Keeping your eyes open for interesting Bitcoin competitors in terms of gains is never going to hurt – even if it’s just to get an overview of the competition or to diversify your crypto portfolio. Although Bitcoin will probably continue to be the clear favourite among investors, that doesn’t mean that the cryptocurrency with the largest market cap will always be the one you can make the most profit with.

If you want to get an overview of potentially interesting Bitcoin competitors in terms of profit, it’s always a good idea to have a look at the biggest gainers of the month. Here are the five crypto currencies that outperformed Bitcoin in January.

1. Holochain’s HOT (price increase: 178%)

HOT, the token of the holochain project, was the clear winner in January and thus the best performing cryptocurrency among the Bitcoin competitors in terms of gains. In case you had invested $ 100 in HOT tokens in the past month, they would be worth $ 1,780 by now.

At the beginning of January, a  report  of the US rating agency Weiss Cryptocurrency Ratings mentioned HOT as one of the crypto currencies with the highest potential. After all, like EOS and Cardano, holochain is “currently leading the charge to create internet 3.0 – a more secure and more sustainable world wide web.”

And indeed, the digital currency has lived up to its reputation as one of the hottest Bitcoin competitors in terms of gains. On the same day of Weiss’s forecast, the trading volume increased by 381% compared to Bitcoin and Ethereum.

However, since it’s still a relatively new project, it’s clear that it will be more in the public eye for a while. In the long term, the real value of the coin will ultimately depend on the sustainability of the holochain project.

2. Augur’s REP (price increase: 51.50%)

Augur’s REP Token came in second with a price increase of 51.50% in January. The launch of Veil, a peer-to-peer forecasting market and Ethereum-based derivatives platform and the announcement of an investment of the venture fund 1Confirmation seem to have left investors anything but indifferent.

Seven days after the news, the token price has risen from $ 8.226 to $ 20.644. However, following the surge of more than 100%, the value declined sharply in the second half of January, before eventually coming to a stop at 51.50%.

For now, with a new support range of around $ 10.954, REP seems to be gaining new momentum.

3. Chainlink’s LINK (price increase: 39%)

Chainlink has gotten over the crash in November quite easily and since then recorded a steady upwards trend with a subsequent slight correction.

The good business model makes it hardly surprising why Chainlink’s token LINK did so well in January. The goal of the project is to securely connect smart contracts with external data, APIs and other off-chain services and to ensure that they can’t be manipulated. To achieve this, the 3^rd among the Bitcoin competitors with the highest gains in January works with Swift, a provider of cross-border payments.

Although the LINK price has fallen again, it is currently in the safe support range of over $ 0.3583.

4. Numeraire’s NMR (price increase: 35%)

Numeraire’s price increase in January seems to solely be due to its business model as well. It is also another smart contract tool.

NMR seems to be popular mainly because of the sustainable use case of the Numeraire platform. The platform hosts weekly competitions that reward the best 100 forecasting models. The NMR token is used for betting on these. If the participants win, they get their NMR tokens back and receive a price in the form of a certain amount of Bitcoin. On the other hand, the NMR tokens bet on the losing models are destroyed.

Over the course of January, the NMR / USD pair rose from $ 2.289 to $ 3,236. Although the price has fluctuated steadily, it still stood out due to its sound upwards trend, which, thanks to its sustainable use case, could also continue in the long-term.

5. Tron’s TRX (price increase: 33%)

Tron is another interesting cryptocurrency among the Bitcoin competitors with the highest gains this month. After all, it’s not just the top 10 currency with the best performance in January, but also a coin that has seen a steady growth in 2018.

By now, the cryptocurrency benefits from even more transactions than Ethereum. Considering that Tron offers developers faster transaction confirmations and no fees, it’s hardly surprising why it’s getting more and more popular to develop Dapps.

In addition, after purchasing the popular file sharing platform BitTorrent, Tron has announced regular airdrops of BitTorrent tokens (BTT) for Tron owners. (An overview of the airdrop schedule can be found here.)

Since Tron investors most likely don’t want to get rid of their coins after this announcement, the cryptocurrency is currently continuing its upwards trend.

Photo by:

RyanMcGuire