2017 was an especially heady time in the world of cryptocurrency. Bitcoin and a growing selection of altcoins enjoyed massive increases in trading volume, with major investment into and publicity for a series of lucrative ICOs adding fuel to the fire. Globally, countless new investors entered at an accelerating rate and fiat flowed into the ecosystem, rapidly pumping the total market cap to a new all-time-high that was hard to imagine and – as it turned out – even harder to sustain.

Now here we are – more than 6 months past the green candles that seemed an inevitable and daily occurrence – and the cryptocurrency landscape is not what it was.

The enthusiasm of a community of investors riding a wave of FOMO has dramatically subsided to accommodate a number of practical realities. Caution, cynicism and significantly reduced trading volume have crystalized into a bear market that has (so far) turned out to represent the dominant trend of 2018.

The values of the various cryptocurrencies and the overall market continue to fluctuate and it needs to be remembered that there are always going to be opportunities to take advantage of moves in either direction. However, the time, intelligence, perspective and courage required to make contrarian trades that beat the prevailing market trends and generate significant positive returns in 2018 are understandably beyond most people over the short term (and all but a select few over longer timeframes).

For this reason, there is now an essential need for investment platforms that can provide new trading and economic models in crypto, utilizing innovative strategies that address the practical realities and challenges of being an investor in this market. Given that the trends across this year have headed undeniably in a downward direction, how can an investor use contrarian investing strategies to go against the prevailing trend and beat others to the upside?

Well, there’s OptiToken, for starters.

Whereas many crypto projects offer technical solutions to challenges faced by specific industries (finance, IoT, transport etc.), OptiToken has focused their efforts on providing a solution to the treacherous and volatile cryptocurrency market that has claimed so many investors over the 2018 bear market. At the center of OptiToken’s whitepaper is an algorithmic trading strategy [GitHub] that has seen the OptiToken portfolio outperform BTC by an astonishing 65%-85% since its implementation.

Having successfully completed their ICO raise in early July, OptiToken (OPTI) has just been listed on BTC-Alpha, with other exchanges to follow.

OptiToken will also be utilizing a percentage of gains generated by their trading algorithm to buy back tokens on these exchanges and ‘burn’ them, taking them permanently out of circulation. This beautifully simply process makes deflation a positive feature, reducing the supply of tokens, generating an equivalent increase in demand, and artificially creating increased value for the token. Buy-and-burn strategies have been shown to add positive pressure in other investment markets and enjoy a prominent advocate in non-other than Warren Buffet. While Buffet’s general grasp of cryptocurrencies might be called into question, the man sure knows how to generate returns!

The downward trend across 2018 didn’t hurt those who had the good fortune or contrarian outlook to have made their investments in the market prior to the massive bull run of last year, but for someone entering the market at any time since Thanksgiving 2017, preserving what gains they’ve managed to generate from trades has become an exhausting and treacherous pursuit.

The consensus is that there is still a massive upside yet to be enjoyed by investing in the cryptocurrency markets. The substantial challenge facing investors is how to protect and increase the value of one’s portfolio until that big gain can be realized. In investing in a project that is focused on generating stability and investor wealth, OptiToken is worth more than a cursory look.