NEM (XEM) Price Forecast 2018: Consider This Cryptocurrency After Tether Hack

NEM (XEM) Price Forecast 2018: This Secure Cryptocurrency Has Great Upside

The Tether hack threw a major scare in the cryptocurrency world this week. Many are worried if cryptocurrencies are safe at all. Indeed, they are. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

First appeared on profitconfidential, from Palwasha Saaim B.Sc

I want you to look past the established industry names for a minute and consider some of the underdogs you’ve missed. Take, for instance, NEM (XEM), which bills itself as a cryptocurrency more secure than Bitcoin and Ethereum. It’s okay if you haven’t heard of it. Read on for more information on it followed by my NEM (XEM) price prediction 2018.

The Tether hack is one of a dozen cryptocurrency hacks to have occurred since 2009 when the first cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, saw the light of day.

How can we forget the biggest cryptocurrency hack—the Mt. Gox hack of 2014? Or the DAO attack last year? Or the Bitfinex attack that followed it?

The reality is that investing in cryptocurrencies is not foolproof, just like fiat currencies. Like bank robberies and cyber thefts are risks we have to accept in fiat currency investments, so do we have to accept cryptocurrency hacks.

But levels of security certainly vary across cryptocurrencies.

If you’re an investor looking for secure investment options in the crypto world, NEM coin (XEM) may be of great interest to you.

But First, What Is NEM (XEM)?

NEM, popularly identified by its coin symbol, XEM, is a blockchain-based cryptocurrency, just like Bitcoin and Ethereum. What sets it apart from the other two is its extended security feature.

The founders of NEM used the same technology that went into making Bitcoin and Ethereum, but made it better.

For reference, Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency that Satoshi Nakamoto built using the blockchain technology—a technology that decentralizes all business and financial transactions, removing the control of a centralized authority (like that of a central bank in our present fiat currency-based economy) and thus bringing anonymity to the system. (Read more on Bitcoin basics here.)

Vitalik Buterin took the same blockchain concept and tweaked it a little to introduce Ethereum.

Ethereum brought in the concept of “smart contracts,” with which users could conduct any business or financial transaction, including sending and receiving money or buying and selling anything of value, by creating their custom contracts without the need or intervention of a third party.

The contracts could be executed on the Ethereum platform and transactions were carried out using Ethereum’s cryptocurrency token, ether. (Follow our Ethereum price predictions and related coverage here.)

From there kicked off a wave of hundreds of blockchain-based iterations, resulting in countless new cryptocurrencies making it to the market.

But unless these alternative cryptocurrencies (or “altcoins” as they are referred to) offered a unique utility, they were sooner or later forgotten.

One name, however, has continued to stand out.

NEM vs. Ethereum

NEM took Ethereum’s smart contracts system and further tweaked it to introduce its blockchain-based system of “smart assets”—a similar system but with higher security and higher scalability.

The probability of an intruder getting into the system is much lower than for Ethereum. On top of that, NEM shuts out spammers from its system.

Likewise, NEM also beats Ethereum on the basis of scalability. While Ethereum can process only 15 transactions per second, NEM can do hundreds more.

If that’s not enough, the real world applications of NEM (or “use cases,” as they are called) apparently outnumber Ethereum’s.

But wait, there are more reasons hinting that triple-digit gains in XEM prices are possible in 2018. Read on for my NEM (XEM) price forecast for 2018.

NEM (XEM) Price Forecast 2018: Factors That Could Push NEM Prices Higher in 2018

It’s true that Bitcoin and Ethereum respectively take the first and second spot for having the highest market cap amongst all the estimated 1200 cryptocurrencies. But NEM is no less.

With a market cap of $1.8 billion, NEM sits in the top 10 most valuable cryptocurrencies in the world.

A quick look at the NEM coin (XEM) price chart shows a very obvious uptrend in play. NEM prices have been making higher highs and higher lows since the beginning of this year as investors began to show interest in this cryptocurrency.

In fact, a comparison of NEM and Ethereum prices shows that XEM has actually outperformed ETH this year.

XEM prices have jumped a whopping 5,600% this year, compared to ETH’s year-to-date climb of 3,400%.

That’s because crypto bugs betting on NEM’s promising projects in the pipeline have been pouring their money into it.

Top of these is “Catapult.”

Catapult

Catapult is the next version of NEM’s technology, which is currently in the beta phase. Once it is launched, it is touted to make NEM’s platform even more secure and faster than it currently is.

In fact, a number of banking institutions are reportedly testing Catapult to consider shifting their financial software technology onto NEM’s blockchain platform. This could serve as a major breakthrough for NEM.

NEM Cold Wallet

Another great feature that NEM is introducing to its platform is the “NEM Cold Wallet.” The idea of a “cold wallet” may not be new, but most cryptocurrencies do not explicitly provide this solution to their users.

A cold wallet is basically the offline storage of your crypto-coins so they can never be stolen.

You have the option to put away your coins—that you have bought for investment purposes and are not likely to use in the near term—in a safety box.

NEM makes it easy for you to create a cold wallet (more of a savings account) on a separate computer, which you must later disconnect from the Internet and put away. This way, your investment remains safe from cyber attacks.

Meanwhile, you can always access your XEM coins lying in the cold storage, from your active computer, since you have your secret passkey.

As for the coins you need on a daily basis for trading or carrying out other transactions, they are kept in your “hot wallet” (the equivalent of a current account), which is the ordinary NEM wallet on your PC connected to the Internet.

Coming straight to my NEM (XEM) price forecast for 2018, I’m seeing XEM coin trading in the range of $1.50 to $2.00 in the coming year, spelling triple-digit gains over 600%. Currently, XEM price is only $0.20 apiece.

Analyst Take: 

After the famous “DAO Attack”—which resulted in an unknown hacker making away with 3.6 million ether—revealed vulnerabilities in the blockchain-based system, the price of Ethereum nosedived. Fears made rounds that cryptocurrencies were unsafe investments.

The latest Tether hack, which resulted in $31.0 million worth of its tokens being stolen, just heightens those fears.

But NEM has set out to prove that wrong by creating a more secure alternative to Bitcoin, Ethereum, and many other blockchain-based systems.

But wait, there’s more.

NEM’s latest initiatives to project its platform as a secure alternative to Bitcoin and Ethereum spell a bullish NEM (XEM) price forecast 2018.

The founders are now also working on creating their own NEM exchange to allow their growing user base to trade their XEM coins securely. This could further reduce the odds of losing your money to hacks, most of which are perpetrated on centralized cryptocurrency exchanges. NEM investors will surpass these ordinary cryptocurrency exchanges to buy and sell XEM coins on a dedicated exchange.

With all these positives in play, I’m seeing NEM prices soaring past the $1.00 mark very soon.

Editor’s Note: Hi, Palwasha Saaim here. If you enjoyed this article, you can get more of my opinions and commentaries in our popular tech letter, Profit Confidential. Published daily, it’s FREE! Click here to sign up