It is hard to understate what 2017 has meant for a crypto investor, And If you are one of the lucky ones you could celebrate 2018 like never before. Major coins such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin turned the overall market and redefined return on investment. Of course, if you were lucky enough to participate in a successful ICO it would have paid off, even more, ROI than these major crypto coins.
As more and more people got on this hype the price might have bumped but very few important issues raised concerns on the current cryptocurrency market situation.

Importance of speed:

When Satoshi Nakamoto invented Bitcoin, the main motto was fast and free transactions but as per current situation the speeds are stalling and transactions fees are booming making it difficult for small purchases. Many alternatives such as Litecoin may have proposed a new way to overcome it but it still falls short of the promise of a fast and free transaction. At present, 10-15 transactions on Bitcoin network is nearly not enough to meet the future demand on a global scale.

Some help for Bitcoin may on the way in 2018 in form of the Lightning Network which if developed properly it could eliminate many Altcoins which promises faster transactions. The Lightning network is a system of smart contracts built on top of the base Bitcoin blockchain that allows for fast, cheap payments directly between two parties.
Addressing to Ethereum Casper could solve the scalability issues. Casper turns Ethereum verification process from “Proof of Work” to “Proof of Stake”. This would dramatically lower the operating costs involving POW protocol. Another proposal is Ethereum Raiden Network, It’s an Ethereum’s version of bitcoin Lightning Network.

I’m most excited and looking forward to the idea of Terabyte Blocks, It means the possible answers to this issue is by creating terabyte size blocks. This idea was proposed for Bitcoin Cash but if it proves working then you can bet that adaptations to other currencies will eventually follow. But turning this idea into a project is still out of the picture but there’s still hope.

No matter what happens in the crypto world, it’s for certain that transaction speed and costs are two super-hot topics in the New Year.

As an Investor, the major key point of bitcoin was that transactions were faster and free but neither these two promises are being met as of now. Let’s just hope one of these ideas solves the issue.