Do Verge Coin (XVG) and Ripple (XRP) have potential for big gains in 2018 ?

( In any situation this is not a financial advice, just my thoughts)Personally, I have invested in verge ($XVG) recently www.vergecurrency.com and can share my research and understanding on that.

• Verge claims to be an anonymous and privacy coin competing against coins like Monero and Zcash. What “privacy” means is that the source location is hidden to the outside world.
• Moreover, technically Verge is far better than any old cryptocurrencies out there in the market. For comparison, lets consider Bitcoin - it takes more than 30 mins for a transaction to be confirmed, but a verge transaction is confirmed in less than 30 seconds. You are able to see the confirmation either on the blockchain or in your wallet as soon as you finish transferring.
• Next, the transaction fee is only a fraction of what you pay for bitcoin transactions.
• Being an open source project, Verge is supported by community of developers, marketers and investors. However, most coins in the market are run privately or by organizations.

Now coming to the market predictions for Verge. Verge has seen a tremendous growth in 2017. They grew from $penny values to almost 30 cents towards to the end of 2017 as I am writing today. Some Whale investors claim it grew almost 10,000x in the last year. I wish I had invested by then. So, I am not sure if it is just a speculation or if investors have invested in these coins based on the technological innovation. Too early to comments on those questions as very few coins have had real life applications as of today. If you visit the Verge website, you can have look at the applications that are using Verge coins now. Last I heard was their integration with debit cards, but not sure how that works ;).I would say any coin you choose to invest, invest small so you don't fear for dips and pumps.Identifying the right coin and holding for a long term is the strategy to see real returns. And with cryptocurrency being a new market, there is a lot of potential for altcoins to become bigger and exceed bitcoin marketcap.Hope this helps you a bit :)