Crypto has been a hot topic ever since Bitcoin began climbing in price from its $5,000 low in March 2020 to its current price of $47,000. The growth of the crypto market as a whole has been just as impressive, with the current crypto market cap at almost $1.5 trillion. Such price increases make many people wonder whether cryptocurrency is still a good investment, and specifically what cryptocurrencies are the best cryptos to buy right now.
5 Best Cryptocurrencies to Buy in 2021
Before we begin with our list, let me make it clear that the crypto industry is an incredibly volatile and risky industry. It’s one of the riskier investments you can do, and you need to do your own research before putting any money in.
Never put in more than you can afford to lose, and do not let only this article convince you what to invest in. All that being said, let’s begin.
# 1. Nano. The fastest, feeless and green crypto
In our opinion, the single biggest opportunity in 2021 comes from Nano. Having already seen a price increase of 500% since a year ago, Nano is only getting started. So why Nano?
Nano has many properties that make us enthusiastic. First of all, transfers are instant. It takes an average of 0.14 seconds to fully confirm a Nano transaction. When you’re trying it out for yourself you’ll see that by the time you hit send and check to see whether it’s arrived, it’s already there. It does so while having the highest security in the market. Don’t take our word for it — Kraken considers Bitcoin deposits “secure” after 4 confirmations (40 minutes), while they consider Nano securely confirmed instantly. When Elon Musk talks about “least error & latency”, Nano is what comes to mind.
Second, Nano is feeless. That’s right, fees are absolutely $0. This isn’t some temporary gimmick either, transactions are feeless forever. Nano accomplishes this through the innovative Open Representative Voting mechanism.
The third advantage of Open Representative Voting is that no mining is involved. Because of this, Nano has a good claim to being an extremely green cryptocurrency. To put this into context — a single Bitcoin transaction uses so much energy that you could drive a Tesla for 3000 miles with the same energy used. Nano on the other hand is so efficient that a single wind turbine can power the entire network. With the increasing focus on energy efficiency and saving the planet, this is going to become increasingly important.
The final impressive aspect of Nano that we would highlight is its scalability. Nano has no upper limit. While Bitcoin tops out at 7 transactions per second on its best day, Nano has been tested at over 200 confirmations per second and scales with hardware. It uses whatever resources are available, and doesn’t stop growing.
Someone summarised it well by saying Nano is like Bitcoin, just 1000x faster, millions of times cheaper to use, with 30x the transaction capacity, 1 million times as energy-efficient, while being more decentralized and more secure.
Despite all this, Nano is priced lower than Bitcoin. In fact, its market cap is about 1/1000th of Bitcoin’s. We personally see massive growth potential here, and Nano takes the #1 spot on our list by a landslide.
# 2. Ethereum. The platform crypto
Coming in at second place is far better-known crypto than Nano, yet it offers something very different. Ethereum (ETH) is the largest cryptocurrency when it comes to decentralized apps and smart contracts, and most of the Defi sector is built on top of it. It’s the father of the platform space and is still being developed.
What could potentially spell trouble for Ethereum is the high fees the chain is currently experiencing. Fees for smart contracts sometimes run into the hundreds of dollars, and people are desperately looking for alternatives. However, Ethereum started the lengthy process of switching to Ethereum 2.0 in December 2020.
While this process will take a while to complete (estimates are 2+ years), ETH will become a lot safer, faster, and more usable when it’s done. There are a lot of good developers working on this, and because of the large industry built on Ethereum, there is every incentive to make this project a success. While it’s always a gamble to invest in a product that is still being developed, we believe Ethereum’s broad backing and the fact that it’s the base layer for so many blockchains gives it a strong position in the long run.
# 3. Bitcoin. The grandfather of the crypto space
While we wouldn’t bet on Bitcoin (BTC) in the long run (see #1 for why we think it will face stiff competition), it’s still got plenty of momentum behind it. It’s a household name and is by far the largest cryptocurrency on the planet. Having recently come under fire for the high fees ($30+) and the pollution caused by Bitcoin mining, Bitcoin nevertheless is seeing increased adoption by institutional investors.
We believe that in the long run, Bitcoin will be seen as the first version that failed to innovate, and we believe it’s unsuitable to be an actual currency, for now, the crypto space is still largely linked to Bitcoin’s price and it is a relatively safe bet, in crypto terms, for gains in the next year. Just don’t expect to be able to actually use it.
# 4. Binance Coin.
The exchange token Binance coin (BNB) is a bit of an odd one out in the list. While it’s commonly derided for being a centralized cryptocurrency due to its link to Binance, no one can deny that it has a clear use case. Binance is one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges right now, and BNB is the exchange’s token. It can be used to lower your transaction fees, and nowadays serves as the native token of the Binance Chain and the Binance Smart Chain (BSC), both of which are seeing strong growth too.
Is it a true cryptocurrency? Perhaps not. But for those looking to invest, there is clear value in crypto that almost everyone getting into cryptocurrency can profit from, and that will be heavily pushed by the largest exchange in the world.
# 5. Cardano — Ada
Cardano is a BlockChain, and Ada the cryptocurrency that lives on Cardano, this is another decentralized and Open source. You can use the Cardano Blockchain to send and receive Ada. This is another Proof of Stake (Pos) concept. Which currently stands at $0.9 with 31,112,484,646 ADA circulating supply. Ada reached $1.1 in 2018.
Bitcoin takes more time for transaction which will make the users wait for a long time, and Ethereum is not scalable. Cardano was made to be a 3rd Gen Cryptocurrency. Cardano’s Vision is to create an “Internet of Blockchains”.
# Just for fun in the list
Dogecoin is an absolute wildcard that we added because well, who can dislike his Dogeness? Started as a meme token, Doge quickly gained prominence and nowadays is recently “shilled” by Elon Musk. We could write about its fundamentals, which to be honest are abysmal (high transfer fees, high inflation, low usage), but that’s not the point with Doge.
Doge is a pure funny coin, one whose value comes from the number of people who think it’s fun to create memes about the prime barker, and surprisingly this has launched Doge into the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap recently. Know getting in that this is by far the most speculative crypto on this list, and use it with play money only.
Final thoughts on the Best Cryptocurrency to Invest
Cryptocurrency is a very volatile and irrational market. In the short run, prices can easily drop 30% in a day, or triple in a week. What we personally like to do is look towards the longer-term trends, and figure out which cryptocurrencies have the strongest fundamentals to merit high valuations through their possible usage in the real world, away from exchanges and speculators. We hope this list can help you and would like to reiterate once again that it’s of the utmost importance to do your own research before buying in. Good luck, and may the gains be on your side.
Article source: Best Cryptocurrency to Invest in 2021 [Top 5]
by Mira Hurley (@mira_hurley).
“$Nano is like #Bitcoin, just greener, without fees, instantly settled, and scalable.”
