Did you know that there are over 8,000 cryptocurrencies in existence, with an ever-expanding field of offerings?
Although slumping Bitcoin has been in the news quite a bit recently, it’s clearly not the only game in town. In fact, for many people “bitcoin” and “cryptocurrency” have come to mean one and the same thing, but cryptocurrency markets are awash in alternatives. However, it can be difficult navigating your way through these crowded waters, much less deciding on the best ones to invest in, which is why we’ve put together a list of the best cryptocurrencies to consider for January 2022 and beyond.
Why you should invest in cryptocurrencies
Apple, Google, Tesla, Samsung, Facebook, PayPal, Deutsche Bank—these are just some of the big-name players that have made cryptocurrencies part of their long-term strategic plans recently. As we outlined in our previous post “The Future of Cryptocurrency,” cryptocurrency has transformed from being a niche digital asset to something that is experiencing widespread adoption for a variety of reasons across various segments of society.
No longer the exclusive domain of fintech disruptors and day traders, cryptocurrencies and the technology used to trade them, such as Trality’s state-of-the-art crypto trading tools, have gone mainstream. And with mainstream traders and institutions increasingly eyeing digital assets, there can be little doubt that cryptocurrencies have proven themselves to be both popular and successful.
A few benefits of crypto trading
So what are some of their benefits and why should you invest in them? Let’s start with a bit of hype. If you invested $1,000 in bitcoin in 2010, it would be worth roughly $287.5 million today. While we are not saying that crypto trading is or should be viewed as a get-rich scheme, we mention this statistic simply to illustrate the extraordinary opportunities that a cryptocurrency such as bitcoin presents for traders.
Closer to reality, crypto traders are drawn to the digital asset for a range of reasons: they can function as a store of value; they are a useful portfolio asset; and they can be used as a direct method of payment. Unlike gold, which has similar benefits, cryptocurrency is easier to store, easier to transfer and easier to trade. Basketball tickets, fast food, coffee, taxis and airline tickets can all be bought with cryptocurrency (just try buying your next espresso with gold).
Some additional points to keep in mind:
Low minimum investment barrier: Cryptocurrencies are divisible, which means that you can buy smaller fractions, allowing for a very low investment threshold. Consequently, the ability to trade is available to virtually everyone.
Liquidity: Cryptocurrency exchanges operate 24 hours a day, which means that you can buy, trade and sell your assets any time.
Transparency: The majority of crypto tractions are recorded using blockchain technology, which ensures reliability, transparency, records that are traceable and information that cannot be altered.
Diversity of assets: Traders can lower or mitigate risks by diversifying through the vast selection of different cryptocurrencies.
Fees: Compared with stock trading or other legacy asset classes, cryptocurrencies offer significantly lower fees.
Best cryptocurrencies to invest in this year
Bulls, bears and even the odd wolf in sheep’s clothing. Crypto trading can be exhilarating, but it can also test your mettle. Perhaps you want to buy cryptocurrency for the first time. In order to choose the best cryptocurrency and get the best value for your money, you need to do your homework by looking into a range of issues, including market capitalization, the best crypto exchanges or brokerage (and their commission fees), past performance, market value, volatility, and even taxes.
You might be surprised to see that a number of perennial favorites such as Tether (USDT), Solana (SOL), Polygon (MATIC), Ripple (XRP), and Binance Coin (BNB) didn't make the cut of the best cryptocurrencies in which to invest for 2022. And aside from Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum, we only have two crypto tokens with a market cap in the top ten.
Here’s a rundown of some of the top cryptocurrencies to invest your dollars or other fiat currencies for the year ahead.
Cadano (ADA)
Rome wasn’t built in a day. All good things come to those who wait. Patience is a virtue. If you have or are interested in acquiring some ADA, then these phrases might become something a personal mantra for you as time goes by. Seemingly loved and loathed in equal measure, not least because many view its founder Charles Hoskinson as either a misunderstood genius or a cult leader, Cardano is the OG of Ethereum killers. Or is it merely vaporware, or worse – a ghostchain? And will Cardano's smart contracts even become as popular as those on Ethereum? As with so many things in the cryptospace, the jury’s still out.
What is clear is that in 2021 Cardano beat rival blockchains in terms of having the most development on GitHub. As one commenter quipped, “If Cardano is a ghostchain, then it is experiencing a lot of paranormal activity.” Their community is also a fantastically loyal one. Last year, the number of ADA wallets reached 2.5 million, having been at just 190,000 the previous year (that’s an increase of 1200%).
And Cardano has been in the news lately, too. Samsung recently announced its partnership with climate solutions platform, veritree, to manage the tree-planting initiative in Madagascar by harnessing blockchain technology to verify and track every step of the reforestation process. And which blockchain are they using? You guessed it: Cardano.
Rome wasn’t built in a day...
Algorand (ALGO)
Crypto naysayers are often quick to point out the lack of real-world value of many blockchains. That’s certainly not the case with Algorand, however, which is already powering the digital currency (the SOV) of the Marshall Islands, the first of its kind in the world.
Considered to be one among the many so-called “Ethereum killers,” Algorand is blockchain cryptocurrency protocol that aims to solve the blockchain trilemma of scalability, speed, and security. It uses a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism to validate transactions along with“pure-proof-of-stake” (PPoS), and its Algorand Standard Protocol (ASA) can be used to create and deploy new tokens on the network. Algo also bills itself as not merely carbon neutral, but carbon negative, which it achieves through low emissions and donations to ClimateTrade in order to offset climate change.
Founded in 2017 by MIT professor and Turing Award winner Silvio Micali, Algorand has some serious intellectual weight behind it. Comprised of both a company and a foundation, the latter is concerned with the growth of the ecosystem, funding, cryptographic research, on-chain governance and decentralization of the Algorand network, while Boston-based Algorand Inc. oversees the protocols development.
Hedera (HBAR)
Here’s one for you HODLers out there. Hedera’s Hashgraph isn’t a blockchain, but rather distributed ledger technology (DLT) that is positioning itself as a faster, cheaper, more secure, and more environmentally friendly alternative.
According to its website, “Hedera proof-of-stake public network, powered by hashgraph consensus, achieves the highest-grade of security possible (ABFT), with blazing-fast transaction speeds and incredibly low bandwidth consumption. By combining high-throughput, low fees, and finality in seconds, Hedera leads the way for the future of public ledgers.”
It also has an impressive list of global organizations acting as its governing council, including Google, IBM, Boeing, LG, and Deutsche Telekom. Many traders consider it to be undervalued, especially in light of major milestones such as over 2 billion total mainnet transactions, which it achieved just before the New Year 2022. As a result, HBAR is seen as a bargain at its current price, while for others it will take years to yield any substantive returns, due in part to its total fixed supply of 50 billion coins. Either way, the underlying technology and potential real-world applications appear strong, making this one to buy and hold.
Fantom (FTM)
Fantom is a fast, high-throughput open-source smart contract platform for digital assets and dApps (or decentralized applications). According to its website, there are 80+ dApps that have already been deployed on Fantom ranging from DEXes, cross-chain bridges, lending and borrowing, and yield optimizers to NFT platforms, tools, and wallets.
Fantom uses a directed acyclic graph or DAG, which looks more like a graph than a chain and is seen by many as a possible substitute for blockchains due to greater efficiency when processing online transactions or when handling data storage. Due to a special proof-of-stake consensus mechanism called Lachesis, Fantom can currently handle approximately 4,500 transactions per second (TPS), while they claims the results of their experiments suggest up to 10k TPS (!). It’s also worth mentioning that Fantom uses the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) in the backend, meaning that anything built on the Ethereum network should essentially be interoperable on the Fantom network (barring a few minor tweaks).
Still need some convincing? According to a recent piece in CoinDesk, “Transactions on emerging layer 1 blockchain Fantom crossed those on Avalanche this week […]. More than 1 million transactions were processed on the Fantom network, compared with 728,000 transactions on Avalanche as crypto.”
Polkadot (DOT)
Blockchain interoperability is often a source of frustration for developers, particularly as the number of DeFi and NFT-driven apps increases (i.e., multiple protocols and chains), which is where Polkadot wants to make its mark. A blockchain platform and cryptocurrency that allows for distributed computing using proof-of-stake consensus, Polkadot aims for interoperability. As it states on its website, “Polkadot is built to connect private and consortium chains, public and permissionless networks, oracles, and future technologies that are yet to be created.”
Polkadot has been in the news recently with some exciting developments. As CoinDesk reported in December, it “launched its first set of parachains, individual networks running in parallel to create a harmonized, interoperable ecosystem […]. The first five parachains going live – Acala, Moonbeam, Parallel Finance, Astar and Clover – are focused on a variety of topics from decentralized finance (DeFi), to investments and loans.”
Starting to connect the dots? Well, that’s precisely the problem that Polkadot solves: interoperability. Polkadot even connects public and private chains. As Cointelegraph explains, “Polkadot’s flexible and adaptive network architecture facilitates building new technology on top, enabling developers to take advantage of the scalability, interoperability and security offered. Therefore, Polkadot’s network also represents a significant breakthrough for developers and entrepreneurs who want to build a new blockchain from scratch.”
Bitcoin (BTC)
The first mover. The OG of cryptos. Love it or hate it, but you can’t deny its enviable staying power, market dominance, and continued importance to the cryptocurrency ecosystem, which are just a few reasons among many why Bitcoin is referred to as “the King of Crypto.”
Developed in 2011 by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin has moved from cypherpunk outlier to increasingly widespread acceptability. No self-respecting cryptocurrency ranking would be complete without mentioning it, especially since it accounted for roughly 65% of 2021’s market cap. In November 2021, Bitcoin reach its all-time high of $69,000. It also outperformed both gold and the S&P 500 for the third straight year, even performing ten times better than gold in 2020. And while predictions in the cryptospace can be notoriously difficult to make with any degree of certainty, some are arguing that the price of Bitcoin will achieve $100,000 by the middle of 2022.
You don’t have to be a Bitcoin maximalist to see the writing on the wall. Bitcoin’s latest slump is a golden opportunity (see what we did there) to buy the dip and add to your stack. As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele has been doing since November 2021.
Just remember to safeguard your key. After all, you don’t wants to end up like this guy with half a billion in Bitcoin lost somewhere in a garbage dump.
NEAR Protocol (NEAR)
Doomslug, Nightshade, and Aurora, not to mention guilds, shards, and DAOs all make NEAR Protocol some fairly complicated tech to grasp, but don’t let the complexity put you off its coin. NEAR is a sharded layer 1 blockchain using a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, with its native NEAR tokens being used to pay for transaction fees and storage on the crypto platform. Launched in April 2020, the network is the brainchild of former Google engineer Illia Polosukhin and Microsoft developer Alexander Skidanov.
What exactly is sharding? Crypto Briefing’s Timothy Craig offers a succinct summary: “NEAR Protocol’s approach to solving the Blockchain Trilemma is by implementing a horizontal scaling feature called sharding. It works by splitting a blockchain node network into smaller partitions known as ‘shards.’ Each shard consists of its own data and can be used to process transactions in unison with other shards, increasing the overall throughput of the network. Thanks to its shard technology, it claims it can process up to 100,000 transactions per second, outpacing other rival smart contract platforms by some distance.”
Not only has it weathered the recent bearish market with aplomb, it even surpassed its ATH and is now pushing a new resistance level of $18. “With high speeds, low fees, and progressive UX,” according to their website, “NEAR’s climate-neutral blockchain is ready for explosive growth.”
Cosmos (ATOM)
The team behind Cosmos aim to create “an Internet of Blockchains,” one capable of communicating with each other in a decentralized way. As with Polkadot, the keyword once again is interoperability.
At the time of writing, Cosmos has approximately 266 apps running on its ecosystem and its Gravity DEX protocol is live. As they describe on their website, “Secured by over $3B of digital assets, the Gravity DEX protocol enables DeFi across multiple chains. Swaps and pools of digital assets between any connected blockchains are now possible […], making cross-chain DeFi accessible to all types of traders using batched transactions to dramatically lower the fees – typically between $0.01-$0.10.” And their upcoming Gravity Bridge to Ethereum will ensure that additional streams of value and liquidity begin flowing into the Cosmos Hub.
As Cointelegraph reported at the beginning of 2022, “Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that since hitting a low of $25.06 on Dec. 30, the price of ATOM has rallied 75% to hit a daily high at $43.98 on Jan. 4 as its 24-hour trading volume spiked to $2.54 billion.” And with its planned Theta Upgrade (31 March), which will potentially include meta-transactions, the introduction of inter-chain accounts, liquid staking, and NFT modules, Cosmos is one to watch in 2022.
Helium (HNT)
Billing itself as “The People’s Network,” Helium is a decentralized blockchain-powered network for Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Launched in July 2019, it was founded by Shawn Fanning, Amir Haleem, and Sean Carey, with a mission to make it easier to build connected devices. The Helium mainnet allows low-powered wireless devices to communicate with each other and send data across its network of nodes or “Hotspots,” which are a combination of a wireless gateway and a blockchain mining device. The goal of Helium is to prepare IoT communication for the future.
An article in InvestorPlace, one of America’s largest, longest-standing independent financial research firms, describes Helium in the following way: “Helium removes internet service providers (ISPs) from the equation for end users; it supplies hotspots that can be purchased and set up to emit wireless internet signals to which other network users can connect. These hosts can passively earn income by generating HNT coins with every connection to their hardware. As more hosts join the network, more hotspots are deployed all over the world. The goal is to become ubiquitous, with hotspots in every high-traffic area and more. Then, others can rely on internet access without needing to pay exorbitant amounts to corporate ISPs.”
Who doesn’t like a good FinTech disruptor?
Ethereum (ETH)
Last but not least is the silver to Bitcoin’s gold. Ethereum is a decentralized, open-source blockchain with smart contract functionality, and its native coin is Ether. Among the thousands of cryptocurrencies out there, Ether is second largest cryptocurrency only to Bitcoin in terms of market cap and is the brainchild of programmer Vitalik Buterin.
Many consider Ethereum as a smart investment option, especially for those just getting started in the cryptocurrency market. The strength of Ethereum’s token correlates with the scale of the network, which means ETH is expected to increase in value as more dApps and projects are launched on the network. Even the likes of J.P. Morgan have begun to take notice, recently publishing a report on the future outlook of crypto markets. Included in the report are Ethereum’s upgrades, decentralized finance (DeFi), and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which it sees as increasingly relevant to financial services.
While some people might be swayed by Wall Street’s growing interest in Ethereum and other cryptos, we’re less than impressed by speculative statements coming from companies that bankrupted the global economy and received bailouts of upwards of $25 billion.
Suffice to say that ETH will remain a solid investment throughout 2022.
Ready to invest in cryptocurrencies?
So now that you’ve got some valuable insight into which cryptocurrencies are worth considering this year, you might have a few practical questions related to testing the cryptocurrency waters. Following are four main steps to help you get started:
- Registering with a crypto exchange
- Picking a crypto wallet
-Research, research, research
- Automate your trading with - bitsgap - state-of-the-art tools
In the following sections, we’ll cover the basics to get you started quickly and easily.
Step 1: Choose a crypto exchange
In order to trade any cryptocurrency, you need to choose a crypto exchange. As with cryptocurrencies themselves, however, there are plenty of options, and deciding on one in particular can be a bit of a difficult task, which is why we’ve written an in-depth article covering the best ones.
In our rundown, we cover a wide range of exchanges, including Binance, Kraken, Coinbase, bybit, bitmart, and Luno as well as offer tips about key things to consider when making your decision (e.g. reputation, fees, payment options, KYC verification and geoblocking).
Step 2: Picking a crypto wallet
Just like fiat currency, you need a wallet for cryptocurrency (in this case a digital one). But unlike traditional wallets, crypto wallets don’t actually store your cryptocurrency, but rather your public and private keys. In this respect, a crypto wallet is more like a bank account in which you keep track of your transactions.
Now the private key is a randomly generated string of numbers and letters, which allows you to send cryptocurrency to someone else. Without it, you can’t approve transactions. Be sure to store this key in a very safe place, otherwise you could share the same fate as a handful of Bitcoin millionaires who can’t access their money.
Your public key, on the other hand, is (as its name implies) derived from the private key through a hash and everyone else can see it. Others can send cryptocurrencies to your wallet via your public key.
As with crypto exchanges, there are various types of crypto wallets (e.g. desktop, online, mobile and hardware), which means that you’ll have to consider the one that best serves your needs (e.g. cost, security, mobility, user-friendliness, etc.). Check our Investopedia’s helpful article “Best Bitcoin Wallets,” for example, to familiarize yourself with some of the industry’s best.
Step 3. Research, research, research
Remember what we wrote in this article about each cryptocurrency? Take it all with a grain of salt. One of the best measures of your future success as a trader is the extent to which you are an informed trader. Read widely. Understand concepts and ideas. Compare and contrast articles, websites and points of view.
Knowledge is power— it might seem like a cliché at this point, but it is the one thing that will ensure years of purposeful and profitable trading.
Step 4. Automate your trading with bitsgap state-of-the-art tools
Unlike traditional stock markets, cryptocurrency trading never stops, making it virtually impossible for private traders to track market fluctuations, diversify risk, reduce error and ensure trading discipline 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
Luckily, private traders can take advantage of advanced tools such as bitsgap Rule Builder or Code Editor to automate their trading with the help of trading bots. Wall Street has been utilizing them for decades, but now platforms such as bitsgap are bringing this tech to Main Street so that everyone can benefit from it.
By communicating directly with crypto exchanges and placing orders automatically based on your own preset conditions, crypto trading bots offer exceptional speed and efficiency, fewer errors and emotionless trading. In order to trade on an exchange, all you need to do is authorize your trading bot to trade on your behalf via API keys (Application Program Interface), and access can be granted or withdrawn at any time.
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Crypto bots offer a non-emotional and systematic approach to trading. Think of them as a roadmap or a GPS, ensuring that you get to your investment endpoint or destination as safely and efficiently as possible. Trading detours based on fear or adrenaline can be costly, often leading to financial setbacks and losses. The point is not to overcome the human element, but to complement it by harnessing the power and potential of artificial intelligence and automation, and at bitsgap we empower traders with world-beating technology.
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