If you keep up with the latest cryptocurrency news and trends, you must have heard of the new cool kid in town, Internet Computer Protocol, or just simply ICP. There’s a huge buzz around this new crypto and some people are saying it’s the next Bitcoin. Let’s check out the top reasons why ICP (Internet Computer) Cryptocurrency is a good investment.
Founded by DFINITY, the ICP cryptocurrency was able to become, albeit briefly, one of the top 10 largest cryptocurrencies in the world, by market capitalization, that too immediately after launch. The prices have dipped since then, but that means now is the time to invest. It is backed up by a great team of tech experts and has strong technological fundamentals.
There are plenty more reasons to invest in ICP right now. But with any decision like this, it’s always best to understand the risks involved and how they may affect you. Let’s dive deeper into the world of ICP so you can understand all that it stands for and can make your own decision of whether to invest in it or not.
Top 9 Reasons To Invest in ICP
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The Internet Computer is a fully-fledged, hyper-functional blockchain network that is designed to compete with industry giants like Bitcoin and Ethereum. There are plenty of reasons why it’s a great investment that will benefit you in the long term. Let’s check them out.
Revolutionary Currency Backed by Protocol
The first of its kind, ICP is a cryptocurrency that is backed by a protocol. It has the potential to completely change the digital world as we know it now. You can use the Internet Computer to create almost anything you can find on the internet right now. It allows you, the user to gain control without letting tech giants determine your decisions.
It is meant to give back the power to the people, instead of keeping it at the hands of the top tech giants like Facebook, Twitter, or Google. It’s more of a democracy of the internet. Experts in the field are therefore expecting that the prices of ICP will grow further in the long term. So, it’s a great investment right now if you want to be at the forefront of the revolution.
Social Media Applications
Various elements will drive Internet Computer ICP investment, but one of the most important is the launch of social media applications in addition to decentralized finance applications. As more and more users will be easily able to create and contribute to social media areas, prices are likely to drive up.
These things are already happening. Cancan, which is a direct competitor of TikTok, was created and run on the Internet Computer blockchain. It was only done with about a thousand lines of code, as compared to the millions of lines for apps like Facebook.
A greater number of social media applications means more users, which in turn means more activity on the cryptocurrency as fuel for computation. The existing value of the digital asset would surely rise as a result of this. You can see of listed ICP applications by checking out the IC Apps portal
Low-Risk Investment
ICP prices have dropped since their all-time listing high. Now everyone is scared to invest. But it’ll be hard to get prices this low in the future. Often the best time to invest in something is when the values reach a state where traders are wary of entering. This way you can get a steal at something that will grow in value over time.
The only place left for the value to go is up, and with all, its potential and promises it’s unlikely that the value won’t rise. Think of the APY of nearly 30% in staking for the first year. It’s the perfect time to strike.
The Team Behind ICP
DFINITY, which has more than 200 of the best experts in all fields related to crypto has developed the Internet Computer. Whether it be cryptography or security, they've got the best of the best in their team. Not only that they have enough funding to keep developing and improving the system.
In 2018, the team raised 102 million USD, and have a total of over 195 million USD since 2015. With this much funding, the ICP can scale alongside the internet and its overall bandwidth. Although their revolutionary approach will burn through this find quite rapidly, their vision itself is tremendous and is very promising for the future of the internet.
ICP Caters Towards Market Need
The Internet Computer has been developed to give power back to the people. In the worldwide web or the internet, most of the power resides in the hands of large companies, much like the real world.
For instance, think of when you’re searching for a product online. Google will decide which brands and websites show up on your first page. This eventually determines which products you end up buying. You never even get to explore the websites that reside on the last few pages of the search engine or even the second page for that matter.
This means most of the power lies in the hands of the top few, and the rest of millions of users on the internet are pretty much powerless in comparison. The ICP gives power back to the people and allows them to use the internet without any “help” from the tech giants. This is why this crypto-project is so great. Because it has a real-world, tangible utility.
The Crypto-Market is at a Low
From the looks of things, the crypto market is at the bottom right now. Bitcoin has declined from a peak of $64,000 to current levels in the upper $40,000s. Several factors have caused this general fall. These include China's crypto-ban and mining troubles as well.
Nonetheless, you can see the mining industry becoming increasingly decentralized around the world. Countries such as Iran, Kazakhstan, El Salvador, and the United States are now in a good position to take advantage of the industry's economic benefits. If you know about market trends, you'd know that the market is expected to rise soon.
Enterprise Focus
Another great area that ICP can provide benefits for is the enterprise industry. With the current way that the internet works, there is very little efficiency and even less security involved. Since the Internet Computer has a foundation of blockchains, it is much more efficient and of course, it provides web-speeds.
So companies can use the Internet Computer more efficiently and at much lower costs and can instead focus more on their products and services. With the Internet Computer, it’s much easier to build and deploy any kind of software and this makes the whole process way better for companies big and small.
Since it’s so versatile and there are so many components to it, you can use it how you need to and expose your company to a global audience. Plus it also allows smaller enterprises to shine through.
DFINITY and Decentralization
Critics raised worries about the Internet Computer and its decentralized architecture earlier this year, claiming that DFINITY had a stronghold on the vote and that its proprietary software was closed. These challenges grew more pronounced amid the bear market's pessimism, causing ICP's value to plummet even further.
Since then, DFINITY has made it apparent that the majority of voting power exists outside of the foundation, and they have deferred from important votes until the community has had a chance to weigh in, most recently with the Bitcoin smart contract integration.
Inspiring Developers to Create and Build
The great part about such a revolutionary initiative is that it inspires many others to follow. Now that ICP has challenged the existing protocols and the way the internet runs, there are many other developers working on applications that do the same or look at the internet itself in a new manner.
It’s an exciting time for the digital world. Even though this requires a lot of hard work and research, there are already people working on building similar decentralized applications such as District, OpenChat, Fleek, etc. This means this isn’t just a momentary trend, it might be sustainable and might create an ecosystem for this, which will evolve with time.
How Do You Get Started with Investing in ICP?
So now that you’re caught up with the top reasons to invest in ICP, you might be feeling lost on where to start. To start investing in ICP Crypto, you need to open up an account with credible cryptocurrency exchanges or brokerages like Binance, Coinbase Pro, etc. Then once you are verified, you can go to the Internet Computer Page and buy your coins.
You have to be careful with cryptocurrency since it’s still very new and evolving every day. Be sure to only invest with the popular, well-trusted exchanges so that you don’t face frauds or lose your money. It’s best to go with exchanges like Binance, WBF Exchange, OKEx, Huobi Global, or even Coinbase Pro.
The main hassle is going to be verifying your identity. Since there are a lot of frauds and identity theft cases online, these websites will ask you for a lot of your details and you may have to provide a government-issued ID card as well.
Once your account is all set up, you Deposit Funds or upload money into your account using your preferred payment method. Then you navigate to the Internet Computer page and start buying coins.
What Does ICP Crypto Do?
Suppose you’ve gotten yourself a few ICP tokens; now what can you do with them? You can use your ICP tokens in 2 different ways. They can be used to create Cycles or fuel, and you can also use them to participate in the governance of the Network Nervous System or NNC. Let’s check out what each of these means.
- Create Cycles
You can think of software hosted on the Internet Computer like cars or motor vehicles. They need fuel to run. You charge them up with Cycles. The software uses up this “fuel” over time as it operates and executes commands. Executing low-level instructions or maintaining data in memory, burns up fuel.
And to create Cycles, you have to burn ICP tokens. So you can use your tokens to fuel software on the Internet Computer. Since burned ICP tokens will cease to exist, Cycles will also disappear when you use them to fuel computation that is hosted by software.
- Participate in Governance
You can also use your ICP tokens to take part in voting or governance. The Network Nervous System or NNS is what governs the Internet Computer. It is an algorithmic governance system.
You can lock ICP tokens within the NNS to create Neurons. These neurons allow you to vote on proposals. It’s like the virtual world democracy. You can use your votes to affect the network’s operations and you will get voting rewards in return in the form of additional ICP tokens.
Which Wallet is Best for ICP?
There are a lot of different ways to store your ICP tokens. But perhaps the most secure and trusted on the market is the Coinbase wallet. It’s very user-friendly and convenient and you can use it on both android and iOS devices. It keeps all your work in place, as you can buy, sell, send, receive and even store your ICP tokens on the Coinbase app.
Coinbase has very low trading fees and also access to a lot of different crypto and digital assets. High liquidity is also an important feature for Coinbase. Plus, your investments are going to be very secure as it offers 2 step verification and biometric login as well. You also get insurance in case Coinbase is ever breached. All in all, it’s a great option.
It does however come down to preference at the end of the day. Because you might choose to store your ICP crypto in another way. Depending on whether you want a Hot Wallet or a Cold Wallet, your options would vary. Other options include Stoic wallet, Dfinance, NNS, Swiss Sygnum Bank, etc. You can also use hardware or paper wallets.
Should You Invest in ICP or Bitcoin?
Even though both ICP and Bitcoin are cryptocurrencies, it's difficult to compare the two. Which one you should invest in depends on what you stand for and which incentive you want to get behind. If you want to buy a stake in a revolution, you should consider investing in ICP.
While a lot of people think ICP is the next Bitcoin, it’s something completely different. It’s a protocol that plans on revolutionizing the internet. The Internet Computer is an effort to change the way you build software and deploy it on the internet. It aims to change how the internet works and take power out of the hands of the top few.
The Internet Computer has a lot of potential and might become something much bigger than just cryptocurrency. And even though it's so new, it has already stirred up a lot of buzz. ICP's success will depend on how the next few months go for them.
The fact that they have such a great team of software engineers behind them and have debuted at such a high market cap only implies all the good things to come. The fact that it has debuted at such a high market cap also supports this. So if you want to be at the forefront of the revolution, ICP is the way to go.
Is it Too Late to Invest in ICP?
No, it’s not too late to invest in ICP or just cryptocurrency in general. The crypto market is down significantly and if we are to judge it by the stock market, then this is the perfect time to buy crypto. It’s as if they are on sale. And as ICP crypto is still very new, you should place your bets on it as soon as you can.
ICP aims to bring greater speed and reduce costs, and its potential is huge. Since it's the price from the debut has now fallen, it's an attractive investment at this time. You can expect to see prices rise again shortly.
According to the Digital Coin Price prediction, Internet Computer coin will gain ground in the coming years to reach $227 in 2025, which suggests a 218 percent upside potential. Longforecast.com forecasts that the price of ICP stock by 2025 will be nearly $300. This is a potential upside of 320 percent!
The price predictions show that ICP will be a long way up from its all-time low, but the consensus is that ICP will rise to a high point. So if you want to invest in ICP, now is the best time.
Conclusion
Now that you’ve gone through the top reasons why ICP (Internet Computer) Cryptocurrency is a good investment, you can decide for yourself whether or not it would be the right investment for you. Even though cryptocurrency is always a pretty volatile investment, ICP has a lot of potential and experts are expecting things to only get better.
So, you can consider it a safe and educated bet.
DISCLAIMER: This article is not providing financial advice, please do your own independent research when considering investments of any sort.
