What are some cryptocurrencies that have the potential to skyrocket in price in January 2018?

Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.”

Keep that in mind as my framework for this answer.

I’ll do you one better.

Why? Because I asked this question to so many people when I was starting out.

All. The. Time.

I am offering a strategy that I learned a couple of months ago. For Free. It has helped me a lot to answer this question.

Have you ever seen these ICOs / altcoins that just shoot up, and you’re then left reading about it with the option to buy only now (when it’s relatively expensive)? I have.

The way to be on the other side of the equation is to track the coin market caps early on! Here’s how you do that:

Go to Cryptocurrency Market Capitalizations | CoinMarketCap

Copy the top 100 coins / tokens into a spreadsheet, ordered by market cap (largest to smallest)

The next day, open a new tab and copy in the top 100 for that day, ordered by market cap (largest to smallest)

Put a # rank next to each coin / token and then subtract the new # rank the following day; if it’s a positive number, then take stock of what that coin / token is and see if that trend happens again. I’d recommend doing this with coins in the top half of the top 100 (50–100) so you catch them early

For example, if I have a coin / token that’s #10 today and #2 tomorrow, then it’s score is +8

Take a close look at those coins that have entered the top 75 and top 50 that weren’t previously in it

If a coin enters the top 50 and quickly enters the top 45 or 40, then that is a good reason to investigate (read: potentially buy)

That is how I have found coins early…

All that said, here are a few “fish” in addition to the “fishing rod” I just outlined above (in no particular order):

IOTA

Neo

Monero

Stellar Lumens

Axpire

EOS

Ethos

Disclosure: This is a recycled answer. I am long IOTA (available on exchanges) and Axpire (private pre-sale right now)…I’m learning more about the rest to get to my personal threshold for investment. This is not financial or investment advice!!!

Why am I not long XRP?

Ripple's Great Opportunity: The Alternative Crypto Investment To Bitcoin And Ether

"it has a slew of big names behind it already"

Sure, because they own about 60% of the coins from the get-go. Ripple coins were pre-mined. The founders retained 20% of total coins and are selling them. Most of the others have been sold to big banks and other big partners. It's now up to you, fair consumer, to buy up the remainder and drive up the price so the owners and big banks can sell their stash at a nice profit. If all that is OK with you, then go ahead and have fun.

Contrast this with Bitcoin where new coins are given as a reward to hashing power that provides security for the chain