Altcoin#1: BAT
Have you ever considered how much money advertising behemoths like Facebook and Google make every year and thought to yourself, "If only I could earn a fraction of that, I'd be set for life?" That's exactly what the $BAT token aims to do.
Brave is the most widely used privacy browser, and BAT is its utility token. Brendan Eich, one of Mozilla's co-founders and the creator of JavaScript, the person who developed the technology that built Netflix, founded Brave.
Brave envisions a future internet in which your time is valued, your personal information is kept secret, and you are really compensated for surfing online and looking at anything you want.
Although you may download and use Chrome extensions with Brave, it's not your standard browser. The creators have gone above and beyond to preserve the privacy of their users. Browser fingerprinting randomization is one method they use to do this.
Fingerprinting is now a way for tracking persons on the internet. Brave change your digital fingerprint every time you restart the browser, making you appear different to every site. But one of the most exciting features is they change the way ad revenue is dispersed.
This is what I mentioned earlier about getting that small slice of Google or Facebook users can allow ads from Braves partners and then be compensated with BAT tokens for just browsing the web. So this is a compelling product, but is the BAT token a good investment?
Most average people will tell you that they value their privacy online. And I'm not just talking about your uncle who gives Alexa the side-eye whenever he says anything. But the truth is, most people don't even know when they're being tracked, and they don't go out of their way to protect their own Privacy.
According to a poll from June 2019, 47% of people say that they're concerned about the privacy of their data within their country. So ask yourself, are you concerned and do you take measures to protect your own privacy?
Now, Privacy, when it comes to blockchain technology, takes this one step further. There's a major weakness here. Most blockchains keep your transactions completely public. Any transaction of Bitcoin that you've ever made is public for literally anyone to view.
And this causes a whole host of interesting problems that need potential solutions. Now back to the BAT token. When I judge something that's fundamentally different, I like to ask myself, is this 10x better than the status quo?
So is a browser that respects your Privacy and pays you to use it 10X better than what we use currently? I'd argue probably yes. Couple this with a relatively low market cap and finite supply of tokens, the BAT token may not be a bad long-term bet on Privacy and security.
Altcoin #2: WAX
Now let's pose another question. Maybe instead of wanting to get a slice of that massive advertising pie, you want to get in on the 300 billion dollar gaming industry from the comfort of your own sofa, let me introduce you to WAX, the Worldwide Asset eXchange.
It's a blockchain built specifically for trading virtual items. WAX aims to integrate blockchain technology within the video game industry, and they seem to be gaining traction. Last month it was disclosed that Amazon recently invested in a trading card marketplace built on top of the WAX Blockchain.
Now the Wax Token has a market cap of under $1 billion, and it's about 50% down from its all-time high. So is it a good time to buy? The way that I look at this, is it's one of the safer bets in blockchain gaming, not safe at all but safer than other bets within this space.
I think the long-term moneymaker in blockchain gaming will be platforms and tools to build games within blockchain gaming. Layer this on top of how large the gaming industry is and the multibillion-dollar push to make more games blockchain-based, I don't think this industry is going to stop growing anytime soon, which to me means the WAX Token is one to absolutely keep an eye on.
Altcoin #3: $CWAR
Now, adjacent to this is the even riskier bet in blockchain gaming in an individual game, Cryowar with their token $CWAR. It's a real-time multiplayer PvP arena game players will compete to earn CWAR, Tokens, NFTs, and other in-game assets.
Now, the game is currently only available in its beta version, and a full launch is expected sometime in 2022. And Interestingly, Crywar wasn't intended to be play-to-earn originally. It was only at the end of 2020 when the team decided that they would launch the game on the Solana network and add in a play-to-earn mechanism within the game.
And this might actually be a good thing. A problem in crypto gaming is most games aren't very fun, and this is even a top complaint with Axie Infinity, the largest crypto game in the world by market cap.
So check out this poll directly from the Axie Infinity subreddit. More than half of the respondents say that it's boring. That's from their subreddit. Now picture what happens when a game that's actually fun launches. Mark my words, this will eventually happen and the game will take over. It will be absolutely massive.
Now, is this Cryowar? I wish I could tell you with certainty this is a very high-risk territory, but they do appear to check a lot of boxes. Now see, CWAR has a modest market cap of just over $100 million. Compare that to Axie Infinity, so we can see that there's a lot of room to grow if the developers can really make something of this game.
Altcoin #4: HTR
Now, maybe you would like a token that appeals to your inner nerd. You want something on the cutting edge of technology. I have just the project for you. HTR, the governance token for the Hathor network. Hathor was founded by Marcelo Brogliato, who proposed a blockchain solution in his Ph.D. thesis.
The paper described a method in which a blockchain could ensure security and handle low-volume transactions, while something called a DAG would be used to scale the system. And you're probably wondering what's a DAG? DAG is an acronym that stands for Directed Acyclic Graph.
This term has been tossed around haphazardly under the banner of blockchain technology, but it's not technically correct. DAG is another type of technology altogether. DAGs present a solution to drastically enhance blockchain scalability because it ends the wasteful phenomenon of 'orphan-chains'.
Regular blockchains take a bunch of transactions and batch process them over specific time intervals. This is called a block time, so take Ethereum, for example. If you make a transaction on the Ethereum network, it gets placed in a block, which then gets processed about every 13 seconds.
The reason for this time delay between block processing is to give the network time to consolidate and verify which branch of the chain is the correct branch. Once a new block of transactions is minted, shorter and malicious branches are then orphaned. This is a bit wasteful and can place a speed limit of total transactions on a network, DAGs aims to solve this problem.
They allow for multiple chains of blocks to coexist and interconnect so nodes can exist in parallel as long as the information is directed in the same way. In theory, DAGs open up a whole new range of possibilities that eliminate the need for block time and reduce the amount of work wasted on those abandoned orphan chains.
This allows Hathor to scale up to hundreds of transactions per second, making it exponentially faster than Bitcoin Litecoin or other proof-of-work chains. Hathor is a layer-1 blockchain that allows developers to program so-called Nano Contracts, which are like smart contracts but with a much simpler design.
Nano Contracts aim to eliminate transaction fees, which would make HTR a feeless blockchain to transact on. Now, while all of this sounds great, a lot of what Hathor aims to be is still under development, with no technical details about how Nano Contracts work or when they'll be functioning.
But with that being said, it doesn't take a functioning product for a cryptocurrency to have massive price appreciation. You just need to be careful that you're not investing in the next Bitconnect.
Altcoin #5: $JOE
Now, last but not least is the $JOE Token, founded and launched by the one and only Joe Rogan. I'm just kidding. He's still working out what NFTs are. Joe is the token for the premier DEX on Avalanche, Trader Joe. 2021 was a huge year of growth for Avalanche.
In December, Joe actually had more active users than all other top DEXes, including Uniswap. If you take a look at the market cap to active user ratio of Trader Joe compared to other DEXes, this indicates it may be undervalued.
The thing is, Avalanche had a huge Q4 with DAOs and Token launches every single day, and all of those new tokens were being purchased on Trader Joe. However, while the volume on the platform is surging, the price of the Joe token is currently down 63% from its all-time high.
Now, I don't know if Joe is a 100X or not, but if you're looking to profit off of the AVAX ecosystem and you want a little bit more upside potential, then Trader Joe looks like a solid pick at current prices.
