Five Lesser-Known Coins with Massive Potential Right Now

True Bit (TRU)

True Bit was developed by Christian Reitwiessner, who contributed to co-writing the coding language of Solidity, as well as Teutsch, a mathematics guru. The project is a blockchain enhancement protocol that runs on a “Layer-2” of Ethereum. True Bit has been in development since 2015 and only just recently launched as a platform. True Bit essentially operates as an outsourcer for ETH’s increasingly problematic gas network. True Bit accomplishes this by setting up an entire market of validators and solvers. This validation system is designed to operate in a trustworthy manner. Any dispute between the validator and solver results in a return to the blockchain, where the cheating solver is punished. The developers have described True Bit as a verification game in a whitepaper.

So what does this translate to in plain English? Jason, the math guru mentioned earlier, published a paper explaining exactly this. He calls it the verifier’s dilemma. Very simply, miners are not always properly incentivized when mining, and will sometimes skip verification so they can skip to the next, more lucrative block and leave more ethical miners solving blocks that may not be worth as much as the next one on the chain. This rewards bad actors, and punishes ethical ones. True Bit is the answer to the verifier’s dilemma. If a miner does not fully validate on the True Bit system, they get nothing. Ensuring that miners complete the task from start to finish.

How do you actually get some True Bit then? You simply buy it from the OS. All transactions are made with ETH. At this time, True Bit does not engage on exchanges. It’s quite the complex piece of software, but definitely not one to sleep on, despite the stealth launch.

Chia Coin (XCH)

If proof-of-work and proof-of-stake aren’t for you, then how about proof-of-space? Eco-coin Chia offers a “farming” method rather than a mining one. Instead of mining for coins with computer processing power, a user selects a “plot” on a storage drive, like a hard drive or a solid state drive, and from there Chia “grows”. There’s some interesting math behind this if you’d like to look under the hood. The analogy commonly used is that your Chia plot becomes like a bingo card. The Chia network scans all plots and looks for a matching number based on the required rules of that particular block. If your plot has a match, you are rewarded with an appropriate amount of XCH.

Hardware is not simply enough with Chia, as things currently stand with PoW and PoS currencies. For example, China controls an estimated 65% of Bitcoin hashrates through brutal acquisition of processing power. For Chia, such centralization certainly helps, but it’s not all there is to the equation. Chia also runs on proof-of-time. Meaning long-time farmers can have some better odds even in the face of mild hardware disparities. This means that Chia’s method of “farming” instead of mining runs on proof-of-time-and-space. In light of all the environmental debate around proof of work right now, Chia is one to watch due to its branding of being eco friendly.

Monero (XMR)

Privacy based coin, Monero makes a lot of headlines as fears of heavy handed regulators rear their head in face of the cryptocurrency. Monero’s main value comes from censorship avoidance and ensuring nosy institutions stay out of your financial business. If you are interested in keeping your financial privacy, then Monero might be the token for you. Anybody seeking to become their own bank should have an ultra secure vault with which to store their value. XMR works excellent for that.

Contrary to popular belief, not all cryptocurrencies are private. In fact that’s a huge draw down for Bitcoin for example. Bitcoin’s open ledger is publicly viewable and anybody can see every single transaction that’s ever been made. This is not the case with Monero. Your transactions are your business. Where you got it from and where you moved it to are not publicly viewable.

It is very easy to assume that only criminals and criminal activity would occur on Monero’s network, however, we live in a data driven world now. There are twitter accounts that follow large purchases made, and market data reveals trends and patterns that an individual may not want to make public. There are very legitimate reasons to want privacy in finance and that does not make holders criminals. Monero also offers resistance to scams and social engineering attacks, as you are no longer painting a target on your wallet if you make frequent or large transactions. The appeal for Monero, or other privacy centered coins are only growing as surveillance capitalism continues to strengthen its grip.

PAX Gold (PAXG)

An asset-backed token, PAXG brings the most old school form of money onto the blockchain. It’s really simple, 1 PAXG token represents one fine troy ounce of gold. Built on Ethereum, it’s fully compatible with anything else on the ETH network. Trust in PAXG is enabled by regulation from the New York Department of Financial Services, so no need to worry about a stranger running off with your gold. You can even look up your gold holdings in a file system available on their website.

Acquiring gold through PAXG has much less friction than traditional methods of acquiring gold. You don’t need a middleman like an ETF or anything like that, one can buy into it for as low as 0.01tz (troy ounces), or around $20 USD according to their website. Fees are low between 0.03% and 1%, depending on network traffic. There’s no custody fees such as with traditional gold acquisition methods and it is instantly redeemable.

Avalanche (AVAX)

Avalanche’s claim to fame is serving as a kind of “internet of finance”. It is an umbrella platform that stands to serve as a launch platform for any number of DeFi applications, assets, and other financial services. The goal with Avalanche as a platform is to reduce friction between exchange of assets around the world. Without all of the financial jargon, Avalanche wants to create a fully legally compliant assets exchange. So ideally, you would be able to trade your stock backed AVAX token with somebody else’s Bitcoin backed AVAX token for example, and then cash those out for cash.

This is similar to the Synthetix platform, but without the heavy focus on indexes and derivatives. Avalanche is an even more ambitious and far reaching project. Perhaps most notably, Avalanche allows users to stake tokens and assets to earn passive income in the form of the AVAX token.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not express the opinion of CryptoVantage. It is not meant to be taken as advice to buy, sell or invest in cryptocurrency.