With all of the focus on Bitcoin and it’s halving, sometimes we forget that there are other currencies out there that just might be worth a few bucks and a few minutes of our time. Although you won’t get be able to use these small markets, emerging cryptos to fund your favorite sportsbook and get a bonus just for using BTC, or use them to purchase goods at your favorite big-box online retailer (someday), they might be good for a medium or long security position.
Let’s have a look at a couple of rising stars in the altcoin world.
IMAGE: UNSPLASH
Stellar Lumens
So, what is Stellar? – The goal of Stellar is to unite the world’s financial infrastructure so that money can move cheaper and easier between financial institutions and payment platforms. Basically, the main issue is communication. There are a ton of currencies – hard or crypto– and a plethora of payment systems, think Swift, Venmo, PayPal, Alipay, ACH, etc. They all speak different languages so it slows the speed transfer and makes it more costly.
Banks, businesses, and people can use Stellar Lumens to speak to any other system in Stellars native language, so they can move money in seconds instead of hours or days. In some regards, it’s similar to Ripple, but still completely decentralized.
Having to make transfers with SWIFT codes that costs $50 to make a $40 paymentback home when you’re overseas just doesn’t make sense. But, before, you might have had to do something just like that. Now, with Stellar, you can send money to family no matter what bank they use, make small payments regardless of institutional fees – or large– and convert currencies.
The internet changed the way we communicate with one another, Stellar wants to change the world’s financial infrastructure interacts. Right now, Stellar Lumens are $0.0659 (at the time of writing) so, even a small investment has the potential to yield big returns. Despite the price, Stellar has the No. 9 highest market cap at 1.3 billion dollars. So, yeah … it’s getting a ton of action.
Orchid
Orchid is a little further back in market cap at just a little over 12 million dollars. But it still ranks in the top 25. This crypto caught my eye because of the problem it is solving. In a nutshell, it’s a crypto-powered privacy tool. Everyday we use our phones to watch videos, make payments, buy things online, talk to our friends, etc.
We think it’s secure, and it kind of is …kind of… but our internet service providers have all of that information and can sell if they choose to. In countries with fewer consequences for such actions – pretty much anywhere outside of the ‘first-world,’ this is actually a significant problem.
A friendly reminder to all community members that:
– Orchid team members will never ask you for any digital currencies (ETH, BTC, OXT, and so on).
– Orchid is not running an airdrop through Telegram. Any groups or bots claiming to do so are fake.
Thank you for your support! pic.twitter.com/OCLdVYaVcj— Orchid (@OrchidProtocol) May 12, 2020
But how do they get the info? Well, you choose to pay for certain bits of content with your personal data. When you want to read that gated news piece and fill out the form to gain access, you just paid with your personal info.
Now, this doesn’t mean that the website you entered your data on is doing anything wrong, or that they are not secure, but the ISP companies like China Telecom, Verizon, Comcast, AT&T, Time Warner, HughesNet, Charter Spectrum, etc. saw everything. Essentially, they are the ones who handed the information you wrote on a note over to the website you were communicating with, so it would be overly-trusting of us to think that they didn’t take a peek at that note as they passed it along.
So, OXT is a full-service VPN build for regular people who want to use the internet in privacy. But instead of paying in cash, you pay for the service with OXT (Orchid) which is an Ethereum token. But, why? Because no matter what country you’re in, you use the same currency. Plus its completely Web 3. Pretty clever, right?
Orchid is sitting at about 19 cents per OXT, so it’s extremely affordable to get in right now. I’, not sure if this crypto and service rolled into one is going to take off, but it definitely has potential. It especially has the potential to step out of the standard alt-o-BTC- correlation. It could be the first one we see that doesn’t mimic Bitcoin’s index chart.
If you are interested in even more business-related articles and information from us here at Bit Rebels, then we have a lot to choose from.
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