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A quick glance on CoinMarketCap shows that there are 2,169 coins and tokens in the market. For new traders and investors, the paradox of choice might make it somewhat difficult to know which coins or tokens deserve a place in your portfolio. Most people tend to follow the crowd to invest in ICOs based on headlines, influencer reports, and their “feelings”.
The problem with following the crowd is that you could end up buying the coins with the largest marketing budgets without delving too much into their underlying value (if any). Many of the 2,169 coins in the market are variants of the same coin, offering similar features to the same target audience with the only differentiating features being their branding.
One simple way to avoid the herd mentality as a cryptocurrency trader/investor is to look for utility tokens with unique value propositions. This piece covers 4 lesser-known but uniquely positioned utility tokens that might be deserving of your due diligence.
KuCoin
KuCoin is a global cryptocurrency exchange for trading crypto and digital assets – it brands itself as “The People’s Exchange”. Since launching in September 2017, KuCoin has grown to have more than 5 million registered users across about 100 countries and regions.
KuCoin Shares (KCS) is the utility token and native cryptocurrency of the KuCoin crypto exchange. From an all-time low of $0.3365 (in Jan 31, 2019), KCS has soared more than 200% to its current trading price around $1.08.
People who own KCS, you can expect up to 30% discount on platform fees and dividends which are proportionate to the amount of KuCoin Shares they hold. KuCoin can return value to token holders through a quarterly buyback program funded with 10% of its net profit. The tokens are 100% burned and the buyback will continue until 100M KCS, which represents 50% of its total supply has been burnt.
DeCoin
DeCoin Exchange is a simple, regulated, and forward-thinking trading exchange for cryptocurrencies. It owns an independent blockchain that uses a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm. One of the key differentiators of its utility token is that it has a revenue-sharing formula in which it will share up to 20% of its revenue with token holders relative to the amount of DeCoin tokens they hold per time. Unlike profits, the revenue cannot be manipulated with salaries, R&D or other kinds of accounting games.
The native utility token on the DeCoin exchange has a maximum supply of 140 million coins. 50% of those coins will be distributed while the remaining 50% will be allocated and used to guarantee a 6.2% annual return promised to token holders who are staking their holdings.
The exchange is also developing the DeCoin Crypto Index to introduce a new layer of sophistication to cryptocurrency trading. The index will be curated by a team of market analysts and researchers who will select 8 promising projects based on the financial merits and performance of such projects.
The firm is also lowering the barriers to cryptocurrency trading by facilitating social trading. Expert traders can anonymously share their trading strategies and actions on the platform to help others become better traders within a shorter duration. The expert traders are rewarded in the exchange’s native token and their followers improve their odds of making educated trading decisions.
Huobi
Huobi is a digital currency exchange founded in 2013 and it provides traders and investors with access to almost 200 cryptocurrency pairs. Houbi prides itself as a global player with operations in more than 130 countries and it claims to provide unmatched liquidity to cryptocurrencies.
The Huobi Token (HT) is Houbi’s native token and it has a total market cap of $1.19B and a circulating market cap of $119,559,639. Users can purchase monthly VIP status plans that give them transaction fee discounts using HT. People who own HT can vote on exchange decisions, gain early while also benefiting from seasonal and other premium features.
For context, when you conduct transactions on Huobi with HT, you can expect to get up to 50% discount on fees. Huobi also provides quarterly buybacks with 20% of its revenue and the tokens bought back are 100% held in a Huobi User Protection Fund.
Lykke
Lykke is a Swiss-born semi-decentralized exchange for trading cryptocurrencies and other financial assets. Lykke prides itself on being a highly efficient and seamless service that facilitates the immediate delivery and direct ownership of digital assets.
Lykke also facilitates fiat to fiat trades, fiat to crypto trades, and crypto to crypto trading. The firm also has a Lykke Index (LyCI) which is a weighted index that consolidates and tracks some of the top performing projects to deliver a snapshot of the entire crypto market in one glance.
LKK is Lykke’s native token, currently trading around $0.014 with a market cap of about $4,477,500 and a circulating supply of 316,809,739 LKK. The more interesting thing about LKK is that it represents ownership in Lykke – 100 LKK represents 1 share of Lykke Corp. Holders of LKK as shareholders are entitled to vote on company decisions and they also receive dividends.
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