I didn't really know much about Stellar until doing research for this write-up, but I'm seriously impressed. The built-in decentralized exchange combined with token issuance means it could eat Ethereum for lunch and have Coinbase for dessert.  Plus it's market cap is way lower than its nearest analog Ripple, which is just focused on the banking industry.

https://www.bitcoinbeginner.com/blog/what-is-stellar/

Right now I like RaiBlocks. It's got instant transactions and no fees.  As an investment, I think it still has a way to go up.

https://www.bitcoinbeginner.com/blog/what-is-raiblocks/

RaiBlocks - When it hits a major exchange - kaboom!
Stellar - I expect it to move into the top 5 in the next month or so.
IOTA - I expect more big announcements in the new year.

There's no mining in RaiBlocks.  If there is a disputed transaction, the "representatives" vote on which is right.  Each vote is weighted by how many XRB are associated with that representative. Right now the devs control the vast majority of the votes.

Representatives are expected to be always online and help secure the network, but there's no incentive for them to do so, which is the problem.

https://bitcoinbeginner.com/blog/what-is-raiblocks/

I'm hodling.  It's the best thing since sliced bread. The only way to improve it is to 1) decentralize the network and 2) somehow add in privacy.

I think when it hits the major exchanges it's gonna hit top 5.

https://www.bitcoinbeginner.com/blog/raiblocks-needs-proof-of-stake/

tl;dr: RaiBlocks is awesome, but voting is highly centralized (devs control 56%). Proof of Stake would be trivial to implement, and at just 1% inflation per year, support 4k nodes each making $20 worth of XRB per day.

Never heard of it before. Sounds like verge.

Ya I had to leave off some other privacy coins as they're just not that well known yet. Still plenty of room to innovate in the privacy area though.

I've looked at the Wraith protocol, and I just don't see it doing that much. At best it will hide the Recipient's address. But the recipient will likely need to claim those coins if they want to spend them in the future. There's really not much detail in the Black paper.

https://www.bitcoinbeginner.com/blog/privacy-coin-comparison/

tl;dr:

Monero is still the most private cryptocurrency, but is slow and has high fees (currently). Zcash uses the most advanced cryptography, but it's privacy tech (zk-SNARKs) is too new to be well peer reviewed. PIVX represents the best pairing of privacy and usability.

A lot of people are definitely into crypto as a speculation.  I think most forget that it's supposed to be a currency.

Your explanation using XYZ coin is correct, but as Unum is backed my many different crypto currencies, you could always exchange it for one of those, or just wait until the reserve gets filled again.

Shortly after launch on the main Ethereum blockchain I plan to hold a Bonus sale, which is where you get a small % bonus for buying Unum.  In this manner I hope to fill the reserve against the sort of scenario you describe (unless a whale gobbles it all up).

If the reserve fell to half the value of the number of issued Unum, the penalty would be 5% - not sure if that's huge, but hopefully enough to discourage others from increasing the deficit.

I hope it's use is as an actual currency - a store of value.

Business are hesitant to adopt cryptocurrencies because it's hard to understand it. How much is it worth? With bitcoin, the price changes minute to minute.  It's impossible to plan for the future and use Bitcoin as a real currency in those plans, because you don't know what it's going to be worth.

People, at least in the US, understand the dollar at a gut level.  My long-term hope is that people would be more willing to use cryptocurrency if they can understand it's value at that gut level.  

To put it in perspective of another dollar-pegged coin - when markets tank, people tend to sell their alt-coins and jump into Tether, because they know that it'll still be worth $1 an hour, a day, or a week from now - after the storm has passed.

The Reserve Deficit Penalty is 1/10th of the Reserve Deficit. So, if there the contract has issued 1,000,000 Unum, but the USD value is only $900,000, then there is a 10% deficit, and a 1% penalty would apply to anyone who wanted to sell unum for any crypto in the reserve.

If the value of the crypto held in reserve shrinks, meaning the number of Unum issues is greater than the $ value of the reserve, then a Reserve Deficit Sell Penalty is applied for anyone who wants to sell unum for crypto in the reserve.  This is meant to encourage users to not increase the deficit until such time as the value of the crypto held in reserve raises to same amount as the number of unum issues.

Right now tracking the exchange rate is done in one place, but the Price Oracle is actually a separate contract from the Unum Token contract. In the short term I plan to make a new Price Oracle that uses something like the Ark super-delegate model. You'd stake x amount of Unum to become a delegate, and then you can "vote" on the price.  Those who are delegates would share in the fee collected by the Unum token.

I feed a stream of crypto prices onto the Ethereum block chain. Anytime you exchange crypto for Unum, it looks up the USD equivalent and issues the corresponding # of Unum.

I think the two main points that make Unum different is 1) it's decentralized, so you don't have to trust me or some shady organization,  and 2) it's simple.  Biteur and bitusd are...complicated. 

I've long felt that a price-stable cryptocurrency is vital to increased acceptance of cryptocurrency by businesses and the public at large. There are a few solutions to this problem out there, but, in my opinion, they are either too centralized (and require too much trust) or they're too complicated. I wanted something simple, distributed, and trustless, so I made Unum.

https://unum.one

Unum is implemented as an ERC20 token smart contract on the Ethereum Blockchain. If you send in $20 worth of Ether, you get 20 Unum. If you send in $100 worth of OMG, you get 100 Unum. Whatever you send in is held in reserve by the smart contract. I can't touch it, and you can exchange your Unum into any currency held in the reserve whenever you'd like. Both buying and selling Unum incurs a 0.05% fee, which I plan to use to pay for the Ether needed to maintain the USD price oracle contract that's used to maintain the dollar peg. For every $100 you send, $0.05 is held as a fee.

Right now Unum is deployed on the Ethereum Ropsten testnet. I'd love feedback on the contract itself, which is on Github, and on the website. You can buy and sell Unum on the Ropsten network today if you have MetaMask through the Unum website. Buying and selling is done directly on the blockchain, there is no backend to the unum website itself. If you'd prefer, you can also use Mist to interact with the Contract directly.

I plan to move to the main Ethereum network soon, baring any major bugs being found.

If you're interested more in my thinking behind Unum, you can read this blog post, or just ask any questions here. If you want to email, I'm at john@unum.one

They ban it because they can't control it. Governments are in the Control business.