For cryptocurrencies, 2018 has been quite an eventful year. Many people lost faith in the market due to the severe price corrections and stagnations of the prices of all currencies. However, this does not mean that everything is bad with Cryptocurrencies. There have been a lot of people who are happy with the way cryptocurrencies have garnered returns for them. In fact, due to the promise of high returns, many institutional bodies are also gaining a foothold in investing in cryptocurrencies.
Throughout the year, there have been many companies and institutions that have been accepting Bitcoin as a form of payment. Notable amongst those are the US state of Ohio which accepts Bitcoin for tax payments, while other merchants like eGifter, Overstock and Expedia are also accepting cryptocurrencies as a form of payment.
Throughout the year, interest in the blockchain of cryptocurrency has also skyrocketed with many new job openings available for those who have the necessary skills for coding.
Many people feel that despite the correction of prices of cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin has emerged as one of the best performing investment assets in the current decade. If people in the past looked at company shares as a secure form of investment, the future place to invest money is in crypto coins.
What to expect from cryptocurrency projects in 2019
Bitcoin
Bitcoin processes transactions currently at the speed of 7 transactions per second. In 2019, they are planning to release the Lightening Network fully which will enable Bitcoin Exchange speeds to increase by 300 percent over a course of time.
Ethereum
Everyone is expecting Ethereum to have an upgrade by the end of January 2019. This upgrade, which is named Constantinople, has been designed to improve on the efficiency of the blockchain and reduce the block reward for miners. This will also make the blockchain ASIC resistant.
Another upgrade is expected in the latter half of 2019 where Ethereum aims to implement Casper protocol and sharding. This means that large mining operations will cease to have too much power on the blockchain while sharding will ensure higher transaction speeds.
Litecoin
Litecoin is coming with an update to encourage more merchants to accept this cryptocurrency. Litecoin is also ensuring that it can enable more anonymous transactions on its blockchain, thereby increasing its fungibility.
TRON
Tron has surpassed Ethereum in dapps usage, with regard to the number and transactions of dapps in use. Tron is all set to adopt zk-SNARKS where the transfer of Tron tokens can be anonymous and private to a large extent. This is set to be done in the first quarter of the year. TRON has also acquired BitTorrent in July 2018, helping it to adopt the mainstreaming of this cryptocurrency. TRON is using its network to build BitTorrent more effectively with the help of a project named Project Atlas.
Though 2018 was not that much of a memorable year for Cryptocurrencies, it showed that people still had faith in these virtual currencies throughout the year. Though many countries are putting up regulations for cryptocurrencies, this is not stopping investors from investing in cryptos of their choosing on the Online Crypotcurrency Exchange. No matter how many myths you hear, there is no doubt that cryptocurrencies have a great potential in the near future especially in this year of 2019.
