Seven of the top cryptos to buy now.
July, finally, was a good month for cryptocurrencies, which had suffered a brutal string of down months following the euphoric highs of late 2021. Perhaps more correlated with equities than crypto enthusiasts would care to admit, July was also an outstanding month for the stock market, with the S&P 500 surging 9.1% in the month as good corporate earnings and hopes of a less hawkish Federal Reserve calmed nerves. The total cryptocurrency market capitalization, meanwhile, surged 21.3% to once again exceed the $1 trillion mark. Despite the rally, it’s still often tough to separate the wheat from the chaff as an investor. 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 trading at about a third of that price, right around the $23,000 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. Arguably one of the bigger catalysts for Bitcoin is if more S&P 500 companies follow Tesla Inc.’s (ticker: TSLA) decision in 2021 to add Bitcoin to its balance sheet.
Ether (ETH)
There are only two must-own cryptocurrencies for investors dipping their toes 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, and a recent CoinShares report shows more than six straight weeks of investor inflows into Ether-based investment products.
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 around $26 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. At its current trading range around $40, SOL’s price is up more than 50% from its 2022 lows.
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 more than sixfold since its public debut in 2019 at about $4, and it’s 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 $54 billion. BNB is the native token of Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange. Trading data from Aug. 9 shows a snapshot of its market dominance: Trailing 24-hour trading volume was $13.4 billion on Binance, dwarfing its nearest mainstream competitor, Coinbase Global Inc. (COIN), which had volume of $1.9 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 as 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 — think YouTube, Spotify Technology SA (SPOT) and the Apple Inc. (AAPL) App Store. Also, transactions incur no fees.
Cosmos (ATOM)
Last, and least as measured 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 $3.2 billion. The fact that Cosmos would nearly be a small-cap stock if it were a public company and 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 08/10/22: This story was published at an earlier date and has been updated with new information.
