Dean

Cryptocurrency markets are famous for their high volatility and the potential for massive gains which go along with that. Early adopters from years ago have made many thousands of percent profit from holding Bitcoin and other cryptos. Although volatility seems to have subsided over recent months, leading some to declare that these nascent markets are becoming ‘boring’, I firmly believe that there is still a great chance that some coins and tokens could see 10x gains or more during the next cryptocurrency bull run. 

But before I get into talking about specific cryptocurrencies which could see 10x gains I feel the need to start with a very strong warning: the cryptos listed here may not be the best choices as an investment. I am emphatically not saying that these cryptos have the best chance of success. In fact, I think that some of them have a relatively low chance of success compared to others. I have chosen these coins and tokens purely because I believe that if they do succeed they have the potential to for really eye-watering gains.

Ripple

XRP or Ripples are the epitome of the warning above. I personally don’t like them. I don’t think they are as decentralized as Ripple Labs claims, I don’t like the fact that Ripple Labs holds a large proportion of the supply, and I am skeptical that they will have any significant real-world use.

But with XRP being targeted at use by banks and other financial institutions within major markets it cannot be denied that success could push the price up by 1000% or more. A large number of financial institutions are already testing or using Ripple products, and if Ripple Labs can also sell them on the value of using XRP itself there could be some really major demand for the coins.

Dash

In Bitcoin’s early days people thought of it as a form of money which would be used to buy things, especially on the internet but also elsewhere. Today this kind of use is falling by the wayside as Bitcoin is seen more of a store of value for savings – a kind of digital alternative to gold. Meanwhile other coins are primarily targeting exotic high-tech niches involving smart contracts, non-fungible tokens and so on. This leaves a relatively  small cadre of projects still trying to succeed as general purpose money.

It is clearly a tough sell to convince people to switch currencies for any meaningful amount of their spending. But any coin capable of doing it could justify reaching a very high market capitalization.

I’ve picked Dash as the most likely to do this for two reasons. The main reason is because their decentralized funding mechanisms are allowing them to invest in marketing Dash in a way that others, including Bitcoin, cannot. This is currently being used to promote the use of Dash in countries experiencing hyper-inflation, such as Venezuela, as well as countries in Africa where large numbers of people cannot access banking services. The second reason is because a 10x gain would put Dash in 4th position in the marketcap rankings: I see this as a very realistic possibility if they succeed in spurring adoption as a general purpose currency even if it were purely in smaller emerging economy markets.

Alternative plays may include coins like Monero or Nano.

Maidsafecoin

After more than 10 years of development, several years since their ICO (one of the first ever ICOs) and still no indication that a launch may be close, many people have given up even following this project. But the potential for Maidsafe, as the most advanced ‘next generation internet’ projects, is huge. This isn’t a short term play, and may well take years to see any real gains. It could also take so long that it is irrelevant by the time it finally does launch. It is even possible that the technical hurdles which are still being worked on will prove too large and the full product they are trying to build will never see the light of day. But a successful launch could easily see this coin go up by way more than 10 times. It’s very ambitious, very advanced, and with a perfectionist team who are really aiming to launch something very special and exciting.

Ethereum

Ethereum has had a tough time recently, even more than Bitcoin. But don’t count it out just yet. The many alternative smart contract platforms which have come out since Ethereum was launched don’t show any signs of being able to erode the network effect which keeps the majority of users, developers and decentralized apps on Ethereum’s blockchain. Meanwhile progress is continuing to be made on scaling and privacy solutions.

A ‘killer Dapp’ which successfully appeals to mainstream audiences could still trigger the much talked about ‘flippening’, with Ethereum taking the top spot from Bitcoin. If that were to happen I would expect to see more than 10 times profit for anybody holding this coin.

Stox

To a certain extent this is a placeholder representing all very low marketcap tokens. For one of the top 5 coins to go up by orders of magnitude it would require a huge amount of new money coming into the market. Smaller coins tend to be even more volatile and require much less new money to see substantial gains – so if you are looking for a 10 bagger then you should probably be looking at lower value coins.

I chose STX as my number one low marketcap coin because it is backed by a big established company with lots of relevant experience (Invest.com), it’s Beta version is already in the top 5 Dapps on Ethereum for daily users even prior to the full product being released, and with a 4 million dollar market cap and a massive market segment to grow into there is undoubtedly potential here for serious price appreciation if this Dapp continues to grow and succeed.