![ethereum.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmb4e8QB54eUs44foayFxsYXmqWpJaq2Wduop1qg3EeUrb/ethereum.png)

In this series of posts, I want to present my top coins for 2018, along with an explanation why I think so. I'll start with the top platforms and their coins / tokens, later getting into payment, utility and other tokens, as well.

# ETH
First on my list is Ether. It's one of the more obvious ones, that's why I'm getting started with it. Despite the rally last year from around 8$ all the way up to over 700$ by the end of December, I think there's still a lot of potential. ETH could actually go through a similar price development that Bitcoin had a year earlier. Let's draw some comparisons.

You may argue that Bitcoin and Ether are totally different, as Bitcoin is a payment token and Ether a platform one. That is correct, and that's also the reason why I was sure it wouldn't make sense for ETH to climb up to heights only known for Bitcoin before. However, this is not about the purpose of the token, but about the value that's being stored and why people make use of it. 

In ETH, although it originally was just meant to be used to pay gas for blockchain transactions, there's also more and more value stored. This is mostly due to the vast number of ICOs happening on the platform, leading to a situation where people originally owning ETH wouldn't sell it, but rather invest in ICOs, and people *not* owning ETH buying some to participate. The combination of these effects, powered by hundreds and hundreds of upcoming ICOs, will make ETH as the fuel of the Ethereum network soar into new heights.

There are two counter-arguments for this: ICOs selling and the scaling debate. Let's have a look:

## What happens if all the ICO projects sell their ETH?
This is a real concern and has already caused ETH price dips in the past, so why will this not stop ETH from going up? Because the ICO projects won't sell all their ETH. Firstly, they would have to pay a lot of taxes at once if they cannot spend all the money they make with ETH sales. Secondly, they are typically bullish with ETH (why would they raise tons of it to begin with?) and they plan to convert a part of the ETH later on at a higher rate. Thirdly, they typically play the long game after raising a couple (or a couple dozen) million $ in ETH, so they will usually want to spend it over the course of the next 5-10 years.

## How about the scaling problems?
There is a similar debate about scaling Ethereum as with Bitcoin, even though it's on a higher level (in terms of the #transactions). This has a similar effect in terms of fees and therefore putting a natural barrier to *churn* of ETH. This means that if transacting ETH is expensive, people are more likely to spend them more rarely for higher-value transactions. We've seen such an effect on Bitcoin last year, where it helped build up the flywheel effect that put Bitcoin up to 19k$.

In addition, Ethereum is more likely than Bitcoin to get its scaling issues solved in the foreseeable future. This is due to the Ethereum Foundation being *the* authority for the Ethereum project, while Bitcoin is more fragmented when it comes to who has which interests. As a consequence, the proposed scaling improvements for Ethereum like Sharding and Casper have been on the roadmap for a while and are largely accepted by the community.

Evaluation: I think that ETH's potential can easily be 5000$ and more for 2018, if the wave of ICOs on the Ethereum platform doesn't suddenly cease.

# ETC
As the Ethereum network gets loaded with transactions, and ICOs getting expensive for investors who weren't in ETH very early on, Ethereum Classic is gaining importance as the obvious #1 alternative to Ethereum. For ICOs, it may be the ideal option as it's technologically almost identical, with a lot more upward potential for their raised funds to 10x or 20x rather quickly, similar to what happened with the early ICOs from 2016 or early 2017, who are now sitting on a big pile of assets to spend to get their projects built.

Evaluation: ETC will surely surpass 100$ soon, with potential up to 500$ by the end of 2018 in case a broader number of ICO projects decide to go for Ethereum Classic rather than the "main" one.

# Wrapup
This got a little longer than expected, I'll move on with the other interesting platforms tokens soon. These are the two most prominent ones, but we'll get to the other big players and some smaller ones, too, next ime.