Top 3 Cryptocurrencies for 2018

• NEO, Main blockchain of China, Smart contract platform known as "China's Ethereum"
• https://neo.org/
  -Very impressive team: https://neo.org/home/team
  -China is blockchain crazy and all Chinese based blockchain projects to come will be launched on the NEO platform (with so many other projects built on top of it it is very unlikely to disappear and will be good long term)
  -Lots of ICOs have already launched on it this year such as DeepBrainChain (DBD) and Red Pulse (RPX). 50+ more are scheduled for the year all requiring NEO to enter the ICO
• APEX ICO sold out in 7 minutes 29th of January, another huge project to be build on this platform.
  -Although at the time of writing NEO sits at around $150 and ranked 6 in terms of market capitalization there is still so much room to grow. Price of Ethereum which is a similar project currently sits at $1150 despite having a higher supply than NEO by 27,000,000 (The lower the supply the higher a coin is likely to reach)
• You receive dividends in the form of gas as a reward for holding NEO. This is essentially another cryptocurrency for free that will rise in tandem with NEO. For example if you were holding 100 NEO you would receive 10 GAS per year which at the current prices (GAS=$70) would mean an extra 700 dollars for free every year, and thatsfor holding only 100.
  -You get GAS daily which can be used to buy more NEO to create a greater yield of GAS, all the while the price of NEO and GAS will be going up steadily throughout the year
  -One of the most resilient during recent corrections to the market which is a very good sign, only ethereum was more resistant to correction over the month.
  -Unlike Ethereum, programmers building on the NEO platform don't have to learn new code and can use existing code such as Java.

-Ethereum, Second biggest cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization
-https://www.ethereum.org/
-Founded by Vitalik Buterin who is highly regarded as one of the most talented people in this space. Watch a video or two of him speaking and you will see why.
-A smart contract platform which DAPPS and ERC20 tokens are built on (over 50 of the top 100 coins are built on Ethereum, making it very very secure for the long term)
-Has an amazing team which have been working tirelessly over the last 4 years to develop this platform, this year will see all of that code being available for use on the test net and in some cases on the mainet. Many expect what they produce to be groundbreaking not only for blockchain fanatics but for the mass market/industries across the globe. Vitalik said earlier this month that "the eyes of the world are on Ethereum this year and we are ready to deliver" so he sounds confident to say the least having pretty much prepared for 2018 for the last 4 years
-Many upgrades and scaling solutions to come such as Casper (part of the Constantinople upgrade) which will change Ethereum from a proof of work cryptocurrency (users mine to power the system whilst being rewarded in Ether after a certain number of blocks mined) to a proof of stake currency (users stake their ethereum on what is called a node, basically locking in a large amount of Ethereum for a certain time period and being rewarded for doing so as the staked Ether is used to process transactions and power the network). No cryptocurrency has ever attempted to change from proof or work to proof of stake so this will be a groundbreaking milestone for the space as a whole and potentially the main event of the entire year.
-Another scaling solution coming this year is Plasma, which uses Psychains in order to take pressure of the Ethereum protocol, this is a "child blockchain" to the "parent blockchain" which will allow up to 100,000 transactions per second without any added congestion the the main blockchain.
-Raiden is yet another big event coming this year for Ethereum, a scaling solution that makes transactions more or less instant and at the fraction of the current price.
-Once Casper is successfully launched Ethereum will then begin to implement sharding, another scaling solution which essentially breaks down block sizes so that you don't have to be holding a crazy amount of Ethereum to run a node meaning average people can benefit from staking their Ethereum
-With all of this coming many think (if successful) that Ethereum will overtake Bitcoin in market cap this year however i think that is slightly optimistic (depending on how quickly bitcoin can sort its own scaling solutions such as lightening network) however this is still likely to be an extremely good year for Ethereum price wise.

• Have a look at what companies Ethereum has partnered with in the future and you can see that many believe this will be the next big thing in the tech industry: https://entethalliance.org/members/

• VeChain. A blockchain-as-a-service company with a mission to build a trust free and distributed business ecosystem to enable transparent information flow, efficient collaborating and high speed value transferring.
  -https://www.vechain.com/#/
  -The project has been around for over two years and already has customers using a working product which is currently a rarity these days. Several industries including luxury goods, agriculture, logistics, food/drug, and governments are already using VeChain blockchain technology.
  -VeChain has multiple use cases. Using the technology, you can track items through a supply chain, ensure the authenticity and quality of goods as well as maintain the quality of food products. These are huge issues worldwide which cost companies billions of dollars every year.
  -VeChain has amazing partnerships not only with companies but also on a national level. It is backed by the Chinese government just like NEO and rumour has it that everything in China will be using VeChain within the next 2 years. Thats right, every single product going out of China, which is a serious amount of use. Full list of partnerships can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/7oqlmg/comprehensive_current_list_of_vechain/ as there are simply to many to explain individually.
  -VeChain is rebranding on the 26th of February to VeChain Thor. Similarly to NEO this will allow users to be given free dividends in the form of Thor (just like Gas as explained earlier). Thor is an independent Cryptocurrency that will rise alongside VeChain over the coming year. At the current rate of conversion 100 VeChain will give you 15.3 Thor per year so the yield is more than 50% higher than NEO.
  -This rebrand, which is happening during a huge event in Shanghai in my opinion will send the price upwards massively. It is currently hovering around the $6/7 mark (lots of room to grow) and rebrands tend to do the world of good for the price. For example when Neo (formerly AntShares) rebranded in August 2017 it sent the price from $9 all the way up to $50.
  -VeChain doesn't want to stop with ASIA and is currently in talks with EU countries about use and expansion. This will be a huge year for VeChain.