With nearly a year of this brutal bear market under our belts, it’s safe to say that there are now some good “buy low” opportunities out there for investors with a long time horizon.
The bear market might well extend for another 11 months or more, but any projects with the fundamentals to survive it and continue with solid engineering and sustainable community growth can emerge on the other side with a boatload of upside.
Chances are you’re familiar with all the big players already. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, and others at the top all have strong and enthusiastic communities to continuously spread the word about them.
But what about those obscure small cap altcoins that have specific use cases targeted at niche industries?
There are a whole lot of inefficient markets out there that blockchain-based solutions are poised to disrupt, and the projects that address those markets will have much less competition than a payments, privacy, or platform cryptocurrency will going forward.
With that said, there is still tons of risk involved with investing in cryptocurrencies and especially small cap coins, so you should do your due diligence before making a buy.
Let’s get started!
Disclaimer: This analysis should not be construed as financial advice. It is an opinion article intended to educate readers about a few promising small cap cryptocurrencies. As always, you should do your own research before investing.
Token: MOD
Current Price: $0.8271
Market Cap: $17.59 million
Total Supply: 27.266 million MOD
Circulating Supply: 21.266 million MOD (78.3% of total)
Modum belongs to the ultra-promising supply chain management niche of the blockchain industry. It combines blockchain and Internet of Things (IoT) technology to provide businesses with a transparent and cost-effective means of tracking goods through transport.
Part of Modum’s solution is a hardware device called MODsense TM, which is a sensor that enables reliable temperature monitoring for last-stage shipments, with data recorded on the Ethereum blockchain backend to maintain its integrity.
The Modum client dashboard then enables customers to ensure that pre-defined quality control requirements are met for each of their shipments.
Modum’s service is particularly useful for pharmaceutical companies when they are shipping their products to distributors. Pharmaceutical drugs are strictly regulated, and the pharmaceutical companies must all shoulder the burden of proof that they’ve met the conditions for safe transport in order to sell their products.
Modum can help automate the quality control process and save those companies a lot of money and headaches in the process.
According to a October 31st update from Modum’s CEO, Simon Dössegger, MODsense will be made commercially available beyond select partners for the first time in November. (UPDATE: It’s launched!)
Dössegger gives an in-depth explanation of MODsense’s utility and the technological components that make it possible to achieve that utility. The post is well worth a read if you have the time.
Considering the prevalence of vaporware in the cryptocurrency market, it’s a major milestone just to be able to welcome Modum to the club of cryptocurrencies with working products.
The fact that Modum has a specific target demographic of pharmaceutical companies and a product that’s optimized for those customers gives it a good chance of success, and really puts the spotlight on MOD’s case as a promising small cap cryptocurrency.
That said, the MODsense release isn’t the only cause for including Modum in this article.
Liquidity is still a massive problem in the cryptocurrency markets, especially for smaller projects. In fact, hundreds of ICOs never even get listed on a single exchange, spelling almost certain failure. You’ll rarely go a day on a crypto Telegram group without seeing questions about exchange listing, especially if there was a recent ICO.
That’s why it’s worth mentioning that Modum has been added to not 1, not 2, not 3, but 4 new exchanges in the past month. They are:
Now I’ll be honest, I’d never heard of 2 of those exchanges before (Bitqist and Biztranex) and I don’t get as excited by exchange listings as the typical crypto enthusiast seems to, anyway.
With that being said, LAToken and Nebula Exchange are nice additions to the previous listings on Binance, Kucoin, IDEX, and Mercatox.
All things considered, October was a great month for MOD and November promises to be even better, making MOD and MODsense well worth keeping an eye on going forward.
Token: SWM
Current Price: $0.2235
Market Cap: $14.15 million
Total Supply: 100 million SWM
Circulating Supply: 63.3 million SWM (63.3% of total)
Sticking with the theme of looking at projects in sectors that have massive potential, this is our under-the-radar representative from the security token space.
Swarm is an open-source, Ethereum-based investment platform that aims to democratize investment in the high yield opportunities of the private equity (PE) sector. As I explained in a past article about private equity, “PE is “private” because you must be extremely wealthy to participate in it.”
Essentially, the market is designed such that the best investment opportunities are reserved for insiders only, all in the name of “protecting unsophisticated investors” from risk through accredited investor laws.
By tokenizing real world assets, it becomes possible for investors to collaborate and have joint ownership of assets that were previously too risky and expensive for them to consider as individuals.
And tokenization has a whole host of additional benefits on top of that, some of which include enhanced tradability and liquidity, as well as more transparency for the respective asset markets.
In case you haven’t heard about Swarm or security tokens before and want to get a more complete overview of either one, you can check out our guide to the security token space and our project overview of Swarm.
As I mentioned earlier, tokenized securities are one of the most promising applications of blockchain technology and a seemingly inevitable step forward for global finance.
That being said, it’s going to be a slow and steady change that happens over the course of years and even decades, not weeks or months.
Outdated regulations aren’t simply going to go away overnight, and any projects that aren’t playing the long game by being fully regulatory compliant now are setting themselves up for almost definite failure and legal consequences down the line.
Swarm and several other players in the security token space are already creating new, legal opportunities for non-accredited investors to get involved with securities. But the news that I’m most excited about is the recent announcement that a Digital Currency Trade Association (DCTA) has been formed and officially launched in the US, with Swarm being a founding member.
This paragraph from the announcement really hits the nail on the head:
Right now, many blockchain and token economic activities are forming outside of the U.S. due to uncertainty in the industry, therefore this new organization has been formed to educate and meet with Members of Congress and the Administration to forestall this trend.
My hope for tokenized securities is that they help level the playing field so that all citizens have equal opportunity to invest in the highest yield assets.
At the same time, it’s become impossible to deny the fact that scammy ICOs and incompetent projects – many of which came about in the 2017 bull market – are giving crypto a bad reputation which could have negative consequences throughout the industry, including with tokenized securities.
Swarm has taken the initiative to help form this organization that will work with regulators and legislators in Washington D.C. to clear up misconceptions about cryptocurrencies and help educate people on the benefits of blockchain technology.
The importance of this work is undeniable.
For me, it’s just further confirmation of something I learned early on in the process of researching Swarm. That is, the team behind Swarm doesn’t care about making a quick dollar or catering to get-rich-quick investors.
Rather, Swarm’s mission is to transform the investment landscape to be more inclusive, transparent, and efficient. And they are in it for the long run.
Token: SCR
Current Price: $0.1036
Market Cap: $3.031 million
Total Supply: 29.2 million SCR
Circulating Supply: 29.2 million SCR (100% of total)
Scorum is a decentralized sports media platform that has a few unique use cases:
Sports betting alone is a $1 trillion industry according to a study by Sportrader.
Considering the costliness of sports bookies, there is certainly an opportunity for blockchain-based solutions to disrupt the industry and ultimately thrive. Add the fantasy sports and incentivized blogging into the mix, and you’ve got a potential sports media juggernaut.
I’ve written about Scorum once in an article on up and coming cryptocurrencies. Rather than rehash the whole section here, I’ll just highlight what I see as the most important reasons that Scorum is worth watching.
Despite its market cap of approximately $3 million, Scorum is consistently in the top 15 of Block-tivity’s rankings of the most actively used blockchains. The sports blogging platform already has more than 30,000 wallet users and 200,000 monthly visitors.
Those stats are all the more impressive when you consider the fact that the blogging platform launched just five months ago in June 2018.
As mentioned earlier, the most similar project to Scorum – at least in terms of the blogging use case – is Steemit.
The big differentiator between the two is that Scorum is focused on a specific niche, and I believe that will work to Scorum’s favor in the long run as it will help them to develop a stronger community united by common interests.
Ultimately, the commission-free fantasy sports platform, commission-free betting exchange, and sports blogging platform could all stand on their own as compelling use cases.
Put the three together, and add in the fact that the user base has grown faster than any other project that comes to mind, and I think Scorum is one that belongs on everybody’s radar.
Token: IPSX
Current Price: $0.0012
Market Cap: $1.02 million
Total Supply: 1.714 billion IPSX
Circulating Supply: 847 million IPSX (49.4% of total)
The sharing economy began with physical assets, namely cars (Uber) and accommodation (Airbnb).
In the past few years, however, the sharing economy has grown to include many more commodities, including some digital ones such as unused storage capacity and idle computing power.
IPSX’s IP Exchange is a decentralized marketplace that brings a new commodity into the sharing economy – unused IP (Internet Protocol) addresses.
More than likely, you’ve never thought about your IP address as an asset. In fact, there’s a good chance you haven’t given any thought to your IP address at all.
It’s time to change that. There are a many businesses around the world, such as data mining companies, web crawler bots, and VPN (virtual private network) service providers, that need access to a large supply of IP addresses.
Those businesses currently face problems with finding enough IPs to meet demand at peak times, as well as difficulties due to a lack of transparency and quality control in the IP marketplace.
With its Ethereum-based transaction system, IPSX brings transparency and flexibility to IP costs, ensures that IPs on the market are not already flagged, and makes the IP rental process easy with a clean UX.
On October 15, IPSX launched their IP exchange mainnet into the world. The IPSX ICO concluded earlier this year in March, so it was a relatively fast turnaround from a whitepaper and business plan to a working product.
With the launch, it becomes possible for anybody to share their unused device’s IP address to bring in passive income, whether it be a phone, tablet, laptop, or desktop. Even data centers with potentially hundreds or even thousands of unused IPs can put them up for rent on the open market.
On the other side of the market, data mining companies and VPN providers will be able to improve their businesses by having a reliable means of accessing all the IPs they need at any given time.
Moreover, they’ll no longer have to worry about lack of transparency with IP costs and inflexible IP rental contracts. All IP exchange transactions are automatically logged on the blockchain and enforced by smart contracts, with users having the option to rent for anywhere between 5 seconds to 1 month.
Bypassing censorship and online content restrictions is a big business.
As stated in the IPSX whitepaper, the market for remote IP usage is over $60 billion and growing by an average of 16% annually. Within the first week of its launch, there were already 10,000 IPs from around the world listed on the IPSX platform, with nearly 7,000 combined corporate and individual users.
Ultimately, IPSX is addressing a market that most people don’t even realize exists.
If the platform continues to grow and meets the needs of remote IP users, this could quickly become one of the most successful decentralized marketplaces in the world. That makes it worth keeping an eye on in my book.
Token: TRST
Current Price: $0.0247
Market Cap: $2.28 million
Total Supply: 100 million TRST
Circulating Supply: 92.1 million TRST (92.1% of total)
WeTrust is a microfinance dapp built on Ethereum that can be used for collaborative saving and insurance.
Its first product, released in 2017, was a solution for Trusted Lending Circles (TLCs). This is a brilliant way for groups of people with low cash flow to collaborate so that each member of the group has earlier access to the capital they need to make a purchase or expand a business without needing to pay interest as they would on a loan.
This bear market has hit WeTrust harder than just about any of the other legit cryptocurrency projects I’m familiar with… down nearly 99% from it’s all-time high of $1.27 in January.
It could very well be past the point of recovery and on its way to a long, slow death. On the other hand, it could be astronomically undervalued.
I’m going to present an entirely speculative case for the latter — a case which I believe makes TRST well worth keeping an eye on in the months ahead.
WeTrust’s latest product release, introduced in October, is a platform called Spring.
The purpose of Spring is to allow social entrepreneurs and nonprofits to raise funds via cryptocurrencies. Essentially, traceable and trustless crypto donations.
As stated in that introductory blog post:
One of the untold stories about the crypto community is that we are an ethos driven group, passionate about a wide range of issues and causes, and we want to be a part of positive change. WeTrust Spring provides that crucial connection between crypto holders and nonprofit organizations that, until now, had been missing.
There is plenty of evidence to support WeTrust’s statement.
To list a few charity-focused crypto projects:
WeTrust Spring is currently partnered with 14 non-profit organizations that accept Ethereum donations. In my opinion, this transparent model is the inevitable future of charitable giving.
Many people don’t trust charities and non-profits to spend donated funds effectively and many nonprofits exist primarily for the purpose of avoiding taxes rather than actually making a difference in the world.
That being the case, public blockchains that make the non-profit sector’s finances more transparent just makes way too much sense to ignore.
So far, WeTrust seems to be the best existing infrastructure project tackling this issue. It’s not getting much attention now, but that could change very quickly if the market turns bullish or if, say, Vitalik Buterin tweets about the project again.
According to Charity Navigator, charitable giving amounted to an estimated $410 billion in 2017. That’s $410 billion worth of transactions annually that really ought to be happening transparently on a blockchain so that people’s faith in the non-profit sector’s effectiveness can be restored.
WeTrust is well-positioned to be that blockchain, and that gives it a ton of upside if it can stay alive through this bear market.
What’s your favorite altcoin under $20 million market cap? Share with us in the comments!
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