There is always a lot going on in the cryptocurrency space, and there’s always something exciting going on. At the core of it, the crypto field is always bursting with brand new ideas. Bitcoin’s white paper that was released back in 2009 explains the concept of a decentralised, peer-to-peer, digital currency that cuts out the banks and the middlemen from transactions. Years after its release, the cryptocurrency market is now worth more than $2 trillion and currently has thousands of digital currencies and projects to choose from. There’s a lot of options and content to sift through, but unlike stocks, they aren’t as easy to parse through using fundamental analysis.
However, not all cryptocurrencies are made equal. Here’s a look at four of the best cryptocurrencies that you should consider buying this year, plus the bull cases for each currency.
Contents
Bitcoin (BTC)
The launch of Bitcoin back in 2009 opened all sorts of possibilities and changed the way we looked at money forever. It would be impossible to think of underestimating the importance of Bitcoin and the blockchain technology that is introduced to the financial world. After 12 years, it has reached a market capitalisation of higher than $1 trillion.
If you would like to try investing yourself, then you might want to visit Bitcoin Profit, a cryptocurrency trading site that will help you out with crypto trading for beginners.
As the top cryptocurrency, Bitcoin has not only been tried and tested by the passage of time, but it is also still out there, setting huge milestones for cryptocurrencies. Huge companies like Tesla Inc. have decided to put Bitcoin on their balance sheet, while countries like El Salvador are slowly making legislation to make it acceptable as legal tender. These huge milestones are important in illustrating how widely accepted Bitcoin has become.
Ethereum (ETH)
Bitcoin may have been the leading cryptocurrency right from the start, but Ethereum has managed to make a name for itself as another blue-chip cryptocurrency. It was first launched in 2015, and since then, it has been slowly eating away at Bitcoin’s overall share over the cryptocurrency market. Just at the start of the year 2021, Bitcoin accounted for 70.7% of the market, with Ethereum sitting at 10.8%. But in the span of a few months, the gap has narrowed to Bitcoin at 45.1% and Ethereum at 18%. The rest of the decline for Bitcoin can be attributed to the next cryptocurrencies we are about to discuss. Ethereum is probably the best-known example of a cryptocurrency that makes use of decentralised finance (DeFi) and smart contracts. Running on DeFi means that intermediaries like banks and exchanges are eliminated from the equation completely, and instead, smart contracts are put in place. Smart contracts refer to programs that are stored in the blockchain that is designed to run once certain conditions are met.
Solana (SOL)
Solana is a cryptocurrency that suddenly shot up to fame in 2021. It was previously an obscure cryptocurrency, only having a market share of 0.01% at the start of the year, but it has recently secured a place for itself within the top 10 cryptocurrencies based on market capitalisation. Similarly to Ethereum, Solana is also a leader in decentralised finance, where users can take advantage of the platform’s technology to develop decentralised applications. The novel features that Solana possesses have attracted an impressive amount of engineering talent due to their use of the Rust programming language. The Solana network also boasts faster transaction speeds and much lower transaction fees when compared to Ethereum.
Cardano (ADA)
It’s not quite like Ethereum or Bitcoin, but Cardano is still among the best choices for cryptocurrencies that you should buy. It is just right behind Bitcoin and Ethereum when it comes to market capitalisation. It is also younger when compared to the other two, having been launched in 2017. There is a lot to Cardano that makes it appealing as a cryptocurrency. It was founded by one of the people behind the creation of Ethereum, Charles Hoskinson, giving it huge credibility from the get-go. Compared to Ethereum, Cardano has a hard limit set on the number of coins it can produce within its course, only allowing 45 billion coins to be in circulation. Another thing that makes Cardano unique is that it uses a proof-of-stake protocol in order to give people incentives to mine for new blocks. Experts believe that using proof-of-stake protocols is 20,000 times more energy-efficient than Bitcoin’s proof-of-work protocols.
With the huge amount of options out there, hopefully, this has helped narrow down your choices for your next cryptocurrency investment.
