After the success of Bitcoin and the rise in the price of the first-ever cryptocurrency, many new coins were developed in cryptoworld. In simple words, any coin other than bitcoin is termed as “Altcoins”. These coins are created by tweaking the Bitcoin's or any other existing cryptocurrencies protocol. In the growing world of cryptocurrency, there are more than 3000 cryptocurrencies which came into existence and so it is a tough job to choose the right Altcoin to invest in it. Here are the 5 most promising Altcoins that can help you to narrow your search.

Disclaimer: This guide should not be considered as financial advice. It is highly recommended to do appropriate market research before any investments. 

Litecoin

After the successful launch of Bitcoin, Litecoin was the next one to enter the Cryptoworld in 2011. Charlie Lee - a computer scientist created Litecoin by making some technical changes in the bitcoin’s source-code and made it the fastest peer-to-peer currency that enabled instant, near-zero cost payments to anyone across the world. Also, litecoin has a total supply of 84 million with an average block mining time of 2.5 minutes. 

Reasons why to choose Litecoin as a Long-Term Investment 

• Improved: Litecoin algorithm is generally easier to mine but difficult to crack The bitcoin mining is highly processed intensive requiring, application-specific integrated circuit devices with high processing capabilities, while Litecoin mining is memory-intensive requiring less cost-intensive graphics processing units (GPU). 

• Faster block-processing rate: The technical changes done on Bitcoin’s source-code allows Litecoin to processes a block at a much faster rate and giving out rewards to the miner faster in every  2.5 minutes as compared to Bitcoin which processes a block in every 10 minutes. Litecoin network have more capacity to handle the transactions than bitcoin's network

• SegWit upgrade: Litecoin's SegWit upgrade boost the capacity of the number of transactions a block can hold in litecoin's blockchain, thereby speeding up the transaction settlement times and lowering transaction costs.

• Higher trading volume: The trading of Litecoin has begun since 2011 and since then it was in the top 10 list of coins. The popularity of Litecoins is so much that you won't face any problem selling them in the future which brings less fear of having risk as compared to other new coins.

Ethereum

Ethereum is the second-largest digital currency introduces Vitalik Buterin in late 2015. It has been a popular choice in many industries as its cool feature named Smart Contracts helps developers to build decentralized applications (dApps) on top of its (i.e. Ethereum's) blockchain which helps to avoid fraud, downtime, and control or interference from a third party. Ethereum can also be used for banking and financial service contracts, ICOS, prediction markets, replacing escrow, identity management. The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance founded in 2017 has over 200 organizations that are testing on various versions of Ethereum's blockchain in different industries. Ethereum has a circulating supply of 106,376,346 ETH, the market capitalization of $26,307, 580,992 and faster transaction of 6 minutes as compared to Bitcoin.

Reasons why to choose Ethereum as a Long-Term Investment 

• Multi-purpose usage- Other than trading Ethereum can be used for ICOs, prediction markets, building tokens and many more ways that very few cryptocurrencies can do as good as Ethereum.

• Safety: The apps built on Ethereum’s blockchain termed as dApps or decentralized apps are significantly safer and more resistant to hacking than the software you use now.

• Smart contracts: The smart contract feature offers significant business benefits over more traditional conventional forms of cloud computing and transaction-clearing.

• Initial Coin Offerings: Ethereum is used ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings) that means it acts as a launchpad for new tokens which thereby makes it a valuable platform and price will increase with its use.  

Ripple 

Ripple is the hot choice in banking and financial institutions as it can be used as an intermediary for quick transaction-processing and settlement service; allowing to transact directly and instantly across national borders. XRP currently has a fast transaction processing time of about 4 seconds and a cheap transaction fee about $0.004 per transaction (which is less than half a cent). It has a circulating supply of 42,181,995,112 and a market capitalization of around 17 billion USD.

Reasons why to choose Ripple as a Long-Term Investment

• Well distributed: Ripple is an open-source technology, built on the principles of blockchain with an increasing set of validators.

• Highly Scalable: XRP has the potential to handle 1,500 transactions per second, 24x7, and can scale to deal with a similar throughput as Visa.

• Highly Stable: The most stable record of Ripple makes it ready for institutional and enterprise use.

• Global Bank partners: Ripple has partnered with over 100 banks like  Bank of America, UBS, Standard Chartered, Barclays, JP Morgan, Santander, and American Express.

Stellar

Stellar offers the fastest and the cheapest online payment and cross-border payment services as compared to the other large companies. Also, it does not use proof of work verification which is time and energy consuming which allows processing a transaction in approx 5 seconds. It has a market capitalization of $2,378,213,121 and a circulating supply of 19.331,689,641.

Reasons why to choose Stellar as a Long-Term Investment

• Low-cost transactions: Stellar’s payment protocol prioritizes profit, the low transaction time and high operational efficiency translates to a lower cost of transactions.

• Currency exchanger: Stellar’s platform also acts as a currency exchanger between government-backed currencies, such as dollars to euros.

• Creating tokens: Launching a token on the Stellar platform is super easy because of the simple programming.

• Tech elements: Stellar can integrate with elements such as blockchain smart contracts, and multi signatures that enhances the functionality of the payment protocol

Binance Coin

Binance coin is the official coin of the Binance platform that offers a stage for trading cryptocurrencies. Binance is soon launching its own decentralized exchange, Binance DEX that would be available on all platforms, such as Windows, Linux, Mac OS, iOS and Android.  BNB has a market capitalization of 4 billion USD and a circulating supply of 141,175,490.

Reasons why to choose Binance Coin a Long-Term Investment

• Discounts: BNB can be used not only to pay сommissions for transactions on the exchange and also to get additional discounts for each purchase and exchange via Binance 

• Team: BNB has a great team that is ambitious and experienced in the cryptocurrency world 

• Referrals: BNB coin offers a smart referral scheme which attracts many users and thereby  grows the platform’s adoption

• Loyalty: BNB coin is the only cryptocurrency that rewards customers for their loyalty and creating a fair ecosystem within Binance