There’s no doubting it, 2017 was the year of cryptocurrencies and blockchain tech. This December, reports stated that the market capitalisation of cryptocurrencies hit $600 billion by end of year. Bitcoin surged from more than $950 at the beginning of the year to as high as $20,000.
There was also growth in the number of the Initial Coin Offerings, from one or two a week in 2016, to more than 10 a week in 2017. All through the year, some companies performed better than others. Ethereum for instance. This decentralised platform allows agreements to be made and executed automatically without human interaction. The company, founded by Vitalik Buterin (listed among Bloomberg’s Top 50 Most Influential People this year)and Jeffrey Wilcke (former Amazon VP), saw a market capitalisation of $73 billon, making it one of the most popular platforms.
Open-source distributed ledger specialised in the Internet of Things, the-year-old IOTA partnered with PwC, Microsoft, Deutsche Telekom and others for data monetisation program. The company also received investments from the Bosch Group this year and was valued at $15 billion.
Another top performer at a $2 billion valuation is Coinbase, one of the top digital currency wallets and platforms for exchange. Coinbase announced that it was going to launch support for Bitcoin Cash, significantly affecting the BCH price. The platform is also one of three Blockchain projects that got BitLicense, the business license issued by New York State Department of Financial Services.
Other top performers for 2017 included Ripple (Market capitalisation: $30 bln), Brave (Market capitalisation: $340 mln), Qtum ($5 bln), OmiseGO ($1,7 bln), Augur ($1 bln), Steem ($850 mln), and Golem ($500 mln).
Ripple is a real-time gross settlement and currency exchange focusing on money transferring. Currently, the company is working with over 75 banks all over the world. Launched in 2017, Brave is a web browser that blocks advertisements and trackers. As a result, websites work faster and traffic decreases significantly and helps users save time and money. At a rough estimate, Brave has about two to three million users. Brave is also one of the fastest ICO. The team raised $35 mln in 27 seconds.
In 2017, Qtum partnered with Chinese video hosting company Baofeng promising to transform the music and movie industry work.
OmiseGO is a decentralised financial technology for exchange and payment services, Steem a decentralised social publishing network, while Augur is a prediction market platform for real events (if you are sure that something is to happen, you can buy shares for this outcome). Golem is the first open-sourced decentralised supercomputer.
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