoBank. Those added features that SALT clearly is missing is a key factor of Lendo. With Lendo you get all banking services in one place. There are several more reasons why Lendo would be chosen over SALT. With the added banking services Lendo’s token is surely going to be popular with crypto investors and enthusiasts. In this moment when there are so many ICO’s being launched it is hard to find a gem like Lendo. As SALT and Lendo both are Utility tokens, it gives Lendo a bigger utility value because the token can be used to cover so many more fees in the platform. The fact that the token can be used for more things delivers 2 major advantages for Lendo, 1. it takes brings more tokens back to the company, that if managed right again, can give a substantial decline in the supply side of the business which again can lead to a nice growth of the value of the token. 2. Token investors will have an alternative use of the token that . (You can in fact use it to pay for something of value, unlike so many of the tokens that are created).
SALT has some limitation that gives Lendo something to add to their competitive advantage. Lendo loans are available globally while SALT is limited to US bank account holders.
Accoring to a resent statement by SALT, SALT currently have a loan portfolio of 23 Million US$. Being the first mover normally gives a big advantage. However, in this case it is not so likely to be a disadvantage for Lendo. Reports from salt states 1,3 Billion US$ in backlog of loans they are unable to facilitate. Adding to this there is a lot more collateral available to be used for getting loans. (I.e. total market cap of Cryptocurrencies is more or less the market possibilities for these lending operations.)
Finally, it is worth to mention that Lendo’s agreements with FCA regulated lenders who has a license to lend is likely to secure them a lot more lending capital than what SALT currently has. As Lendo’s system is set up to connect any licensed lender to offer loans through Lendo’s platform it is likely that the list of Lender’s knocking on Lendo’s door will be long. Crypto loans will most likely carry higher interest than fiat loans. And it is already proved by SALT that the Crypto people don’t mind the higher interest rates that follow this type of loans.
It is not that I do not believe in SALT, or that there is anything negative with it. They already have a great business, the point of this is that it seems like Lendo has the potential to become the industry leader if they deliver what is planned. That said there is clearly room for both SALT and Lendo in the market and probably many more.
If this was a list of ICO’s to watch out for, or an advice in which ICO’s to invest in there is no doubt that Lendo would be number 1 on that list.
Note: Lendo’s Pre-ICO is launching the 28th of March 2018. you can find the ICO by following this link: www.lendo.io
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