After such a disappointing year of losses across the board in the crypto markets, the promise of a better 2019 is on the horizon. For many people that have recently bought into the craziness and hype that is the world of cryptocurrencies, HODLers might have found that their initial investments are significantly lower than what they have now. However, after such a detrimental year in many crypto markets, with the new year less than a month away now may be the time to buy cryptocurrency while prices are so low. With that in mind, let’s have a look at what’s next for the big 4 cryptocurrencies.
Bitcoin
The original and best; Bitcoin is the oldest cryptocurrency on the market and seen by many as the one that started it all. It’s had the highest price/market cap for years and it’s been on a major downtrend in 2018 following its major breakout in mid-late 2017. Such surges in price naturally provide an upturn across many altcoin markets too, since Bitcoin is one of the most well used currencies that investors will buy before liquidating it into altcoins. This means that when there’s increased interest in the altcoin markets following network updates/upgrades, there’s usually an influx of fiat money that sifts into the Bitcoin market. Experts expect that Bitcoin will recover in 2019 from such huge losses in 2018, although its projected to start weak in the initial months before returning to the topside. With Bitcoin Network upgrades due soon too, hopefully the age-old problem of scalability can be addressed through the improved efficiency of Bitcoin transactions.
Ethereum
Ethereum have enjoyed much success over the past few years, as it has grown to become the second most expensive/per market cap cryptocoin owing to its smart contract applications. As the gateway to many ICO events for newly emerging digital assets, the Ethereum network has showed frailties in the past that have affected network performance due to hordes of new users trying to get involved. Because of this, the Ethereum team have been plugging away on their contingency plan following a disappointing year with updates that are seemingly scheduled for the new year. With the first of these being readied to roll out in January, the Constantinople hard fork aims to begin the process of increasing block times. Following this, another is scheduled for May 2019 where the difficulty bomb is expected to reach 30 second block times. Additionally, despite the low prices at the moment, the adoption rate of Ethereum has shown no signs of slowing, so hopefully the increased network performance and promise of Ethereum 2.0 could mean that 2019 will be a better year.
Litecoin
After creator, Charlie Lee, shut down their revolutionary LitePay venture which was scheduled for release back in February this year. It was initially noted that this was postponed, before eventually being cancelled as a consequence of Litecoin not being able to find a suitable card service provider they could partner with. However, while scalability issues continue to hamper the progression of Bitcoin, Litecoin will continue to be a popular digital asset in 2019. This is in large part due to the fact that Litecoin is essentially a faster and more agile alternative, as well as the fact that Bitcoin miners continue to switch between Bitcoin and bitcoin cash. As such, following a drop in value of around 50%, Litecoin should recover throughout 2019.
Ripple
Following a string of high profile partnerships with major financial institutions, such as the Bank of America, Santander and – more recently – GMT, it’s expected that Ripple will have a big breakout in the early months of 2019. Moreover, due to the low price it currently has the risk/reward standpoint looks more favourable to reward, rather than risk. As such, with plenty of upside for long-term investment, it appears that all of Ripple Labs’ hard work over the past two years could come to fruition in 2019.
Summary
After a poor 2018 where many cryptocurrencies have lost a significant amount of value, it looks like 2019 could be a far better year across the board. With expectations seemingly high for many of the major cryptocurrencies on the market, many of them should recover next year. Not only that, but with network upgrades scheduled and more applications continually being developed, could 2019 be the year that cryptocurrencies are mass adopted?
