Coinplan Large Cap Portfolio
The “S&P 100” for Cryptocurrency Now Live at Coinplan
The Coinplan Large Cap portfolio is an equally weighted portfolio of the biggest names in cryptocurrency. With bitcoin, XRP, ethereum, Dash and Litecoin this portfolio encompasses over 75% of the overall cryptocurrency market cap. (CoinMarketCap) Since the other 25% of the entire cryptocurrency market is distributed amoung 1,600+ coins, the Coinplan Large Cap portfolio is a fantastic way to buy the market and have a diversified cryptocurrency investment.
This portfolio draws similarities to the S&P 100 — the more focused index of the largest 100 U.S. publicly traded companies. The S&P 100 represents 51% of the overall U.S. equities market, which is quite amazing considering there are 4000 publicly traded companies in the U.S.
So just like the S&P 100 is a collection of the highest quality U.S. companies, the Coinplan Large Cap is a portfolio of the highest-quality cryptocurrencies.
In the Portfolio
Bitcoin
Bitcoin — the decentralized currency that started it all and still remains the dominant cryptocurrency — is a peer to peer payment network built on a publicly distributed ledger called a blockchain. With bitcoin, anyone can send money across the globe in a matter of minutes without large fees and dealing with currency exchange. This makes bitcoin an international digital currency, incorruptible by central governments or corporations. Bitcoin makes up 51% of the total cryptocurrency market capitalization, making it easily the largest and most influential cryptocurrency. Just like the creation of the world wide web allowed information to reach every corner of the earth almost instantly, bitcoin is the digital currency of the internet that allows value to be exchanged frictionlessly across the globe.
XRP (Ripple)
XRP is a decentralized cryptocurrency made for institutional payment processing, for example international banks and corporations. XRP is a groundbreaking improvement on the SWIFT payments network — bank’s longstanding system for sourcing liquidity. XRP payments are settled in 4 seconds instead of 3–5 days that the SWIFT network takes to settle payments. XRP can also handle 1,500 transactions a second — putting the XRP network inline with Visa and Mastercard’s centralized capabilities.
Sometimes Ripple and the cryptocurrency XRP are confused as the same thing, however the two are quite different. Ripple is a payments software company that launched and uses XRP, the decentralized cryptocurrency, in its institutional products made for banks. XRP is a public, decentralized cryptocurrency launched by Ripple for anyone to use for making payments via digital assets. This infographic from Ripple helps clarify the differences:
XRP’s lightning fast payments network is on course to revolutionize international payment processing for huge institutions. XRP has risen in recent months to the #2 spot behind bitcoin by market capitalization because of the wide-held belief in this new cryptocurrency.
Ethereum
Ethereum is a decentralized blockchain made for applications to be built upon it. The ability for the ethereum network to create and execute “smart contracts” is the key feature that allows other decentralized applications to be on ethereum. A smart contract is a programmed set of rules that run exactly how the programmers intended. There is no risk of censorship, negotiating, or bad-actors.
Think of ethereum like a railroad and the decentralize applications, DApps for short, are the different train cars running on-top of the ethereum blockchain. DApps utilizing smart contracts range from legal contracts to betting to distributed computing power. Ethereum is the operating system for most ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings) because it is so easy to create a new token based on the ethereum blockchain (these tokens are called ERC20 tokens). One of our favorite cryptocurrencies here at Coinplan is MakerDAO, which is a DApp operating on the ethereum blockchain.
Ethereum is perhaps the most flexible decentralized blockchain and at its core it was built to be built upon. The possibilities of what DApps and smart contracts can be built on ethereum are endless which makes investing in ethereum a sound investment.
Dash
Dash is a decentralized digital currency similar to bitcoin; however, Dash payments are processed ultra-fast in just one second. This makes Dash ideal for consumer purchases either in-store or online. With Dash, wallet balances and transactions are kept private, unlike on the bitcoin network where any transaction and wallet address is public. For private payments, Dash is the right cryptocurrency.
Dash is launching a new product called Dash Evolution that aims to disrupt PayPal by decentralizing merchant payments across the internet. Dash is already being accepted and used for dozens of stores from real consumer products like wine, coffee, clothes and books.
Litecoin
Litecoin, often called “Digital Silver” to bitcoin’s “Digital Gold”, is a decentralized peer to peer payments network similar to bitcoin. While the two cryptocurrencies have many similarities, a few main differences are the total number of coins available in the network, the mining difficulty, and the speed of transactions.
Litecoin has 84 million maximum coins possible in its network, which is 4 times more than bitcoin’s 21 million maximum coins. Industry experts are still unsure how this difference will effect the cryptocurrencies in the long run, with the main concern being the divisibility of the coins for small payments. Litecoin utilizes a simpler and more accessible mining algorithm. This means there is a lower barrier to entry for anyone looking to mine Litecoin — an essential element for any decentralized cryptocurrency. Finally, the speed of Litecoin’s transaction processing is 2.5 minutes compared to bitcoin’s 10 minutes. Litecoin can handle higher transactions at one time as well. Quicker transaction closings are thought to be more attractive to merchants, however it has not seemed to have an impact in real-world application.
Litecoin could be thought of as bitcoin’s larger and more accessible brother. As a successful cryptocurrency since its launch in 2011, Litecoin is here to stay as a large cap cryptocurrency.
Putting it All Together
Each coin in the Coinplan Large Cap portfolio is a household name and successful cryptocurrency that is adopted across the globe. With the Coinplan Large Cap portfolio, an investor can one-click invest in this portfolio of high-quality cryptocurrencies that will continue to shape the digital currency landscape.
To learn more about investing in diversified cryptocurrency portfolios, check out Coinplan HERE.
