Cryptocurrency is a marathon not a sprint
There are thousands of cryptocurrencies that exist but not many of them will be around in 10 years. It's a well known fact that out of the 7000 coins that are out many of them are already dead coins. That is why projects like CoinJanitor exist to buy out dead projects.
How to Know if a Project Will be Successful
- Length of Survival
- Number of users/community vitality
- Use case
- Business vitality (if business dependent)
Length of Survival
50% of small businesses fail within 5 years and 1/3 make it to the ten year mark. It does seem that if a startup can make it past the first 5 years it has a great chance of surviving to the ten year mark and beyond. I think it's reasonable to apply similar thinking to cryptocurrency, after all most of them are developed by a business or a foundation.
Number of Users, Vitality, and Network Effect
Cryptocurrency gains value through network effect; the more people adopt it the more valuable it becomes. But numbers is not the only thing that matters; the quality of the users also matters. Think about Quora, it has millions of signed up users but many never post, upvote or comment. It takes a large number of high quality users to make a cryptocurrency come to life.
Use Case
Is the cryptocurrency useful? What does it do? If a cryptocurrency has utility that drives people to use it then it has staying power. Otherwise, it will die.
Business Development
Even though must crypto is open source software someone must be motivated to update and improve it. Typically, there is a business or foundation that is taking care of it. However, there are some cryptos that do seem to run themselves.
Keep Running!
Some Cryptos That May Have Staying Power… Besides Bitcoin
Keep in mind, I am not looking at these coins for what the price will be in the future. I am more concerned that the coin will be around and have a community that is using it in the next ten years. If a crypto is being used it has value.
- Litecoin. It was established in October, 2011 so it has nearly survived ten years. It has a large community and the developers are still working on the software. They are currently implementing Mimble Wimble technology to make it more private and scalable. It has similar utility to Bitcoin but tends to be more experimental in its technology.
- Dogecoin. December 6th 2014 so it has made it over 6 years. It was created as a “joke coin" but got popular on Reddit and has been used a tip coin for the last 6 years. It is not being developed anymore but it still has a large community that loves to tip their friends.
- Dash. Launched January, 2014 so it is almost as old Dogecoin. It's the first crypto to implement a masternode system that makes private transactions and instapay. The Dash team is serious about their development and has a large community. I think Dash is here to stay.
- Monero. April, 2014. Monero is the first privacy coin that focuses on anonymity and fungibility. It has a large community and a team of developers that are determined to keep the crypto updated and private. As long as Monero keeps its function as a privacy coin then it has long term use case.
- Ethereum. July 30, 2015. Ethereum is the first smart contract platform. It's a large platform that hosts many significant tokens like BAT and Loopring. It has thousands of developers and a dedicated community. Even if another smart contract platform manages to overtake Ethereum I think it will still remain.
These are some of the oldest coins that have significant community and use case. If you want to acquire some of these coins you should check out OKEx to buy some of these cryptos.
If you want to learn more about cryptocurrency check out The Crypto Cave.
