The top three altcoins to look out for this summer

Since early 2019, the cryptocurrency market has been booming, and many altcoins have experienced gains of way over 100%.

That means there’s a chance you can double your money if you choose the right altcoins.

I’ve recently written how greed is usually the intrinsic motivator behind high-volatility seasons, so there’s no reason to expect altcoins to lag behind Bitcoin when it moons past previous highs.

So let’s take a look at some of the altcoins I think will perform well over the summer when the altcoin bull season (if there is such a thing) eventually begins.

Ethereum (ETH)

I’m hopeful that there’s a bright future ahead for Ethereum, with the new ETH 2.0 upgrade approaching fast and the multiple implementations of the Casper PoS protocol.

How will this impact the price and adoption of Ether? It’s too early to say, but due to the high market value of the coin coupled with serious development teams working 24/7 across the world, I seriously doubt Ethereum won’t be doing well over the next couple of years.

I’m personally quite interested in how sharding and the Beacon chain will work, especially with the migration of miners to stakers. Even though most of the technical community still prefers a PoW-based consensus over PoS due to the security risks, it’s undoubtedly a good choice for scaling and decentralisation.

With the integration of better scaling solutions, we may see more smart contracts and applications being developed on the Ethereum network, with lower fees as well. That may mean some sidechain projects could be hurt, but due to the way Ethereum 2.0 will work, sidechains will most likely become interoperable shards within the new blockchain system.

Another positive fundamental aspect is how Ox is integrating new features in Ethereum, known as meta-transactions. If meta-transactions can be implemented, it will mean new users can interact with Ethereum without first having to go to an exchange to buy ETH.

The impact this type of solution could have is potentially huge. Imagine meta-transactions being the equivalent to plug-and-play operating systems, browsers, and plugins, which the average person now uses without knowing a single thing about how they work. Throwing a ready-made crypto wallet into the mix only makes things more exciting.

With further announcements, I expect price to react positively.

Chainlink (LINK)

Currently, the LINK token is the best-performing cryptocurrency of 2019 (as far as I’m aware).

The value of LINK peaked over $4 during the last weekend of June – a new all-time high. At the time of writing, LINK is trading over $3.80, having gained a whopping 75% since the start of the week.

LINK has gained nearly 130% over the past seven days and is up nearly 1,200% since the start of 2019. By comparison, the overall cryptocurrency market has gained about 165% so far this year.

Following some positive recent announcements and partnerships, it seems the decentralised Oracles project might become one of the most relevant and key players in the field. Any project like Augur or BetProtocol that relies on API calls to centralised data sources can immediately benefit from a Chainlink Oracle solution.

In a sense, Chainlink is the very first blockchain-based project built over Ethereum with an immediate real-life use case within any kind of media or financial institution. It impacts trust at a core level, since participants can easily verify and vouch for better sources in a decentralised manner.

I personally love what Chainlink is doing and plan to keep following the project closely.

Binance Coin (BNB)

I’m sure there won’t be an altcoin season without Binance Coin breaking record highs.

As the number of cryptocurrency users continues to grow, many of them have switched to Binance due to the increasing number of projects being listed, its really cool features, its brilliant UX/UI, and tokenomics to die for.

Even though I’m personally against IEOs as I don’t like their business model, I understand why folk tend to flock to these types of events. I expect IEOs to continue increasing in value as more and more projects choose this way to raise funds in a more centralised way than ICOs.

Some people argue a degree of centralisation is fine as it benefits investors who are less likely to be scammed. I agree that in the short term this might sound like a wonderful solution, but it will only fuel future bad behaviour by exchanges as their incentive will be to list as many IEOs as possible to increase sales revenues.

Nevertheless, as much as I would personally prefer DAICOs to have had this kind of adoption, I won’t turn a blind eye to the growing IEO market, as that would be a fatal blow to my personal portfolio.

Of course, markets change, and unforeseen events might change the overall outlook. I intend to keep an eye on these projects and update you all as the summer progresses.

Bonus: Unibright (UBT)

An honourable mention must go to one of my favourite projects: Unibright (UBT).

I recently interviewed Unibright’s CTO Stefan Schmidt, who was open about all my questions and told me at the time there would be some big news coming during the summer, as there were plans for the further integration of smart contracts in the current infrastructure.

Well he’s kept his money where his mouth is. Unibright has just released a sandbox for anyone to try where you can create smart contracts without using a single line of code.

If you like ERP systems and business software, then look no further. Check out how it works here.

Safe trades!

Disclaimer: This article isn’t financial advice or promotional material; it represents my personal opinion and should not be attributed to Coin Rivet. I have savings invested in cryptocurrency so take whatever I write with a grain of salt. Do not invest what you cannot afford to lose and always read as much as possible about a project before investing.