Seven of the top cryptos to buy now.
June was yet another tough month for cryptocurrencies: The market capitalization of all publicly traded cryptos plunged by 33% in that short period, falling from $1.31 trillion to $880 billion. That, in turn, is a 70% decline from the $2.96 trillion market cap in November 2021. Needless to say, this asset class isn’t a playground for momentum investors at the moment, but contrarians may want to start considering small investments in some of the top cryptocurrencies at current levels, for a few reasons. First, digital assets are more established than they’ve ever been at any point in their history, and projects in the young industry continue to attract huge levels of brainpower, labor and investment. Second, 70% declines aren’t actually unprecedented in crypto. Bitcoin fell from roughly $20,000 to about $3,000 between late 2017 and late 2018, for example. For the long-term believers and calculated risk-takers out there, here are seven of the best cryptocurrencies to buy now.
Bitcoin (BTC)
It’s probably a good idea for every cryptocurrency investor to have some exposure to Bitcoin, which is far and away the largest crypto by market cap and also the first cryptocurrency. Like the rest of the market, Bitcoin has been hammered since hitting all-time highs around $69,000 in November, currently treading water around the $20,000 level. Sometimes referred to as “digital gold,” Bitcoin has appeal in its rules-based limit on its maximum supply — there can only ever be 21 million Bitcoins — and its lack of connection to a central bank or government that can print money at will. BTC’s history is full of precipitous drops and epic rallies, so long-term investors shouldn’t be spooked by its current bear market. If more S&P 500 companies follow Tesla Inc.’s (ticker: TSLA) lead and add Bitcoin to their balance sheets, that sort of institutional adoption will be very good for Bitcoin bulls.
Ether (ETH)
There are only two must-own cryptocurrencies for investors dipping their toe into digital currencies: Bitcoin and Ether. Although it’s known colloquially as Ethereum, that’s actually the name of the popular blockchain network and not the network’s native cryptocurrency. The Ethereum blockchain essentially introduced decentralized finance, or DeFi, to the world, and has advantages over other DeFi platforms due to its wide adoption and devoted pool of developers. Ethereum is one of the go-to chains for non-fungible tokens, altcoin issuance and blockchain-based games. The medium-term catalyst for ETH is something called “The Merge,” an event that will switch Ethereum from the less scalable, more expensive and more energy-inefficient proof-of-work algorithm to the less problematic proof-of-stake mechanism. Although the exact date of The Merge is unknown, the general expectation is that it should happen sometime this year.
Solana (SOL)
Solana burst onto the scene in 2021, beginning the year in obscurity and emerging as a top-10 cryptocurrency, at least by market cap, by the end of the year. But its meteoric rise has been rivaled only by its swift decline, as SOL plunged from highs of $260 in November to lows near $22 in 2022. The good news? Solana is still a top-10 cryptocurrency, and it has its own blockchain, which means it doesn’t have to rely on another network’s design and limitations. The longer Ethereum takes to complete The Merge, the more Solana, an Ethereum competitor with decentralized apps and DeFi products of its own, should benefit.
Avalanche (AVAX)
Crypto isn’t a winner-take-all market, so there’s room for others in DeFi besides Ethereum and Solana, and that’s why Avalanche looks like one of the best long-term cryptocurrencies to buy. AVAX is up about five-fold since its public debut in 2019 at about $4, and it is one of the few cryptos whose price is actually higher today than it was a year ago. Ava Labs, which develops and supports the Avalanche ecosystem, has big plans for Avalanche. “We view a world where everyone who’s doing anything is going to have some version of their own blockchain, building their own thing,” said Patrick O’Grady, head of engineering for Ava Labs. Avalanche is starting to enable this vision through a new feature called subnets. “We think over the next five years we’re going to be the AWS (Amazon Web Services) of crypto. Instead of deploying a program on an AWS web server, instead you’ll deploy your blockchain on top of Avalanche,” O’Grady said.
Binance Coin (BNB)
Binance Coin is the third-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, excluding stablecoins, behind Bitcoin and Ether. At the time of this writing, its market cap stands at about $40 billion. BNB is the native token of Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange. Trading data from July 7 shows a snapshot of its market dominance: Trailing 24-hour trading volume was $10.5 billion on Binance, dwarfing its nearest mainstream competitor, FTX, with volume of $1.6 billion. Binance is a global player in the crypto space, with a lot of irons in the fire when it comes to blockchain and DeFi. BNB is arguably the strongest current contender to emerge as an out-and-out blue-chip crypto in the same category of Bitcoin and Ether.
Tron (TRX)
As far as cryptocurrencies go, Tron is older than a number of others on this list, debuting just two years after Ether, in 2017. Since then, Tron has stood the test of time (relatively speaking), emerging as a top-15 cryptocurrency with a $6 billion market cap. Aside from that, its mission is one that should resonate for the long term: Tron aims to reward content creators directly for their intellectual labor with TRX tokens, cutting out the centralized middlemen of the world — the YouTubes, Spotifys and Apple App Stores. Additionally, transactions incur no fee.
Cosmos (ATOM)
Last, and least by market cap, on this list of seven of the best cryptos to buy is Cosmos, a top-25 token with a market value of about $2.5 billion. The fact that Cosmos would nearly be a small-cap stock if it were a public company but that it’s in the upper echelon of crypto projects underscores how nascent this asset class is. That said, Cosmos’ aspirations are anything but small. It seeks to solve some of the most fundamental problems in cryptocurrency, including the fragmentation of different blockchains, the complexity of software development and the difficulty of scalability. Succeeding on any one of these three aims should help to dramatically increase mainstream adoption, especially the ability for different blockchains to communicate with one another through something like Cosmos. Cosmos is a proof-of-stake system, with ATOM tokens earned through staking. ATOM tokens also double as governance tokens.
7 best cryptocurrencies to buy now:
— Bitcoin (BTC)
— Ether (ETH)
— Solana (SOL)
— Avalanche (AVAX)
— Binance Coin (BNB)
— Tron (TRX)
— Cosmos (ATOM)
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7 of the Best Cryptocurrencies to Buy Now originally appeared on usnews.com
Update 07/08/22: This story was published at an earlier date and has been updated with new information.
