Did you know that, as of December 2021, there were over 8,000 digital currencies in existence? If you’re like me, you’re probably aware of the more popular digital currencies, such as Bitcoin or Ethereum. But what about all the rest?
In this article, I’ll cover the top 20 cryptocurrencies investors will be scooping up in 2022.
Let’s dive right in.
(All prices and market cap figures were accurate as of Jan. 13.)
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1. Bitcoin (BTC)
Bitcoin is the oldest digital currency, and one of the most popular. It’s the one I first learned about. Bitcoin was invented in 2009, toward the end of the financial crisis, and currently has a market cap of $818 billion. It’s also the de-facto digital currency for the majority of investors, and as such, it’s now the number-one coin globally by market cap. In 2021, Bitcoin was at one point up 57% and reached a high of $67,566 on August 11 before making a dramatic pullback. On Jan. 13, it was trading at $42,830.
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2. Ethereum (ETH)
The next cryptocurrency on the list is Ethereum. Ethereum may appear to be a relatively new coin in the market, but it’s done well thanks to its ability to create intelligent, or smart, contracts. It was launched in July 2015, and today, it boasts an approximate market cap of around $394 billion.
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3. XRP
XRP is a cryptocurrency built for payments. It is the native digital asset on the XRP Ledger, an open-source, decentralized blockchain technology that can complete transactions in seconds. XRP can be sent directly without needing a central intermediary, making it a convenient instrument in bridging two different currencies quickly and efficiently. XRP launched in 2012 and today has a market cap of around $38 billion.
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4. Stellar (XLM)
Stellar offers investors low-cost transactions on cross-border transactions. According to stellar.org, the cryptocurrency makes it possible to create, send, and trade digital representations of all forms of currency — dollars, pesos, Bitcoin, pretty much anything. It’s designed so all the world’s financial systems can work together on a single network. Launched in 2014, Stellar’s market cap is around $7 billion. In 2021, XLM doubled in price, which made long-term investors quite happy.
Image Credit: Stellar.
5. Cardano (ADA)
Cardano, a third-generation digital currency, was cofounded by
Charles Hoskinson, who founded Ethereum. Cardano was launched in 2017, and its market cap is now around $43 billion. In 2021, the cryptocurrency shot up a whopping 700%.
According to Wikipedia, Cardano is a public blockchain platform. It is open-source and decentralized, with consensus achieved using proof of stake. In addition, it can facilitate peer-to-peer transactions with its internal cryptocurrency, Ada.
Image Credit: Dennis Diatel Photography/istock.
6. Dogecoin (DOGE)
Dogecoin was created in 2013 by Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, who decided to create a payment system as a “joke” and make fun of the wild speculation rampant in cryptocurrencies at the time. It was a way to poke fun at other cryptocurrencies that had plans to seemingly take over the world. Dogecoin became popular as the first internet meme about digital currency. Its market cap is now around $22 billion, and its all-time high was reached on May 7, a price of $0.6848. Today, Dogecoin trades at around 16 cents.
Image Credit: Stuart Partridge/istock.
7. Polkadot (DOT)
Created by Dr. Gavin Wood, another co-founder of Ethereum, Polkadot is among one of the more promising third-generation digital currencies to consider. It trades at around $27 and has a market cap of $26 billion, impressive considering that it launched in May 2020. According to the Polkadot website, the currency is built to connect private and consortium chains, public and permissionless networks, oracles and technologies that are yet to be created.
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8. Neo
Originally known as AntShares, Neo was created in 2014 and is also often referred as the “Ethereum of China,” as it is very similar to that cryptocurrency. It’s a blockchain-based platform that supports its own cryptocurrency and enables the development of digital assets and smart contracts. At $24 a coin, Neo has a market cap of around $1.7 billion. It was up 77% in 2021 but is down quite considerably from the high of $122 it reached in May of 2021. The Chinese government recently cracked down on cryptocurrencies, so it’ll be interesting to see what happens with Neo in the near future.
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9. Celsius (CEL)
The next digital coin on the list is Celsius, which has a market cap of about $800 million. Founded in 2017, it’s a relative newcomer to the cryptocurrency market. The Celsius Network is a regulated, SEC-compliant lending platform that allows users to receive interest on cryptocurrency deposits or even take out crypto loans. Celsius hopes to attract investors by offering high yields on deposits. And for existing crypto investors wishing to take out a loan, Celsius provides an opportunity to receive dollars without cashing out of their cryptocurrency holdings.
Image Credit: valik4053022 / DepositPhotos.
10. Nano
The next worthy cryptocurrency investors are buying up is Nano. Nano currently trades around $3.08, and it has a market cap of $410 million. Nano is famous for being the “digital money for the modern world” and is designed to enable secure, practically instant payments, without fees, and improves upon legacy financial infrastructure and other modern cryptocurrencies.
Nano was launched in 2015, under the name RaiBlocks, through a public faucet, which allowed users to claim small amounts of XRB after completing a captcha challenge. Anyone with access to a computer or phone could solve captchas and be rewarded with RaiBlocks. In 2018, the name changed to Nano, reflecting the speed at which transactions complete.
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11. Tether (USDT)
The next crypto currency on the list is Tether, which is known as its ticker, USDT. Tether’s current market cap is more than $78 billion. It’s a Stablecoin, pegged to the value of the U.S. dollar, so its price is usually $1, give or take a few hundredths of a cent. In fact, looking back to 2016, the highest trading price I could find was $1.03, which it reached in 2017. USDT works on the Ethereum, EOS, Tron, Algorand and OMG blockchains.
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12. Dash (DASH)
We first heard about Dash in 2014, when it was known as Xcoin. It then became DarkCoin, and in 2015 got its current name, Dash, or digital cash. Dash currently trades for a little under $139 and boasts a market cap of more than $1.4 billion. There are more than 10 million Dash in circulation, out of a maximum of 18.9 million. It can be used for purchases with retailers through its DashDirect app and can be traded on cryptocurrency exchanges that include Coinbase, Binance and Kraken.
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13. TRON
Tron is best described as a decentralized platform focused on content sharing and entertainment. One of its biggest acquisitions was the file-sharing service BitTorrent, a deal that took place in 2018. One of the currency’s benefits is that it can handle 2,000 transactions per second, allowing for daily use. TRON tokens trade at around 6.6 cents and have a collective market capitalization of nearly $6.8 billion.
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14. Zcash (ZEC)
Zcash was released in 2016 and is a cryptocurrency originally based on Bitcoin that focuses on anonymity. Zcash uses technology that allows transactions to be verified without revealing any sensitive information about those transactions.
Now, you might think, aren’t all cryptocurrency transactions private? Well, not so much. Most cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, are in fact not anonymous, but rather pseudonymous. In other words, while they do not explicitly reveal the identities of their users, each user has his or her own public address or addresses, which can be traced back to them through blockchain forensics.
Zcash transactions, on the other hand, by default do not reveal the sending and receiving addresses or the amount being sent. However, there is an option to reveal the data for the purposes of auditing or regulatory compliance. Today, Zcash trades around $142 and has a market cap of just under $2 billion.
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15. NEM
NEM is an acronym for New Economy Movement and is a collection of technologies that use blockchain and cryptography to provide solutions for end-users and businesses. Investors can buy and sell NEM on popular platforms such as Zaif, Binance and Cointiger.
NEM has a current price of 11.6 cents and a market cap of a little over $1 billion; its value was down about 45% in 2021.
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16. Binance Coin (BNB)
The next worthy cryptocurrency on the list is Binance Coin. It was launched in July 2017 and is the biggest cryptocurrency exchange in the world based on daily trading volume.
BNB began 2021 trading at nearly $38 and ended the year at over $511 a share. It is currently trading around $473, and BNB’s market cap is a little under $79 billion. I think it’s one to watch.
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17. Bitcoin SV
Bitcoin SV, or BSV for short, was created after a hard fork of Bitcoin Cash back in 2018, which had, in turn, forked from the BTC blockchain a year earlier. BSV’s current market cap is a little over $2 billion, and it trades for about $110, down significantly from its 52-week high of $491. One of BSV’s biggest selling points is its ability to process more than 100,000 transactions per second.
Image Credit: AlekseyIvanov / DepositPhotos.
18. EOS Coin
EOS is a platform that’s designed to allow developers to build decentralized apps — DApps, for short. The project’s goal is to make it as easy as possible for programmers to develop blockchain technology. EOS’s current market cap is around $2.7 billion, and its price is $2.81.
Image Credit: putilich / DepositPhotos.
19. VeChain (VET)
VeChain is an enterprise-grade, smart-contract platform that was launched in 2015, and is best known for its work in the supply-chain industry. VeChain provides a decentralized trust layer for multi-party ecosystems and has already seen some major successes with high-profile clients including governments.
VeChain currently trades at a little under 8 cents and has a market cap just over over $5 billion. In 2021 this cryptocurrency shot up a whopping 400%.
Image Credit: Vechain.
20. Dai
Similar to Tether or USDT, Dai is a stablecoin, as it’s soft-pegged to the U.S. dollar. In 2020, DAI faced extreme volatility due to the sudden outbreak of COVID-19 and reached a peak of $1.09 before returning back to its current price of 9.9 cents. It has a market cap of $9.5 billion.
Image Credit: AlekseyIvanov / DepositPhotos.
Summing it up
Digital currencies have become a popular choice for investors across the globe looking to earn good returns, thanks to the number of features attached to them that traditional money does not offer. If you are looking to invest in digital coins, the above list offers a decent number of options. Choose the right one and you never know; you could see huge profits. Good luck!
This article originally appeared on The Financially Independent Millennial and was syndicated by MediaFeed.org.
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