My Top 5 AltCoins for 2018 🚀 🌒

These are my picks for top investment options for 2018. Im no pro so this is not financial advise just my opinion and I would love to hear all of your feedback on my choices. So don't be shy hit up the comments section after and I would appreciate every upvote.👍

#5 Bitshares BTS

What is BitShares?
BitShares (symbol BTS), formerly known as ProtoShares (PTS), is an industrial grade “crypto-equity”, peer to peer distributed ledger and network based on a Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) algorithm. It was created in 2014 by visionary Dan Larimer (“Bytemaster”), co-founder of Steemit, EOS and Cryptonomex.

BitShares is based on Graphene, an open source C++ blockchain implementation, which acts as a consensus mechanism. Graphene is used by several other projects like Steemit.com (decentralized Reddit, blog platform), and PeerPlays.com (gaming site and token PPY) indicating real-world usage.

If you want more info on BitShares heres a couple links.
Reference for BitShares on this post https://coincentral.com/what-is-bitshares/
BitShares official website https://bitshares.org

#4 Stellar Lumens XLM

What is Stellar Lumens?
Stellar Lumens advertises itself as an open-sourced, distributed payments infrastructure, built on the premise that the international community needs “a worldwide financial network open to anyone.” Stellar Lumens will fill this need, connecting individuals, institutions, and payment systems through its platform.

In doing so, the Stellar Lumen’s team wants to make monetary transactions cheaper, quicker, and more reliable than they are under current systems. In addition, their protocol would connect people from all over the world by allowing for more efficient cross-border payments.

Reference for XLM on this post. https://coincentral.com/what-is-stellar-lumens-a-beginners-guide/
Stellar Lumens Website https://www.stellar.org

#3 EOS

What is EOS?
EOS is a blockchain platform for the development of decentralized applications (dapps), similar to Ethereum in function. It makes dapp development easy by providing an operating-system-like set of services and functions that dapps can make use of.

The idea behind EOS is to bring together the best features and promises of the various smart contract technologies out there (e.g. security of Bitcoin, computing support of Ethereum) in one simple to use, massively scalable dapplication platform for the everyday user to empower the impending blockchain economy.

EOS promises to be a real contender in the dapp arena, lowering the barrier to entry for developer and others seeking blockchain-powered solutions.

Reference for EOS on this post https://coincentral.com/what-is-eos/
EOS Website https://eos.io

#2 NEO

What is NEO?
NEO is a next generation smart economy platform (formerly Antshares) and means new and young in Greek. NEO has had a monumental rise to fame and most know NEO for its explosive growth. Called the “Chinese Ethereum” .

-Delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerance (DBFT) algorithm – This is a consensus mechanism (instead of the traditional proof of work/stake) that allows the system to resist the Byzantine Generals problem and maintains consensus even if some nodes bare malicious intentions
-NeoX – This system will create the ability to execute and operate across various Blockchains
-NEO Contract – Is the mechanism for creating smart contracts seamlessly in scalable, high performance environments that integrates pre-existing codebases (e.g. C#, VB.Net, F#, Java, Kotlin)
-NeoFS – This is a service which allows decentralized storage (like a peer to peer Dropbox)
-NeoQ – A lattice-based cryptographic mechanism which creates problems that cannot be solved by quantum computers and ensuring being quantum-proof

Reference for NEO on this post. https://coincentral.com/what-is-neo-cryptocurrency/
NEO Website https://neo.org

And #1 Goes to our one and only STEEM.

If you're on here, you already know what Steem is. I see a lot of good potential in Steem. It is already the number one blockchain by transactions per day and is currently running on about 1% capacity. I see us reaching pretty close to $100 a Steem by the end of the year.

I pretty much like every project that Dan Larimer is involved with (STEEM, EOS, BTS).

Every coin on my list received a B on the Weiss Ratings Report that came out last week, except for Stellar Lumens which received a C+ and BitShares which also got a C+. No A's were given out and only 5 B's were given out. Ethereum and Cardano received B's and Bitcoin received a C+.

I myself am currently holding all of these coins on my list (as well as 8 other altcoins) but I like these 5 the most in the order I listed them above.

If you're looking for something thats still cheap, XLM and BitShares are a good option with XLM currently at .52 cents and BitShares at .43 cents. If you have a little more money to invest with, Steem and EOS are a good option with Steem currently at about $5 and EOS at about $12; lastly NEO is at about $145.

I think its best to try to get a good quantity so if I was only investing about $500 I might just get all Steem or get XLM and BitShares, half and half. If you got a nice chunk of change to invest, its best to have a diverse portfolio so I would invest in all of those. You just have to see what works best for you. What works for me might not work for you and what works for you might not work for me. I plan to hodl all of these coins I mentioned for the rest of this year at least and if you do invest I recommend you do the same. Always remember to do your own hw on these coins before you purchase anything as the markets are very volatile and things could change pretty dramatically.

Again I want to repeat I am not a pro I'm just a fellow crypto enthusiast and investor just sharing my opinion. I would love to hear what you guys think and give me your top 5 altcoins for this year.

Make sure you hit that upvote button and follow me for more.