Forex Trading for beginners can be especially tough. This is mostly due to unrealistic expectations that are common among newcomers.

November 2030
Well, uh, this sucks. Just a few short months after the Arab States of the Gulf finally unified, the world economy decided to explode. This is what we in the business of economics call a very bad thing.
The effects across the FAS have been relatively disparate. The United Arab Emirates, easily the most diversified economy in the region, has been the least heavily impacted (though it's still bad). Diversification programs in Oman and Bahrain have also helped to stave off some of the worst impacts of the crisis, though they haven't been as successful in avoiding the effects as the UAE. Qatar and Kuwait, still almost entirely reliant on hydrocarbon exports, are not happy with this turn of events. Falling global oil prices, though propped up a little by a sudden increase in demand from China, have left their economies struggling much more than the rest of the country, and in desperate need of assistance from the better off parts of the country.
One major pain point in this crisis has been the FAS's economic ties to the United States. While most of the FAS's trade is with Asia, Africa, and Europe, the US financial system still plays a crucial role in the FAS. The stability of the US Dollar has long been used to protect the economies of the Gulf using their vast Forex reserves (earned from oil sales) to peg their currency to the US Dollar. With the US Dollar in complete collapse, the value of the Khaleeji is plummeting right along with it, causing a significant degree of harm to the FAS's economy.
To help offset this harm (and to decouple the FAS's economy from a country that the FAS is starting to view as maybe not the most reliable economic partner), the Central Bank in Dubai has announced that the Khaleeji will switch its peg from the US Dollar to a basket of foreign currencies (the Euro, the Pound Sterling, the Swiss Franc, the US Dollar, and the Japanese Yen). The FAS hopes that this will help to salvage the Khaleeji's value, better protecting the economy from the collapse of the dollar-based international financial system. Rumor has it that the Central Bank is discussing the idea of unpegging the Khaleeji entirely and allowing it to float freely, but so far, the Central Bank has made no moves towards floating the Khaleeji.
Crises suck. They shatter the status quo and throw established norms and procedures into chaos. No one really wins during a crisis.
But in another sense, they're a double-edged sword. The status quo is often a repressive entity, reinforcing existing hierarchies and preventing dramatic shifts in the order of things. Chaos breaks that apart, giving the ingenuitive and the entrepreneurial on opportunity to better their lot in ways they otherwise could not.
Put differently: chaos is a ladder, and the FAS intends to be the one climbing it. As the largest economy in the Arab World (and one of the world's 20 largest economies) by both nominal GDP and GDP per capita (by a significant margin--it's probably either Saudi Arabia or Egypt in second place in nominal GDP, and definitely Saudi Arabia in second place in GDP per capita, but the FAS more than doubles the country in second place in both categories, so it's sort of a moot point), the FAS hopes to cement its place as the regional economic power.
The FAS has announced a new slate of policies intended to attract rich investors, manufacturing firms, and financiers fleeing the new nationalization program of the United States. New free trade zones have been created throughout the country--especially in the struggling, undiversified regions of Kuwait and Qatar--with the goal of convincing fleeing American manufacturers to set up shop in these areas. Attractions include wildly low tax rates (as low as zero percent in some instances), a common law framework (as opposed to the Sharia-based legal system in most of the FAS), highly subsidized land prices (sometimes free), relaxed financial restrictions (making it easier to move money in and out of the FTZ), and, for large enough firms moving enough operations into the country, preferential visa treatment (making it easier for them to relocate foreign employees into the country). Sitting at one of the major crossroads of global trade, moving operations to the FAS offers easy access to both the world's established consumer markets (like the EU and East Asia) as well as to some of its largest growing markets (South and Southeast Asia, East Africa, and MENA). Pair this with wildly high standards of living (for people who aren't slaves Asian or African migrant workers) and established expatriate communities, and the FAS becomes an incredibly attractive option for American and other foreign firms looking to relocate.
In addition to manufacturing-oriented FTZs, special attention has been paid to attracting service-oriented firms to new and existing FTZs in the vein of Dubai Internet City, Dubai Design District, Dubai Knowledge Park, and Dubai Media City, with the goal of developing a robust service economy that can capture growing markets in the MENA, South Asia, and East African regions. In advertising these zones, the governments of the FAS have highlighted the success of previous ventures in Dubai, which have attracted the regional headquarters of giants like Facebook, Intel, LinkedIn, Google, Dell, Samsung, Microsoft, IBM, Tata Consultancy, and more.
Perhaps one of the most substantial pushes, though, is to attract American financial services and FinTech firms to base in the FAS (particularly Dubai, Kuwait City, Doha, and Abu Dhabi, the traditional centers of regional finance). New financial industry free trade zones have been set up in the four cities, structured in the vein of the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC). These financial FTZs boast an independent and internationally regulated regulatory and judicial system, a common law framework, and extremely low taxation rates. All government services in these regions are available in English (the lingua franca of international finance), and in events where ambiguity exists in the legal and regulatory systems, the systems are set to default to English Common Law (except for the Kuwait City International Financial Centre, which is hoping to better tailor itself towards American financial firms by defaulting to American Civil Law from pre-2020 rather than English Common Law). Much like in the DIFC, these new FTZs will also run their own courts, staffed in large part by top judicial talent from Common Law (or in the case of Kuwait City, American Civil Law) jurisdictions like Singapore, England, and (formerly) Hong Kong. Using these FTZ, the four cities hope to raise their profile as financial centers. Dubai in particular is hoping to break into the top ten global financial centers--and it stands a good chance of doing so, too, as it sits at number 12, just behind cities like LA, SF, and Shenzhen--while the other cities are just hoping to boost their profile into the 20s or 10s (according to Long Finance, Dubai is number 12 in the world and 1 in the region, Abu Dhabi is number 39 in the world and two in the region, Doha is number 48 in the world, and Kuwait City is number 91).

Hi all
​
Besiege here. After seeing a couple of reddit posts on shady MLM, pyramid schemes and "scam" courses, I was wondering if any of the sg redditors here would be interested to start a workgroup to better address these issues (it can be online!). There has been a sizable movement by the government to catch outright scams ( https://www.scamalert.sg/ ), but the same cannot be said for shady MLMs/"scam" courses. If there is one which I am not aware of, let me know and I will delete this post.
Personally, I feel indignant whenever I hear of individuals/groups taking advantage of vulnerable populations in order to make a quick buck off them. Worse, I shudder when I hear these scummy people justify their actions by arguing they are providing opportunities for others to become a better version of themselves. Just a few quick points to get terminologies out of the way:
​

• Multilevel/Network Marketing companies are not illegal. In fact, I think using personal networks to sell products is a perfectly legitimate marketing strategy. The company is illegal if the payment structure for the distributors is like a pyramid. The basic idea of a pyramid scheme is that money is made primarily through recruiting more people to market/distribute the products, where there is often an upfront payment fee to join as a distributor. This joining fee then goes up the pyramid to pay whoever suckered the recruit in and then to whoever suckered the recruiter in, all the way to the top of the pyramid.
• However, some pyramid companies have been really good at disguising as legal MLM companies. Take Herbalife for example, one of the world's most successful MLM companies, with a presence in Singapore as well. It was found by the US Federal Trade Commission to be complicit in unfair practices (having pyramid-like features) and was fined 200 million dollars.
• By "scam" courses, I refer to courses where people are sold false promises of earning some $$$$ by learning some secret tips/skills, but instead, find themselves paying more and more to unlock knowledge that ends up going nowhere. Such "scam" courses over promise, under deliver. They can take many forms: be it internet marketing, platform-based selling, property investment, forex trading, wealth generation, etc. I use "scam" for a lack of a better word, since I believe they are mostly operating within legal limits. But just because it is legal, doesn't mean it is good!
• The main point of "scam" courses is not to teach and get you up and running (it would be great advertising for them if you somehow managed to do it), but to tease you enough to sign up for level 2, level 3... Or in some cases paying a premium for special extras, such as 1 to 1 coaching, this special chat group where you get more advanced knowledge. Maybe even get a cut for referring others to join future courses. This can get insidious because some of the courses actually teach you a few tricks (although they are very basic), and the feel-good from learning can make it feel like it is worth the cost.

Some ideas right off the top of my head:

1. Maintaining a list of potentially shady companies/courses/individuals to avoid (on a website/gdoc/ singapore wiki page)
2. Creating a checklist for people to suss out shady schemes (e.g. no mention of the company's name, constant avoidance of business model, no mention of the product being sold, some mentor figure who changed lives)
3. Written articles to detail modus operandi of various pyramid/"scam" course schemes (e.g. like the rice media article on ICS)
4. Have an open channel for people to talk about any potential illegal MLM experiences; We will listen and ask guiding questions to suss out if the experience was indeed MLM (by notafairylight)

​
If you are interested to join this workgroup or have better ideas, do pm me or post it in the comments. I am looking at maybe 5-6 people for a start, who are willing to carve out some of their personal time for this initiative.
Also, if you have knowledge and skills you think which can be useful for this initiative, do sound out! E.g. writing, legal, content creation, intimate knowledge of various pyramid schemes, programming, etc. I am currently working as a data-analyst btw!

EDIT: Thanks for the awesome response guys! I will create a separate chat group for all those who have indicated interest to help; I will send u the chat group link via PM by tomorrow. It would be great if someone could think of a catchy group name.

​

EDIT2: Hi, I have sent out the group links. If I missed out anyone, please sound out via pm!

I am putting together my investment portfolio for 2018 and made a complete summary of the current Top 100. Interestingly, I noticed that all coins can be categorized into 12 markets. Which markets do you think will play the biggest role in the coming year?
Here is a complete overview of all coins in an excel sheet including name, market, TPS, risk profile, time since launch (negative numbers mean that they are launching that many months in the future) and market cap. You can also sort by all of these fields of course. Coins written in bold are the strongest contenders within their market either due to having the best technology or having a small market cap and still excellent technology and potential. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1s8PHcNvvjuy848q18py_CGcu8elRGQAUIf86EYh4QZo/edit#gid=0
The 12 markets are

1. Currency 13 coins
2. Platform 25 coins
3. Ecosystem 9 coins
4. Privacy 10 coins
5. Currency Exchange Tool 8 coins
6. Gaming & Gambling 5 coins
7. Misc 15 coins
8. Social Network 4 coins
9. Fee Token 3 coins
10. Decentralized Data Storage 4 coins
11. Cloud Computing 3 coins
12. Stable Coin 2 coins

Before we look at the individual markets, we need to take a look of the overall market and its biggest issue scalability first:
Cryptocurrencies aim to be a decentralized currency that can be used worldwide. Its goal is to replace dollar, Euro, Yen, all FIAT currencies worldwide. The coin that will achieve that will be worth several trillion dollars.
Bitcoin can only process 7 transactions per second (TPS). In order to replace all FIAT, it would need to perform at at least VISA levels, which usually processes around 3,000 TPS, up to 25,000 TPS during peak times and a maximum of 64,000 TPS. That means that this cryptocurrency would need to be able to perform at least several thousand TPS. However, a ground breaking technology should not look at current technology to set a goal for its use, i.e. estimating the number of emails sent in 1990 based on the number of faxes sent wasn’t a good estimate.
For that reason, 10,000 TPS is the absolute baseline for a cryptocurrency that wants to replace FIAT. This brings me to IOTA, which wants to connect all 80 billion IoT devices that are expected to exist by 2025, which constantly communicate with each other, creating 80 billion or more transactions per second. This is the benchmark that cryptocurrencies should be aiming for. Currently, 8 billion devices are connected to the Internet.
With its Lightning network recently launched, Bitcoin is realistically looking at 50,000 possible soon. Other notable cryptocurrencies besides IOTA and Bitcoin are Nano with 7,000 TPS already tested, Dash with several billion TPS possible with Masternodes, Neo, LISK and RHOC with 100,000 TPS by 2020, Ripple with 50,000 TPS, Ethereum with 10,000 with Sharding.
However, it needs to be said that scalability usually goes at the cost of decentralization and security. So, it needs to be seen, which of these technologies can prove itself resilient and performant.
Without further ado, here are the coins of the first market

Market 1 - Currency:

1. Bitcoin: 1st generation blockchain with currently bad scalability currently, though the implementation of the Lightning Network looks promising and could alleviate most scalability concerns, scalability and high energy use.
2. Ripple: Centralized currency that might become very successful due to tight involvement with banks and cross-border payments for financial institutions; banks and companies like Western Union and Moneygram (who they are currently working with) as customers customers. However, it seems they are aiming for more decentralization now.https://ripple.com/dev-blog/decentralization-strategy-update/. Has high TPS due to Proof of Correctness algorithm.
3. Bitcoin Cash: Bitcoin fork with the difference of having an 8 times bigger block size, making it 8 times more scalable than Bitcoin currently. Further block size increases are planned. Only significant difference is bigger block size while big blocks lead to further problems that don't seem to do well beyond a few thousand TPS. Opponents to a block size argue that increasing the block size limit is unimaginative, offers only temporary relief, and damages decentralization by increasing costs of participation. In order to preserve decentralization, system requirements to participate should be kept low. To understand this, consider an extreme example: very big blocks (1GB+) would require data center level resources to validate the blockchain. This would preclude all but the wealthiest individuals from participating.Community seems more open than Bitcoin's though.
4. Litecoin : Little brother of Bitcoin. Bitcoin fork with different mining algorithm but not much else.Copies everything that Bitcoin does pretty much. Lack of real innovation.
5. Dash: Dash (Digital Cash) is a fork of Bitcoin and focuses on user ease. It has very fast transactions within seconds, low fees and uses Proof of Service from Masternodes for consensus. They are currently building a system called Evolution which will allow users to send money using usernames and merchants will find it easy to integrate Dash using the API. You could say Dash is trying to be a PayPal of cryptocurrencies. Currently, cryptocurrencies must choose between decentralization, speed, scalability and can pick only 2. With Masternodes, Dash picked speed and scalability at some cost of decentralization, since with Masternodes the voting power is shifted towards Masternodes, which are run by Dash users who own the most Dash.
6. IOTA: 3rd generation blockchain called Tangle, which has a high scalability, no fees and instant transactions. IOTA aims to be the connective layer between all 80 billion IOT devices that are expected to be connected to the Internet in 2025, possibly creating 80 billion transactions per second or 800 billion TPS, who knows. However, it needs to be seen if the Tangle can keep up with this scalability and iron out its security issues that have not yet been completely resolved.
7. Nano: 3rd generation blockchain called Block Lattice with high scalability, no fees and instant transactions. Unlike IOTA, Nano only wants to be a payment processor and nothing else, for now at least. With Nano, every user has their own blockchain and has to perform a small amount of computing for each transaction, which makes Nano perform at 300 TPS with no problems and 7,000 TPS have also been tested successfully. Very promising 3rd gen technology and strong focus on only being the fastest currency without trying to be everything.
8. Decred: As mining operations have grown, Bitcoin’s decision-making process has become more centralized, with the largest mining companies holding large amounts of power over the Bitcoin improvement process. Decred focuses heavily on decentralization with their PoW Pos hybrid governance system to become what Bitcoin was set out to be. They will soon implement the Lightning Network to scale up. While there do not seem to be more differences to Bitcoin besides the novel hybrid consensus algorithm, which Ethereum, Aeternity and Bitcoin Atom are also implementing, the welcoming and positive Decred community and professoinal team add another level of potential to the coin.
9. Aeternity: We’ve seen recently, that it’s difficult to scale the execution of smart contracts on the blockchain. Crypto Kitties is a great example. Something as simple as creating and trading unique assets on Ethereum bogged the network down when transaction volume soared. Ethereum and Zilliqa address this problem with Sharding. Aeternity focuses on increasing the scalability of smart contracts and dapps by moving smart contracts off-chain. Instead of running on the blockchain, smart contracts on Aeternity run in private state channels between the parties involved in the contracts. State channels are lines of communication between parties in a smart contract. They don’t touch the blockchain unless they need to for adjudication or transfer of value. Because they’re off-chain, state channel contracts can operate much more efficiently. They don’t need to pay the network for every time they compute and can also operate with greater privacy. An important aspect of smart contract and dapp development is access to outside data sources. This could mean checking the weather in London, score of a football game, or price of gold. Oracles provide access to data hosted outside the blockchain. In many blockchain projects, oracles represent a security risk and potential point of failure, since they tend to be singular, centralized data streams. Aeternity proposes decentralizing oracles with their oracle machine. Doing so would make outside data immutable and unchangeable once it reaches Aeternity’s blockchain. Of course, the data source could still be hacked, so Aeternity implements a prediction market where users can bet on the accuracy and honesty of incoming data from various oracles.It also uses prediction markets for various voting and verification purposes within the platform. Aeternity’s network runs on on a hybrid of proof of work and proof of stake. Founded by a long-time crypto-enthusiast and early colleague of Vitalik Buterin, Yanislav Malahov. Promising concept though not product yet
10. Bitcoin Atom: Atomic Swaps and hybrid consenus. This looks like the only Bitcoin clone that actually is looking to innovate next to Bitcoin Cash.
11. Dogecoin: Litecoin fork, fantastic community, though lagging behind a bit in technology.
12. Bitcoin Gold: A bit better security than bitcoin through ASIC resistant algorithm, but that's it. Not that interesting.
13. Digibyte: Digibyte's PoS blockchain is spread over a 100,000+ servers, phones, computers, and nodes across the globe, aiming for the ultimate level of decentralization. DigiByte rebalances the load between the five mining algorithms by adjusting the difficulty of each so one algorithm doesn’t become dominant. The algorithm's asymmetric difficulty has gained notoriety and been deployed in many other blockchains.DigiByte’s adoption over the past four years has been slow. It’s still a relatively obscure currency compared its competitors. The DigiByte website offers a lot of great marketing copy and buzzwords. However, there’s not much technical information about what they have planned for the future. You could say Digibyte is like Bitcoin, but with shorter blocktimes and a multi-algorithm. However, that's not really a difference big enough to truly set themselves apart from Bitcoin, since these technologies could be implemented by any blockchain without much difficulty. Their decentralization is probably their strongest asset, however, this also change quickly if the currency takes off and big miners decide to go into Digibyte.
14. Bitcoin Diamond Asic resistant Bitcoin and Copycat

Market 2 - Platform

Most of the cryptos here have smart contracts and allow dapps (Decentralized apps) to be build on their platform and to use their token as an exchange of value between dapp services.

1. Ethereum: 2nd generation blockchain that allows the use of smart contracts. Bad scalability currently, though this concern could be alleviated by the soon to be implemented Lightning Network aka Plasma and its Sharding concept.
2. EOS: Promising technology that wants to be able do everything, from smart contracts like Ethereum, scalability similar to Nano with 1000 tx/second + near instant transactions and zero fees, to also wanting to be a platform for dapps. However, EOS doesn't have a product yet and everything is just promises still. Highly overvalued right now. However, there are lots of red flags, have dumped $500 million Ether over the last 2 months and possibly bought back EOS to increase the size of their ICO, which has been going on for over a year and has raised several billion dollars. All in all, their market cap is way too high for that and not even having a product.
3. Cardano: Similar to Ethereum/EOS, however, only promises made with no delivery yet, highly overrated right now. Interesting concept though. Market cap way too high for not even having a product. Somewhat promising technology.
4. VeChain: Singapore-based project that’s building a business enterprise platform and inventory tracking system. Examples are verifying genuine luxury goods and food supply chains. Has one of the strongest communities in the crypto world. Most hyped token of all, with merit though.
5. Neo: Neo is a platform, similar to Eth, but more extensive, allowing dapps and smart contracts, but with a different smart contract gas system, consensus mechanism (PoS vs. dBfT), governance model, fixed vs unfixed supply, expensive contracts vs nearly free contracts, different ideologies for real world adoption. There are currently only 9 nodes, each of which are being run by a company/entity hand selected by the NEO council (most of which are located in china) and are under contract. This means that although the locations of the nodes may differ, ultimately the neo council can bring them down due to their legal contracts. In fact this has been done in the past when the neo council was moving 50 million neo that had been locked up. Also dbft (or neo's implmentation of it) has failed underload causing network outages during major icos. The first step in decentralization is that the NEO Counsel will select trusted nodes (Universities, business partners, etc.) and slowly become less centralized that way. The final step in decentralization will be allowing NEO holders to vote for new nodes, similar to a DPoS system (ARK/EOS/LISK). NEO has a regulation/government friendly ideology. Finally they are trying to work undewith the Chinese government in regards to regulations. If for some reason they wanted it shut down, they could just shut it down.
6. Stellar: PoS system, similar goals as Ripple, but more of a platform than only a currency. 80% of Stellar are owned by Stellar.org still, making the currency centralized.
7. Ethereum classic: Original Ethereum that decided not to fork after a hack. The Ethereum that we know is its fork. Uninteresing, because it has a lot of less resources than Ethereum now and a lot less community support.
8. Ziliqa: Zilliqa is building a new way of sharding. 2400 tpx already tested, 10,000 tps soon possible by being linearly scalable with the number of nodes. That means, the more nodes, the faster the network gets. They are looking at implementing privacy as well.
9. QTUM: Enables Smart contracts on the Bitcoin blockchain. Useful.
10. Icon: Korean ethereum. Decentralized application platform that's building communities in partnership with banks, insurance providers, hospitals, and universities. Focused on ID verification and payments. No big differentiators to the other 20 Ethereums, except that is has a product. That is a plus. Maybe cheap alternative to Ethereum.
11. LISK: Lisk's difference to other BaaS is that side chains are independent to the main chain and have to have their own nodes. Similar to neo whole allows dapps to deploy their blockchain to. However, Lisk is currently somewhat centralized with a small group of members owning more than 50% of the delegated positions. Lisk plans to change the consensus algorithm for that reason in the near future.
12. Rchain: Similar to Ethereum with smart contract, though much more scalable at an expected 40,000 TPS and possible 100,000 TPS. Not launched yet. No product launched yet, though promising technology. Not overvalued, probably at the right price right now.
13. ARDR: Similar to Lisk. Ardor is a public blockchain platform that will allow people to utilize the blockchain technology of Nxt through the use of child chains. A child chain, which is a ‘light’ blockchain that can be customized to a certain extent, is designed to allow easy self-deploy for your own blockchain. Nxt claims that users will "not need to worry" about security, as that part is now handled by the main chain (Ardor). This is the chief innovation of Ardor. Ardor was evolved from NXT by the same company. NEM started as a NXT clone.
14. Ontology: Similar to Neo. Interesting coin
15. Bytom: Bytom is an interactive protocol of multiple byte assets. Heterogeneous byte-assets (indigenous digital currency, digital assets) that operate in different forms on the Bytom Blockchain and atomic assets (warrants, securities, dividends, bonds, intelligence information, forecasting information and other information that exist in the physical world) can be registered, exchanged, gambled and engaged in other more complicated and contract-based interoperations via Bytom.
16. Nxt: Similar to Lisk
17. Stratis: Different to LISK, Stratis will allow businesses and organizations to create their own blockchain according to their own needs, but secured on the parent Stratis chain. Stratis’s simple interface will allow organizations to quickly and easily deploy and/or test blockchain functionality of the Ethereum, BitShares, BitCoin, Lisk and Stratis environements.
18. Status: Status provides access to all of Ethereum’s decentralized applications (dapps) through an app on your smartphone. It opens the door to mass adoption of Ethereum dapps by targeting the fastest growing computer segment in the world – smartphone users.16. Ark: Fork of Lisk that focuses on a smaller feature set. Ark wallets can only vote for one delegate at a time which forces delegates to compete against each other and makes cartel formations incredibly hard, if not impossible.
19. Neblio: Similar to Neo, but 30x smaller market cap.
20. NEM: Is similar to Neo No marketing team, very high market cap for little clarilty what they do.
21. Bancor: Bancor is a Decentralized Liquidity Network that allows you to hold any Ethereum token and convert it to any other token in the network, with no counter party, at an automatically calculated price, using a simple web wallet.
22. Dragonchain: The Purpose of DragonChain is to help companies quickly and easily incorporate blockchain into their business applications. Many companies might be interested in making this transition because of the benefits associated with serving clients over a blockchain – increased efficiency and security for transactions, a reduction of costs from eliminating potential fraud and scams, etc.
23. Skycoin: Transactions with zero fees that take apparently two seconds, unlimited transaction rate, no need for miners and block rewards, low power usage, all of the usual cryptocurrency technical vulnerabilities fixed, a consensus mechanism superior to anything that exists, resistant to all conceivable threats (government censorship, community infighting, cybenucleaconventional warfare, etc). Skycoin has their own consensus algorithm known as Obelisk written and published academically by an early developer of Ethereum. Obelisk is a non-energy intensive consensus algorithm based on a concept called ‘web of trust dynamics’ which is completely different to PoW, PoS, and their derivatives. Skywire, the flagship application of Skycoin, has the ambitious goal of decentralizing the internet at the hardware level and is about to begin the testnet in April. However, this is just one of the many facets of the Skycoin ecosystem. Skywire will not only provide decentralized bandwidth but also storage and computation, completing the holy trinity of commodities essential for the new internet. Skycion a smear campaign launched against it, though they seem legit and reliable. Thus, they are probably undervalued.

Market 3 - Ecosystem

The 3rd market with 11 coins is comprised of ecosystem coins, which aim to strengthen the ease of use within the crypto space through decentralized exchanges, open standards for apps and more

1. Nebulas: Similar to how Google indexes webpages Nebulas will index blockchain projects, smart contracts & data using the Nebulas rank algorithm that sifts & sorts the data. Developers rewarded NAS to develop & deploy on NAS chain. Nebulas calls this developer incentive protocol – basically rewards are issued based on how often dapp/contract etc. is used, the more the better the rewards and Proof of devotion. Works like DPoS except the best, most economically incentivised developers (Bookkeeppers) get the forging spots. Ensuring brains stay with the project (Cross between PoI & PoS). 2,400 TPS+, DAG used to solve the inter-transaction dependencies in the PEE (Parallel Execution Environment) feature, first crypto Wallet that supports the Lightening Network.
2. Waves: Decentralized exchange and crowdfunding platform. Let’s companies and projects to issue and manage their own digital coin tokens to raise money.
3. Salt: Leveraging blockchain assets to secure cash loands. Plans to offer cash loans in traditional currencies, backed by your cryptocurrency assets. Allows lenders worldwide to skip credit checks for easier access to affordable loans.
4. CHAINLINK: ChainLink is a decentralized oracle service, the first of its kind. Oracles are defined as an ‘agent’ that finds and verifies real-world occurrences and submits this information to a blockchain to be used in smart contracts.With ChainLink, smart contract users can use the network’s oracles to retrieve data from off-chain application program interfaces (APIs), data pools, and other resources and integrate them into the blockchain and smart contracts. Basically, ChainLink takes information that is external to blockchain applications and puts it on-chain. The difference to Aeternity is that Chainlink deploys the smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain while Aeternity has its own chain.
5. WTC: Combines blockchain with IoT to create a management system for supply chains Interesting
6. Ethos unifyies all cryptos. Ethos is building a multi-cryptocurrency phone wallet. The team is also building an investment diversification tool and a social network
7. Aion: Aion is the token that pays for services on the Aeternity platform.
8. USDT: is no cryptocurrency really, but a replacement for dollar for trading After months of asking for proof of dollar backing, still no response from Tether.

Market 4 - Privacy

The 4th market are privacy coins. As you might know, Bitcoin is not anonymous. If the IRS or any other party asks an exchange who is the identity behind a specific Bitcoin address, they know who you are and can track back almost all of the Bitcoin transactions you have ever made and all your account balances. Privacy coins aim to prevent exactly that through address fungability, which changes addresses constantly, IP obfuscation and more. There are 2 types of privacy coins, one with completely privacy and one with optional privacy. Optional Privacy coins like Dash and Nav have the advantage of more user friendliness over completely privacy coins such as Monero and Enigma.

1. Monero: Currently most popular privacy coin, though with a very high market cap. Since their privacy is all on chain, all prior transactions would be deanonymized if their protocol is ever cracked. This requires a quantum computing attack though. PIVX is better in that regard.
2. Zcash: A decentralized and open-source cryptocurrency that hide the sender, recipient, and value of transactions. Offers users the option to make transactions public later for auditing. Decent privacy coin, though no default privacy
3. Verge: Calls itself privacy coin without providing private transactions, multiple problems over the last weeks has a toxic community, and way too much hype for what they have.
4. Bytecoin: First privacy-focused cryptocurrency with anonymous transactions. Bytecoin’s code was later adapted to create Monero, the more well-known anonymous cryptocurrency. Has several scam accusations, 80% pre-mine, bad devs, bad tech
5. Bitcoin Private: A merge fork of Bitcoin and Zclassic with Zclassic being a fork of Zcash with the difference of a lack of a founders fee required to mine a valid block. This promotes a fair distribution, preventing centralized coin ownership and control. Bitcoin private offers the optional ability to keep the sender, receiver, and amount private in a given transaction. However, this is already offered by several good privacy coins (Monero, PIVX) and Bitcoin private doesn't offer much more beyond this.
6. Komodo: The Komodo blockchain platform uses Komodo’s open-source cryptocurrency for doing transparent, anonymous, private, and fungible transactions. They are then made ultra-secure using Bitcoin’s blockchain via a Delayed Proof of Work (dPoW) protocol and decentralized crowdfunding (ICO) platform to remove middlemen from project funding. Offers services for startups to create and manage their own Blockchains.
7. PIVX: As a fork of Dash, PIVX uses an advanced implementation of the Zerocoin protocol to provide it’s privacy. This is a form of zeroknowledge proofs, which allow users to spend ‘Zerocoins’ that have no link back to them. Unlike Zcash u have denominations in PIVX, so they can’t track users by their payment amount being equal to the amount of ‘minted’ coins, because everyone uses the same denominations. PIVX is also implementing Bulletproofs, just like Monero, and this will take care of arguably the biggest weakness of zeroknowledge protocols: the trusted setup.
8. Zcoin: PoW cryptocurrency. Private financial transactions, enabled by the Zerocoin Protocol. Zcoin is the first full implementation of the Zerocoin Protocol, which allows users to have complete privacy via Zero-Knowledge cryptographic proofs.
9. Enigma: Monero is to Bitcoin what enigma is to Ethereum. Enigma is for making the data used in smart contracts private. More of a platform for dapps than a currency like Monero. Very promising.
10. Navcoin: Like bitcoin but with added privacy and pos and 1,170 tps, but only because of very short 30 second block times. Though, privacy is optional, but aims to be more user friendly than Monero. However, doesn't really decide if it wants to be a privacy coin or not. Same as Zcash.Strong technology, non-shady team.
11. Tenx: Raised 80 million, offers cryptocurrency-linked credit cards that let you spend virtual money in real life. Developing a series of payment platforms to make spending cryptocurrency easier. However, the question is if full privacy coins will be hindered in growth through government regulations and optional privacy coins will become more successful through ease of use and no regulatory hindrance.

Market 5 - Currency Exchange Tool

Due to the sheer number of different cryptocurrencies, exchanging one currency for the other it still cumbersome. Further, merchants don’t want to deal with overcluttered options of accepting cryptocurrencies. This is where exchange tool like Req come in, which allow easy and simple exchange of currencies.

1. Cryptonex: Fiat and currency exchange between various blockchain services, similar to REQ.
2. QASH: Qash is used to fuel its liquid platform which will be an exchange that will distribute their liquidity pool. Its product, the Worldbook is a multi-exchange order book that matches crypto to crypto, and crypto to fiat and the reverse across all currencies. E.g., someone is selling Bitcoin is USD on exchange1 not owned by Quoine and someone is buying Bitcoin in EURO on exchange 2 not owned by Quoine. If the forex conversions and crypto conversions match then the trade will go through and the Worldbook will match it, it'll make the sale and the purchase on either exchange and each user will get what they wanted, which means exchanges with lower liquidity if they join the Worldbook will be able to fill orders and take trade fees they otherwise would miss out on.They turned it on to test it a few months ago for an hour or so and their exchange was the top exchange in the world by 4x volume for the day because all Worldbook trades ran through it. Binance wants BNB to be used on their one exchange. Qash wants their QASH token embedded in all of their partners. More info here https://www.reddit.com/CryptoCurrency/comments/8a8lnwhich_are_your_top_5_favourite_coins_out_of_the/dwyjcbb/?context=3
3. Kyber: network Exchange between cryptocurrencies, similar to REQ. Features automatic coin conversions for payments. Also offers payment tools for developers and a cryptocurrency wallet.
4. Achain: Building a boundless blockchain world like Req .
5. Req: Exchange between cryptocurrencies.
6. Bitshares: Exchange between cryptocurrencies. Noteworthy are the 1.5 second average block times and throughput potential of 100,000 transactions per second with currently 2,400 TPS having been proven. However, bitshares had several Scam accusations in the past.
7. Loopring: A protocol that will enable higher liquidity between exchanges and personal wallets.
8. ZRX: Open standard for dapps. Open, permissionless protocol allowing for ERC20 tokens to be traded on the Ethereum blockchain. In 0x protocol, orders are transported off-chain, massively reducing gas costs and eliminating blockchain bloat. Relayers help broadcast orders and collect a fee each time they facilitate a trade. Anyone can build a relayer.

Market 6 - Gaming

With an industry size of $108B worldwide, Gaming is one of the largest markets in the world. For sure, cryptocurrencies will want to have a share of that pie.

1. Storm: Mobile game currency on a platform with 9 million players.
2. Fun: A platform for casino operators to host trustless, provably-fair gambling through the use of smart contracts, as well as creating their own implementation of state channels for scalability.
3. Electroneum: Mobile game currency They have lots of technical problems, such as several 51% attacks
4. Wax: Marketplace to trade in-game items

Market 7 - Misc

There are various markets being tapped right now. They are all summed up under misc.

1. OMG: Omise is designed to enable financial services for people without bank accounts. It works worldwide and with both traditional money and cryptocurrencies.
2. Power ledger: Australian blockchain-based cryptocurrency and energy trading platform that allows for decentralized selling and buying of renewable energy. Unique market and rather untapped market in the crypto space.
3. Populous: A platform that connects business owners and invoice buyers without middlemen. Invoice sellers get cash flow to fund their business and invoice buyers earn interest. Similar to OMG, small market.
4. Monacoin: The first Japanese cryptocurrency. Focused on micro-transactions and based on a popular internet meme of a type-written cat. This makes it similar to Dogecoin. Very niche, tiny market.
5. Revain: Legitimizing reviews via the blockchain. Interesting concept, though market not as big.
6. Augur: Platform to forecast and make wagers on the outcome of real-world events (AKA decentralized predictions). Uses predictions for a “wisdom of the crowd” search engine. Not launched yet.
7. Substratum: Revolutionzing hosting industry via per request billing as a decentralized internet hosting system. Uses a global network of private computers to create the free and open internet of the future. Participants earn cryptocurrency. Interesting concept.
8. Veritaseum: Is supposed to be a peer to peer gateway, though it looks like very much like a scam.
9. TRON: Tronix is looking to capitalize on ownership of internet data to content creators. However, they plagiarized their white paper, which is a no go. They apologized, so it needs to be seen how they will conduct themselves in the future. Extremely high market cap for not having a product, nor proof of concept.
10. Syscoin: A cryptocurrency with a decentralized marketplace that lets people buy and sell products directly without third parties. Trying to remove middlemen like eBay and Amazon.
11. Hshare: Most likely scam because of no code changes, most likely pump and dump scheme, dead community.
12. BAT: An Ethereum-based token that can be exchanged between content creators, users, and advertisers. Decentralized ad-network that pays based on engagement and attention.
13. Dent: Decentralizeed exchange of mobile data, enabling mobile data to be marketed, purchased or distributed, so that users can quickly buy or sell data from any user to another one.
14. Ncash: End to end encrypted Identification system for retailers to better serve their customers .
15. Factom Secure record-keeping system that allows companies to store their data directly on the Blockchain. The goal is to make records more transparent and trustworthy .

Market 8 - Social network

Web 2.0 is still going strong and Web 3.0 is not going to ignore it. There are several gaming tokens already out there and a few with decent traction already, such as Steem, which is Reddit with voting through money is a very interesting one.

1. Mithril: As users create content via social media, they will be rewarded for their contribution, the better the contribution, the more they will earn
2. Steem: Like Reddit, but voting with money. Already launched product and Alexa rank 1,000 Thumbs up.
3. Rdd: Reddcoin makes the process of sending and receiving money fun and rewarding for everyone. Reddcoin is dedicated to one thing – tipping on social networks as a way to bring cryptocurrency awareness and experience to the general public.
4. Kin: Token for the platform Kik. Kik has a massive user base of 400 million people. Replacing paying with FIAT with paying with KIN might get this token to mass adoption very quickly.

Market 9 - Fee token

Popular exchanges realized that they can make a few billion dollars more by launching their own token. Owning these tokens gives you a reduction of trading fees. Very handy and BNB (Binance Coin) has been one of the most resilient tokens, which have withstood most market drops over the last weeks and was among the very few coins that could show growth.

1. BNB: Fee token for Binance
2. Gas: Not a Fee token for an exchange, but it is a dividend paid out on Neo and a currency that can be used to purchase services for dapps.
3. Kucoin: Fee token for Kucoin

Market 10 - Decentralized Data Storage

Currently, data storage happens with large companies or data centers that are prone to failure or losing data. Decentralized data storage makes loss of data almost impossible by distributing your files to numerous clients that hold tiny pieces of your data. Remember Torrents? Torrents use a peer-to-peer network. It is similar to that. Many users maintain copies of the same file, when someone wants a copy of that file, they send a request to the peer-to-peer network., users who have the file, known as seeds, send fragments of the file to the requester., he requester receives many fragments from many different seeds, and the torrent software recompiles these fragments to form the original file.

1. Gbyte: Byteball data is stored and ordered using directed acyclic graph (DAG) rather than blockchain. This allows all users to secure each other's data by referencing earlier data units created by other users, and also removes scalability limits common for blockchains, such as blocksize issue.
2. Siacoin: Siacoin is decentralized storage platform. Distributes encrypted files to thousands of private users who get paid for renting out their disk space. Anybody with siacoins can rent storage from hosts on Sia. This is accomplish via "smart" storage contracts stored on the Sia blockchain. The smart contract provides a payment to the host only after the host has kept the file for a given amount of time. If the host loses the file, the host does not get paid.
3. Maidsafecoin: MaidSafe stands for Massive Array of Internet Disks, Secure Access for Everyone.Instead of working with data centers and servers that are common today and are vulnerable to data theft and monitoring, SAFE’s network uses advanced P2P technology to bring together the spare computing capacity of all SAFE users and create a global network. You can think of SAFE as a crowd-sourced internet. All data and applications reside in this network. It’s an autonomous network that automatically sets prices and distributes data and rents out hard drive disk space with a Blockchain-based storage solutions.When you upload a file to the network, such as a photo, it will be broken into pieces, hashed, and encrypted. The data is then randomly distributed across the network. Redundant copies of the data are created as well so that if someone storing your file turns off their computer, you will still have access to your data. And don’t worry, even with pieces of your data on other people’s computers, they won’t be able to read them. You can earn MadeSafeCoins by participating in storing data pieces from the network on your computer and thus earning a Proof of Resource.
4. Storj: Storj aims to become a cloud storage platform that can’t be censored or monitored, or have downtime. Your files are encrypted, shredded into little pieces called 'shards', and stored in a decentralized network of computers around the globe. No one but you has a complete copy of your file, not even in an encrypted form.

Market 11 - Cloud computing

Obviously, renting computing power, one of the biggest emerging markets as of recent years, e.g. AWS and Digital Ocean, is also a service, which can be bought and managed via the blockchain.

1. Golem: Allows easy use of Supercomputer in exchange for tokens. People worldwide can rent out their computers to the network and get paid for that service with Golem tokens.
2. Elf: Allows easy use of Cloud computing in exchange for tokens.

Market 12 - Stablecoin

Last but not least, there are 2 stablecoins that have established themselves within the market. A stable coin is a coin that wants to be independent of the volatility of the crypto markets. This has worked out pretty well for Maker and DGD, accomplished through a carefully diversified currency fund and backing each token by 1g or real gold respectively. DO NOT CONFUSE DGD AND MAKER with their STABLE COINS DGX and DAI. DGD and MAKER are volatile, because they are the companies of DGX and DAI. DGX and DAI are the stable coins.

1. DGD: Platform of the Stablecoin DGX. Every DGX coin is backed by 1g of gold and make use proof of asset consensus.
2. Maker: Platform of the Stablecoin DAI that doesn't vary much in price through widespread and smart diversification of assets.

EDIT: Added a risk factor from 0 to 10. The baseline is 2 for any crypto. Significant scandals, mishaps, shady practices, questionable technology, increase the risk factor. Not having a product yet automatically means a risk factor of 6. Strong adoption and thus strong scrutiny or positive community lower the risk factor.
EDIT2: Added a subjective potential factor from 0 to 10, where its overall potential and a small or big market cap is factored in. Bitcoin with lots of potential only gets a 9, because of its massive market cap, because if Bitcoin goes 10x, smaller coins go 100x, PIVX gets a 10 for being as good as Monero while carrying a 10x smaller market cap, which would make PIVX go 100x if Monero goes 10x.

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NOTE: I did not write this article below. I simply copy and pasted the article. Please click the following link to view the entire article. The article includes charts and images which were not transferred to the text below.
https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@lennartbedrage/the-ripple-xrp-effect-fundamental-analysis
The Ripple(XRP) Effect - Fundamental Analysis: lennartbedrage44 in cryptocurrency ripple.jpg
Lately, there’s been a tremendous amount of buzz around Ripple(XRP), but is it only because of the massive growth we’ve seen in the past few 30 days, or is there something more?
In this article, I’ll dive into a brief back ground of Ripple, objectively examine the arguments for and against it, explore its potential from a economic standpoint, then close with potential threats to your investment and a summary.
Meet Ripple(XRP)-
Released in 2012, Ripple aims to enable “secure, instant and nearly free global financial transactions of any size with no chargebacks” through their real-time gross settlement system (RTGS) and currency exchange and remittance network. Ripples distributed open-source internet protocol consensus ledger was created as basic technology for interbank and regulated financial institutions to integrate Ripple into their own systems. This differs from the Bitcoin full node and other crowdsourced altcoin consensus networks in several ways:
Ripples common shared ledger is a network of independent validating servers which compare their transaction records, rather than the full network of nodes coming to consensus prior to each transaction, enabling faster transaction speeds. Although their protocol is open source, it was not created as a plug & play solution, like bitcoins full-node software, nor does it rely on crowd-sourced support. Unlike Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, and other Alt-coins, Ripple is recognized as legal tender by several governments, which gives it instant liquidity via financial institution, as well as purchasing power over material goods. Because of this, it cannot be evaluated in the same ways as other coins, which are largely evaluated based on assumptions & speculation. In terms of value, it’s more like cash than a commodity. Because of this, it is evaluated in a much different way than Ethereum(ETH) and other alt-coins with intrinsic value, but is accepted much more rapidly because it’s easy for the mass-market to understand. Remember: without market acceptance, there is not value, regardless of how innovative something may be.
Just 4 short years after its release, on 01MAY17, Ripple announced that a consortium of 47 banks have successfully completed a pilot implementation of Ripple in Japan, making it the first country in the world to enable domestic and international real time money transfers via the cryptocurrency. This event lead the XRP value to sky-rocket from $0.051580 USD to an all-time high of $0.430085 in just 16 days… but why? Is it 100% speculation, or is there something else going on here?
“It’s not a real cryptocurrency!” Or is it? Well, those whom bring this argument to the table are probably referencing facts that I’ve mention during my introduction to Ripple: Its a centralized and regulated crypto-currency which does not need global consensus for transfers, and it is built specifically for (and potentially by) financial institutions. Though a lot of the Anarcho-Capitalists may want to steer clear of this one due to its highly regulated nature, regular capitalist may believe these core differences to be its greatest strengths:
Regulated - As I mentioned in my analysis on Ethereum(ETH), Bitcoin’s lack of regulation was likely he reason (or at least, that’s what they told us) that the proposed ETF failed to pass the SEC’s evaluation several months ago. If adhering to some sort of trusted regulatory standards, this could drive federal confidence, which in turn drive bank and lending institution faith…trickling all the way down to the consumers. This insures rapid mass market acceptance. Consensus - As mentioned before this is much different process than Bitcoin’s global consensus, which means that transaction times are nearly instant regardless of volume transferred. Additionally, all transfers adhere to distributive ledgers DLT standards, which is a requirement for many financial institutions to be insurable. Institutional Management - You’ve probably guessed this one already. Although the demand and speculative value is driven at some capacity by ‘the people’, this currency is about as close to the World bank and SWIFT as you can get. This is largely due to the amount Deliberate - It feels like a big bank, because it is. Ripple was built specifically for the financial markets, which is why they specifically targeted regulatory compliance. shutterstock_289877267_long_read_cover_large.jpg
Economic Value As mentioned in the last point, Its easy to see that Ripple offers tremendous value to financial-institutions and retail investors. These two groups make up 358 billion (numbers from 2013) non-cash cross-country annual transactions, and the FOREX market which sees more than $5.1 trillion $USD each day. Per a report released by Capgemini and The Royal Bank of Scotland, this is growing at an average rate of about 7.5% each year globally, though China and other Emerging Asian economies have been leading the charge at around 21%.
Seems like a lot, right? Well, for sake of uncovering the immediate value of XRP, we will zoom into the recent adopters of the distributed ledger technology: Japan, India, and the Central Europe, Middle East & Africa(CEMEA) regions.
Japan.jpg
Japan is the third largest economy in the world by nominal GDP ($6.11 trillion), fourth by purchasing power parity(PPP) and second largest developed economy. Currently, their GDP per capita is roughly $48,412 (vs $56,430 in US) and their major trade partners include the US, China, Hong Kong, Australia and South Korea.
Japan GDP.png
Aside from the speculation that they maybe soon pressure their trade partners (excluding the US and China) to adopt a system which allows for instant, near free transfers of funds, here’s where it gets interesting for the immediate future: Japan has already started accepting Ripple(XRP) as legal tender. If Ripple raises to just 25% of the overall transaction volume of P2P, P2B & B2B within Japan itself (represented in the chart by Other Services, Real Estate, Retail, Transport, Communications, Finance & Utilities) which is equal to about 20% of their overall economy, Ripple would be handling roughly $1.27 trillion USD in Japan – alone - every year. To put that in perspective, the current (at the time of writing) market capitalization of Bitcoin(BTC) is $30.7 billion USD (or >0.4%). Unlike Bitcoin, Ripple is legal tender which means that it can be exchanged for material goods and services, which means that it’s likely to have explosive acceptance in the local area.
India.jpg
India-based Axis Bank announced in April that they will soon begin leveraging distributed ledger tech for cross-border transactions and to make banking simple and convenient for their customers. About 15 days’ prior, another large financial institution, Yes Bank, also announced that they would be adopting Ripples ledger for the same reasons. If Ripple continues to grow in acceptance at this rate in India, we could see another economy, roughly 1/3 the size of Japan’s ($2.074 trillion USD) add to Ripples annual transaction value. Now, from an economic stand point, this is most interesting because agriculture represents more than 50% of India’s employment, which means that India would be the 2nd case of consumer trading Ripple for staple foods.
India GDP.png
It is likely that Ripple will not handle as large of a percentage of overall transaction volumes in India because only two major banks have adopted this currency and it is not the only Crypto. The latter is probably one of the most important variables, as this means that Ripple will be duking it out for market dominancy. As all of my projections are fairly conservative, I would estimate that Ripple will handle roughly 10% of India’s over all transaction volume in the next 365 days, equal to roughly $311.1 billion USD.
One last thing that I would like to mention is that India is literally the ‘I’ in BRIC and roughly 13% of the BRIC countries total output. If the BRIC comes to fruition, India may be able to convince it’s other close trade partners to jump on the XRP-Train as well.
Dubai.jpg
Abu Dhabi Bank, the National and largest bank of the UAE, has already begun offering cross-border transaction services with Ripples distributive ledger technology as well. As they deal extensively with their middle eastern neighbors, such as Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, the UAE is likely to set a trend for other CEMEA countries to follow.
UAE GDP.png
This might be a surprise to some people, but Dubai’s largest industry is the energy sector (shocker!) followed closely by Real Estate and their Finance industry (double shocker!). Although their GPD is much smaller than Japan and India’s (about $370 billion USD), I am anticipating Ripple to handle a larger percent of the UAE’s transaction volume (31.11%), especially in the finance, Real Estate, Retail and Logistics industries. This is due largely to the fact that their population is only roughly 9.157 million, but most Abu Dhabi nationals are very financially inclined (or at least heavy spenders).
Potential Threats As this threatens SWIFT (unless they are completely on board) and the US dollars’ supremacy in the economic & financial markets, I would not be surprised to see a false flag attack, in which the NSA attacks Ripple and blames it on North Korea or China. Frankly, this would be a cake walk compared to Stuxnet or WannaCry and they could probably hand the task to an MIT intern. Where semi-centralization is Ripples strength in terms of transaction speed and regulation, it is also the biggest security flaw and may open it’s user to some heart ache, hair loss and heavy drinking over the next several years.
Possibility So, what is possible in terms of value over the next few years? Well, if we consider the following scenario:
XRP accounts for roughly 20% of Japan, India full GDP, but 31.1% UAE’s GDP ($7.152 Trillion USD) total exchange volume in the next 2 years Max XRP Supply stays at 100 billion No other countries adopt XRP (not likely) No hacks or other catastrophic events remove confidence Exclude speculation, demand, rallies, and GDP growth projections for each country Then we’re looking at each Ripple(XRP) market capitalization over ~$1.75 Trillion USD, making each coin $17.52 in real value. This means that if you were to invest today at $0.362794, your ROI would be about 4,989%. That said, I think that it’s likely it will go over $30 in the next 2 years, due to speculators flooding the markets and other countries signing up. Again, these are conservative numbers are based on total transaction value in USD equivalent.
For those whom subscribe, I will update as new variables are available to my appraisal
Bottom Line Although it was most definitely created by an insider of the banking industry and does not ‘feel like a crypto’, I personally feel that due to its rapid market acceptance, liquidity and position as legal tender in 3 large economies, Ripple(XRP) is both primed for explosive growth in the near future and likely to be one of the safest value based Crypto-investments we can make today.
Another thing, China is the anchor of the West Pacific, so we should all watch their evaluation of Ripple, very closely. If they were to jump on the XRP-Train, you are likely to see Australia, South Korea, Indonesia and Singapore do the same.
If you enjoyed this article, be sure to share & subscribe, as I have kept my proprietary models and will update as major events and additional countries begin to adopt this currency. If you feel that I have missed something or am just flat out wrong, please be sure to let me know in the comments below!
Planned articles for the next 14 days:
ICO advice from a Venture Capitalist (Follower Request) Paper Wallets (Follower Request) VIVA Analysis (Follower Request) Segregated Witness(Segwit) : Friend or Foe? A Kraken ate my gains... Fundamental Analysis: Stellar Lumens(XLM) Dual-Citizenship and Banking in Panama Rich vs. Wealthy All analysis, numbers and projections are my own. Core information was gathered from reliable sources, such as the World Bank, IMF, CIA world fact book, eia.gov and more.

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Bluzelle (BLZ) Receives Capital Injection from NEO Capital

Period: 76.83 days

	Submissions	Comments
Total	982	5230
Rate (per day)	12.78	67.37
Unique Redditors	702	946
Combined Score	5730	16211

Top Submitters' Top Submissions

1. 366 points, 45 submissions: benjaminikuta
   
   1. So, what's the difference between this new trade deal with Mexico and Canada and the old one, and what are the implications? (68 points, 12 comments)
   2. Do powerful unions increase wages above the optimal level, or do firms with market power cause imperfect competition in the labor market, causing sub optimal wages? (Or both?) (29 points, 2 comments)
   3. How do the salaries of high paid professionals compare between the US and various other developed countries? (28 points, 1 comment)
   4. Just how much more expensive is it to build on mountainous terrain than on flat land? How much more expensive would housing have to be before it's economical to develop the mountains of Hong Kong? (27 points, 5 comments)
   5. When it is said that someone in a third world country lives on a dollar a day, what does that actually mean? (25 points, 19 comments)
   6. How do economists measure unpaid work? (23 points, 8 comments)
   7. What's the economic effect of legal vs illegal immigration? (22 points, 10 comments)
   8. If someone saved enough money to live on investment income, could their descendants live off it indefinitely? (Assuming they don't spend the principle, reinvest to account for inflation, etc, of course.) (20 points, 46 comments)
   9. How effectively can negative externalities be quantified? (11 points, 7 comments)
   10. What are some common misconceptions about economics? (11 points, 19 comments)
2. 134 points, 11 submissions: Fart_Gas
   
   1. Is free public transport a good idea? (42 points, 20 comments)
   2. What caused the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis? (31 points, 13 comments)
   3. Would it be more economical for supermarkets to slightly under-stock? (21 points, 12 comments)
   4. Will Venezuela's plummeting economy make it a good choice for low-wage industries? (20 points, 8 comments)
   5. What might cause sudden inflation? (7 points, 2 comments)
   6. Why do some countries without hyperinflation use a foreign currency in everyday life? (7 points, 3 comments)
   7. Has any country tried reducing the minimum wage, and ended up with a good result from it? (4 points, 8 comments)
   8. Is Ordoliberalism feasible for most poor and recently war-torn countries? (1 point, 0 comments)
   9. Why do some businesses sponsor sporting teams in countries they don't operate in, and that they don't plan to expand to in the foreseeable future? (1 point, 1 comment)
   10. Is it inevitable that certain areas will never recover from a war? If so, why? (0 points, 0 comments)
3. 96 points, 5 submissions: MrZer
   
   1. Why do countries like France or Japan have a high debt to GDP but aren't in shambles like Greece? (43 points, 16 comments)
   2. Milton Friedman is well respected by many economists, why aren't there more Libertarians? (22 points, 18 comments)
   3. I've heard Marxists claim that central planning is good because the military and corporations do it. (20 points, 38 comments)
   4. Someone once said "Interest is what actually creates money. Without debt and interest, our economies would collapse." (7 points, 5 comments)
   5. What does it mean when people say China manipulates currency? (4 points, 7 comments)
4. 83 points, 17 submissions: Whynvme
   
   1. Do economists actually calculate consumer surplus empirically, or is it more of s theoretical concept? (19 points, 5 comments)
   2. If we have cobb douglas preferences, my demand for x is not a function of the price of y. How do substitution effects arise then? (13 points, 6 comments)
   3. Is me making more money than I would necessarily require to work( so more than my 'opportunity wage') for a job an economic inefficiency? or is ineffiency in labor markets a wedge between my marginal revenue product and my wage? (11 points, 3 comments)
   4. some basic macro questions (6 points, 5 comments)
   5. understanding equilibrium in a dynamic context? (6 points, 1 comment)
   6. Trying to understand economies of scale, e.g. costco (5 points, 5 comments)
   7. Why does inflation necessarily mean wages will be increasing too? (5 points, 3 comments)
   8. question about equilibrium tax incidence (3 points, 1 comment)
   9. trying to understand the utility of theoretical models (3 points, 3 comments)
   10. when firms are earning short run economic profit, does that just mean all factors of production are earning more than their opportunity cost? so firms entering the industry = labor and capital reallocating towards that industry by forming new firms? (3 points, 1 comment)
5. 65 points, 1 submission: imadeadinside
   
   1. If Bruce Wayne was revealed as Batman, would stock prices and sales skyrocket or plummet for Wayne Enterprises (65 points, 16 comments)
6. 57 points, 2 submissions: csObsession
   
   1. Do most economists think political and economic freedoms are intrinsically tied together? How do they explain the success of extremely authoritarian capitalist governments (Singapore, China, South Korea, Chile)? (37 points, 25 comments)
   2. Why are salaries for professionals so much higher in the United States than other developed countries? (20 points, 34 comments)
7. 53 points, 13 submissions: Experimentalphone
   
   1. Why do Information Technology workers are so high in demand and earn so much in Western countries but doesn't even get sustenance wage in Bangladesh? (30 points, 10 comments)
   2. Anyone know of a comprehensive list of all the sub disciplines one can do a PhD in Economics, Finance and Business? (6 points, 4 comments)
   3. Which PhD sub disciplines have the least math but still good employability prospects in academia and industry? (5 points, 19 comments)
   4. What is the best website to publish your working papers in Economics? (3 points, 4 comments)
   5. Do I have to prove factual assertions before providing my arguments on economic policy suggestions for a journal article? (2 points, 4 comments)
   6. Why is the Ready Made Garments industry of Bangladesh declining due to withdrawal of trade privileges of Western countries when prices are already competitive in the world market? (2 points, 1 comment)
   7. Are qualitative policy prescription papers accepted by most journals or are they better of in blog posts? (1 point, 7 comments)
   8. What is the best free website for working papers in Economics? (1 point, 3 comments)
   9. Where can I find data on work conditions and how hard is the work of foreign students who work alongside their studies legally or illegally? (1 point, 0 comments)
   10. Which metrics do I need, to find out the effects of outward remittance on a poor economy? (1 point, 5 comments)
8. 52 points, 6 submissions: FrankVillain
   
   1. Is China still considered a centrally planned economy? (16 points, 4 comments)
   2. Ressources on the Soviet industrial failures due to poor economics? (15 points, 2 comments)
   3. What is the reason behind France's high unemployment rate? (10 points, 13 comments)
   4. About Land Value Tax & Single Tax: how would it affect farmers and those of them who own their land? (9 points, 3 comments)
   5. Does welfare policies contribute to inflation? (2 points, 1 comment)
   6. If a Bitcoin is worth $1 000 000 and some persons like Satoshi have one or more millions of it... what power do they have? Can they disrupt the financial system with the huge amount of dollars that they have? (0 points, 8 comments)
9. 49 points, 9 submissions: Chumbaka
   
   1. Can someone explain M0 , M1 and M2 to me? (13 points, 2 comments)
   2. Why is inflation and deflation bad? (13 points, 8 comments)
   3. Can anyone explain why this happens and what it means? (10 points, 3 comments)
   4. Stupid question but : Why does printing lots of money lead to inflation? (5 points, 14 comments)
   5. Why aren't all banks Full Reserve Banking? (5 points, 3 comments)
   6. What does this stock market fall mean to the economy as a whole? (3 points, 4 comments)
   7. How do I pick an economist ideology to support? (0 points, 3 comments)
   8. Is investing in Forex worth it? (0 points, 15 comments)
   9. What is Fractional Reserve Banking? (0 points, 4 comments)
10. 47 points, 1 submission: furikakebabe
    
    1. The Tax Bill of 2017 reduced corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%. Tax haven countries have rates as low as 15%. Why would companies be more likely to move money back to the US if they still aren’t getting a better rate? (47 points, 6 comments)
11. 47 points, 1 submission: gh0bs
    
    1. Why does the economy have to be a series of bubbles and bursts/corrections, rather than a sustained gradual growth? (47 points, 32 comments)
12. 45 points, 1 submission: wcoleman22
    
    1. For all the economists out there that got advanced degrees, what were your most influential assigned readings? (45 points, 23 comments)
13. 43 points, 1 submission: Crane_Train
    
    1. How could Venezuela fix its economy? (43 points, 17 comments)
14. 42 points, 4 submissions: Jollygood156
    
    1. Why didn't quantitative easing + low interest rates raise inflation high? (20 points, 36 comments)
    2. How do we actually refute MMT? (12 points, 69 comments)
    3. What is Nominal GDP targeting and why do so many people advocate for it? (6 points, 16 comments)
    4. How exactly are land value taxes calculated? (4 points, 3 comments)
15. 42 points, 1 submission: kornork
    
    1. With Soybeans piling up and a 12 Billion bailout from the trade war, how come tofu isn’t super cheap right now? (42 points, 3 comments)
16. 41 points, 1 submission: TheHoleInMoi
    
    1. Are there any papers/solid arguments about the benefits of having more local business as opposed to corporate consolidation? (41 points, 2 comments)
17. 39 points, 1 submission: infernomedia
    
    1. What are some of the most interesting results in economics that are widely well regarded by the academic community to come out in the last decade? (39 points, 7 comments)
18. 38 points, 1 submission: -reasonable-person-
    
    1. From an Economic Perspective What is the Most Effective Way for Mexico to end its Violent Organized Crime Problem? (38 points, 13 comments)
19. 38 points, 1 submission: ajsox22
    
    1. Does culture impact the growth and development of a nation's economy? (38 points, 15 comments)
20. 37 points, 8 submissions: MedStudent-96
    
    1. Quasi-convexity of the Indirect Utility Function? (12 points, 14 comments)
    2. Is my textbook wrong? (9 points, 8 comments)
    3. Interpretation of Lagrange Multipliers for Consumer (5 points, 4 comments)
    4. Consumer Demand Interpretation for Cobb Douglas-Non Convex to Origin. (4 points, 6 comments)
    5. Do monopolies produce the same as a competitive firm in the long run? (4 points, 8 comments)
    6. In some circumstances can a monopoly leave the consumer better off? (1 point, 3 comments)
    7. Two Period Consumption Savings Model (1 point, 3 comments)
    8. [General Equilibrium] Proving that in the limit case the core shrinks to the set of competitive equilibrium. (1 point, 0 comments)

Top Commenters

1. BainCapitalist (2255 points, 571 comments)
2. smalleconomist (1053 points, 307 comments)
3. RobThorpe (853 points, 247 comments)
4. Calvo_fairy (721 points, 146 comments)
5. Cross_Keynesian (527 points, 126 comments)
6. zzzzz94 (468 points, 83 comments)
7. raptorman556 (334 points, 91 comments)
8. Integralds (323 points, 51 comments)
9. whyrat (298 points, 56 comments)
10. MrDannyOcean (290 points, 48 comments)
11. isntanywhere (263 points, 84 comments)
12. benjaminikuta (249 points, 133 comments)
13. penguin_rider222 (158 points, 40 comments)
14. daokedao4 (148 points, 23 comments)
15. lawrencekhoo (132 points, 13 comments)
16. ecolonomist (129 points, 45 comments)
17. RegulatoryCapture (126 points, 29 comments)
18. intowilde (114 points, 28 comments)
19. VineFynn (113 points, 30 comments)
20. MedStudent-96 (103 points, 48 comments)

Top Submissions

1. So, what's the difference between this new trade deal with Mexico and Canada and the old one, and what are the implications? by benjaminikuta (68 points, 12 comments)
2. If Bruce Wayne was revealed as Batman, would stock prices and sales skyrocket or plummet for Wayne Enterprises by imadeadinside (65 points, 16 comments)
3. Why does the economy have to be a series of bubbles and bursts/corrections, rather than a sustained gradual growth? by gh0bs (47 points, 32 comments)
4. The Tax Bill of 2017 reduced corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%. Tax haven countries have rates as low as 15%. Why would companies be more likely to move money back to the US if they still aren’t getting a better rate? by furikakebabe (47 points, 6 comments)
5. For all the economists out there that got advanced degrees, what were your most influential assigned readings? by wcoleman22 (45 points, 23 comments)
6. How could Venezuela fix its economy? by Crane_Train (43 points, 17 comments)
7. Why do countries like France or Japan have a high debt to GDP but aren't in shambles like Greece? by MrZer (43 points, 16 comments)
8. Is free public transport a good idea? by Fart_Gas (42 points, 20 comments)
9. With Soybeans piling up and a 12 Billion bailout from the trade war, how come tofu isn’t super cheap right now? by kornork (42 points, 3 comments)
10. Are there any papers/solid arguments about the benefits of having more local business as opposed to corporate consolidation? by TheHoleInMoi (41 points, 2 comments)

Top Comments

1. 68 points: Calvo_fairy's comment in Milton Friedman is well respected by many economists, why aren't there more Libertarians?
2. 62 points: Calvo_fairy's comment in Milton Friedman is well respected by many economists, why aren't there more Libertarians?
3. 54 points: Calvo_fairy's comment in If Bruce Wayne was revealed as Batman, would stock prices and sales skyrocket or plummet for Wayne Enterprises
4. 52 points: Qwernakus's comment in What is the difference between GDP (Nominal), GDP (PPP), and Real GDP ?
5. 50 points: TheoryOfSomething's comment in Which parts of Marxism are theoretically dependent on the labor theory of value and which are not?
6. 47 points: Lucid-Crow's comment in I've heard Marxists claim that central planning is good because the military and corporations do it.
7. 46 points: Integralds's comment in Milton Friedman is well respected by many economists, why aren't there more Libertarians?
8. 44 points: Yankee9204's comment in If Bruce Wayne was revealed as Batman, would stock prices and sales skyrocket or plummet for Wayne Enterprises
9. 43 points: lawrencekhoo's comment in With Soybeans piling up and a 12 Billion bailout from the trade war, how come tofu isn’t super cheap right now?
10. 42 points: Cross_Keynesian's comment in Does income inequality really matter?

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