Cryptocurrency has garnered a lot of attention from people around the world, and it has become a global phenomenon in recent years. There are more than 5000 cryptocurrencies in the market and it is constantly evolving. According to pwc, the cryptocurrency market will evolve at the pace set by the five key participants: merchants and consumers, tech developers, investors, financial institutions and regulators. The expected growth spurts of legitimacy from one of these participants will bring the market to reach the next stage of its evolution towards mainstream and stable expansion.
Investing in cryptocurrency comes with risks. First, we should determine the the top cryptocurrency choices based on some criteria including longevity, track record, technology, and adoption rate. There are many recommendations on which cryptocurrency to invest in available online. Firstly, it is important to check a company’s performance by comparing its historical data. It is a good sign if the prices are stable and the cryptocurrency is gains traction and becomes valuable over time. However, past performance does not indicate future performance. Next, compare usability and security to ensure that the network can easily handle the transaction. The last step is to see how many people have adopted the cryptocurrency you are considering in. A higher level of adoption would mean that the cryptocurrency has better liquidity that would simplify trading and selling in the future.
Here are the Top 10 Best Cryptocurrencies to invest in 2021 and Beyond!
1. Bitcoin
Bitcoin has been around for the longest of any cryptocurrency. Created by someone under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, it was the first cryptocurrency to appear in the market. With a price, market cap and volume higher than any other investment options, it is understandable why it stays at the top as the leader. Despite thousands of other cryptocurrencies in the market, Bitcoin still accounts for 40% of the total cryptocurrency market cap. Bitcoin is available for trading on top exchanges such as Binance, FTX, OKEx, Huobi Global, CoinTiger and many more.
Many businesses already accept Bitcoin as payment, making this cryptocurrency a smart investment. Besides, larger banks are beginning to incorporate Bitcoin transactions into their offerings. What made Bitcoin particularly noteworthy in 2021 was Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk invested $1.5 billion USD in Bitcoin. As soon as the news emerged, the price of Bitcoin rose by around 14% to over $44,000 per coin. Bitcoin is known to be one of the most stable cryptocurrencies despite its volatility. Bear in mind that Bitcoin fluctuates a lot. Therefore, do not let the fluctuations affect you emotionally as it is a smart long-term investment. It is a wise decision to keep Bitcoin on your investment radar because it has the highest liquidity in the crypto space, making it easy for beginners.
Bitcoin Market cap from October 2020 to August 2021 (Sourced from CoinMarketCap)
Bitcoin is currently ranked #1 with a live market cap of $897,804,725,846 USD at the time of writing. It has a circulating supply of 18,802,393 BTC coins and a maximum supply of 21,000,000 BTC coins. Its market cap reached the highest point, exceeding $1.19 trillion USD in mid-April 2021.
Bitcoin Price from October 2020 to August 2021 (Sourced from CoinMarketCap)
Bitcoin’s current price is $47,749.49 USD and it increased 0.30% has since the last 24 hours. Its 24-hour trading volume of $31,568,350,676 USD. It reached the highest point in mid-May with $63,109.7 USD.
2. Ethereum (ETH)
Ethereum is a decentralized open-source blockchain system launched in 2015, with a market capitalization of $316 billion USD. Its native cryptocurrency is Ether (ETH). The Ethereum blockchain is based on smart contracts, which allow for decentralized applications (dAPPs) such as the widely used decentralized finance services (DeFi). While Ethereum is far behind Bitcoin in terms of value, it is also considerably ahead of its competitors. Despite being released years after certain other cryptocurrencies, it has significantly outperformed its market position due to its unique technology.
As the second-largest cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, Ethereum can be traded on nearly all major crypto exchanges including Binance, Coinbase Pro, OKEx, Kraken, Huobi Global etc. Ether may not be cheap, but it is worth the investment as it has remained one of the top ten cryptocurrencies until 2021.
Ethereum’s Market Cap from October 2020 to August 2021 (Sourced from CoinMarketCap)
At the time of writing, Ethereum is ranked #2 with a market cap of $404,457,345,144 USD. It has a circulating supply of 117,340,072 ETH coins. Its market cap reached $438.59 billion USD, which is the highest point in early May 2021.
Ethereum’s Price from November 2020 to August 2021 (Sourced from CoinMarketCap)
At the time of writing, the Ethereum price is $3,446,88 USD with a 24-hour trading volume of $27,678,296,239 USD. It has increased 6.13% in the last 24 hours. It reached its highest price point of $4168.7 USD in early May 2021.
3. Cardano (ADA)
Known for its flexible network, secure and fast transactions, Cardano is expected to remain one of the most popular cryptocurrencies. Cardano is a blockchain platform with a cryptocurrency called ADA, which uses an exclusive proof-of-stake (PoS) system on the blockchain, known as Ouroboros. Cardano was founded in 2017 by Charles Hoskinson, one of the co-founders of Ethereum. It was developed based on peer-reviewed research and is scalable enough to accommodate global and robust systems. The ADA Token can be traded on Coinbase, Bittrex, Coinmama, Binance, eToro, etc. Furthermore, it is very sustainable as it consumes only 6 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of power.
Cardano’s ADA token has had relatively modest growth compared to other major crypto coins. In 2017, ADA’s price was $0.02 USD. As of August 2021, its price was $2.11 USD. This is an increase of over 10,000%. Some believe that Cardano has a lot more to offer. According to Dare Shonubi of CoinPedia, Cardano might hit $10 USD by the end of 2021, which, if accurate, would make it one of the best coins to invest in by far.
Cardano’s Market Cap from November 2020 to August 2021 (Sourced from CoinMarketCap)
At the time of writing this article, Cardano is ranks #3 with a market cap of $89,325,715,206 USD. It has a circulating supply of 32,145,348,141 ADA coins and a maximum supply of 45,000,000,000 ADA coins. Its market cap reached the highest point, with $94.64 billion USD at the end of August 2021.
Cardano’s Price from November 2020 to August 2021 (Sourced from CoinMarketCap)
Cardano’s price is $2.78 USD, and it increased 1.02% in the last 24 hours. Its 24-hour trading volume $4,831,123,634 USD. It reached its highest point with $2.9442 USD at the end of August 2021.
4. Tether (USDT)
Tether is a stablecoin, which means it is backed by fiat currencies such as the U.S Dollar and the Euro and theoretically keeps a value equal to one of those denominations. It was originally launched by Brock Pierce, Reeve Collins and Craig Sellars as Realcoin in 2014 before renaming into Tether. The token’s peg to the USD is achieved by maintaining a sum of commercial paper, fiduciary deposits, cash, reserve repo notes, and treasury bills in reserves equal in USD value to the number of USDT in circulation. Tether’s value is intended to be more consistent than other cryptocurrencies, which is why it is favored by investors who are wary of the extreme volatility of other coins.
It can be traded on the top exchanges such as Binance, OKEx, FTX, CoinTiger, Huobi Global and many more.
Tether’s Market Cap from November 2020 to August 2021 (Sourced from CoinMarketCap)
At the time of writing this article, Tether ranks #5 with a market cap of $65,643,877,825 USD. It has a circulating supply of 65,600,678,008 USDT coins. Its market cap reached the highest point with $65.57 billion USD at the end of August 2021.
Tether’s Price from September 2020 to July 2021 (Sourced from CoinMarketCap)
Tether’s price is $1.00 USD, and it is down 0.01% in the last 24 hours. It has a 24-hour trading volume of $88,211,005,494 USD. It reached its highest price point of $1.0115 USD in mid-April 2021.
5. Ripple (XRP)
Ripple is the company that unveiled the XRP token, and it is appealing to investors because it offers international transactions, which sets it apart from other cryptocurrencies. As a result, Ripple caters to large institutions rather than individual users. International money transfers through a bank can take up to 10 business days. However, with Ripple, similar transactions take only seconds. Besides, Ripple has contracts with major banks all around the world. The more contracts the Ripple cryptocurrency has, the more accessible it is to adopters. Experts believe that Ripple might explode in the years to come because of the legal situation with the SEC (US Securities and Exchange Commission) regulation, who believe Ripple should be classified as a security. As many feel that Ripple will overcome this temporary problem, prices have plummeted dramatically, creating an amazing buying opportunity.
Investing in Ripple XRP could pay off massively, as the price appears to be recovering and benefitting from the recent surge in the market. In addition, predictions have recovered as a result of many crypto traders becoming more familiar with Ripple.
The top exchanges for trading XRP are currently Binance, OKEx, FTX, CoinTiger, and Huobi Global.
Ripple’s Market Cap from November 2020 to August 2021 (Sourced from CoinMarketCap)
Ripple ranks #6 with a market cap of $55,711,056,728 USD. It has a circulating supply of 46,542,338,341 XRP coins and a maximum supply of 100,000,000,000 XRP coins. Its market cap reached its highest point with $83.51 billion USD in mid-April 2021.
Ripple’s Price from November 2020 to August 2021 (Sourced from CoinMarketCap)
The XRP price is $1.20 USD, and it increased 6.36% in the last 24 hours. Its 24-hour trading volume is $6,087,357,397 USD. It reached its highest price at $1.8392 USD in mid-April 2021.
6. Dogecoin (DOGE)
One of Elon Musk’s jokey tweets about Dogecoin. (Sourced from Elon Musk’s Twitter)
Dogecoin (DOGE) is based on the popular “doge” internet meme and features a Shiba Inu on its logo. It rose to fame thanks to Elon Musk, a superfan and currently considering accepting DOGE as payment at Tesla. The open-source digital currency was created by Billy Markus, Jackson Palmer and was forked from Litecoin in December 2013. This cryptocurrency has had a roller coaster journey over the last 4 months, returning for more than 8000 percent in 2021. Despite being a controversial cryptocurrency, it has surpassed the Rs50 mark, bringing its market capitalization to an all-time high of $80 billion USD.
Many assumed Dogecoin would have vanished by now, but it remains strong in the crypto scene. Dogecoin’s primary use has evolved into a mechanism for individuals to top each other when they come across useful or amusing content on the internet. The main reason to keep an eye on Dogecoin is the enormous support received from Redditors who have been driving up the price like crazy. This is because they believed that pumping up the price could prevent Wall Street hedge funds’ plans on short-selling Dogecoin.
The top exchanges for trading Dogecoin are currently Binance, FTX, OKEx, CoinTiger and Huobi Global.
Dogecoin’s Market Cap from October 2020 to August 2021 (Sourced from CoinMarketCap)
Dogecoin ranks at #7 with a market cap of $39,674,125,519 USD. It has a circulating supply of 131,114,847,997 DOGE coins. Its market cap reached its highest point in early May 2021 with $88.68 billion USD.
Dogecoin’s Price from October 2020 to July 2021 (Sourced from CoinMarketCap)
At the time of writing this article, the Dogecoin price is $0.302591 USD, and it increased 9.47% in the last 24 hours. It has a 24-hour trading volume of $2,564,719,588 USD. It reached the highest point with $0.6848 USD in early May 2021.
7. Solana (SOL)
Solana could be a top investment opportunity you’ve never heard of. It is an up-and-coming competitor to Ethereum, with the primary goal of providing superior dApps and DeFi services. Launched in March 2020 by the Solana Foundation, Solana claims to be able to overcome the ‘blockchain trilemma’, meaning it is capable of supplying both decentralization, security and scalability, which many cryptos have struggled to do. This was achieved because Solana uses the proof-of-history (PoH) consensus developed by Anatoly Yakovenko. Therefore, this makes Solana faster than most cryptos as it has a booming DeFi ecosystem with approximately 301 projects built on top. SOL, Solana’s native token, powers the platform. It can be purchased on most exchanges such as Binance, OKEx, Bilaxy, Huobi Global, etc.
Solana’s Market Cap from October 2020 to September 2021 (Sourced by CoinMarketCap)
Solana ranks #8 with a market capitalization of $32,924,557,968 USD. It has a circulating supply of 290,716,579.63 SOL tokens. Its market cap reached its highest point with $32.95 billion USD on September 2, 2021.
Solana’s Price from October 2020 to September 2021 (Sourced from CoinMarketCap)
At the time of writing, Solana’s price is $113.76 USD, and it increased 1.46% in the last 24 hours. It has a 24-hour trading volume of $3,708,556,175 USD. It reached its highest point with $125.95 USD at the end of August 2021.
8. Polkadot (DOT)
Polkadot (DOT) is a proof-of-stake (PoS), a multi-chain network that aims to bridge different blockchains together. In simple terms, it is a protocol that allows independent blockchains to exchange information. Polkadot was founded by Gavin Wood, the co-founder of Ethereum and inventor of Solidity, the coding language used for Ethereum. Polkadot offers numerous “lanes” to complete transactions in, rather than just one. According to Gavin Wood, Polkadot can handle up to 1 million transactions per second. Polkadot is composed of four components, including relay chain, parachains, parathread and bridges. Investors actively involved in the company also assist in the decision-making process on network fees, network upgrades, and establishing or removing parachains.
Polkadot's native DOT coin has three distinct functions: network governance and operations, and bonding to create parachains (parallel chains). The top exchanges for Polkadot are currently Binance, Huobi Global, HBTC, OKEx and Binance.KR.
Polkadot’s Market Cap from October 2020 to August 2021 (Sourced from CoinMarketCap)
Polkadot ranks #9 with a market cap of $31,444,339,495 USD. It has a circulating supply of 987,579,315 DOT coins. Its market cap reached the highest point with $44.97 billion USD in mid-May 2021.
Polkadot’s Price from October 2020 to August 2021 (Sourced from CoinMarketCap)
Polkadot’s price is $31.84 USD, and it increased 6.44% in the last 24 hours. It has a 24-hour trading volume of $3,007,448,813 USD. Its price reached the highest price point of $47.95 USD in mid-May 2021.
9. Uniswap (UNI)
Uniswap is a popular decentralized trading protocol known for facilitating automated trading of decentralized finance (DeFi) tokens. Uniswap was released in the DeFi framework, and the UNI coin was released in 2020. Uniswap was created as a way to provide AMMs to a wider audience on Ethereum. The platform’s creator is Ethereum developer Hayden Adams, who is also a former Siemens mechanical engineer. Uniswap provides two main services: delivering and utilizing liquidity. Besides, users can also add new tokens to Uniswap without paying an exchange fee, making it easier for investors to access new and low market cap tokens.
DEXs are an entirely new area of the crypto market that is rapidly growing and offers a desirable alternative for our current system. Therefore, Uniswap could be desirable option to invest in. Uniswap is available for trading on major exchanges against other cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, fiat currencies, and more. These include Binance, OKEx and Coinbase Pro, along with Uniswap’s protocol itself.
Uniswap’s Market Cap from October 2020 to August 2021 (Sourced from CoinMarketCap)
Uniswap ranks #11 with a market cap of $18,547,393,284 USD. It has a circulating supply of 611,643,724 UNI coins and a maximum supply of 1,000,000,000 UNI coins. Its price reached the highest point of $23.18 billion USD in mid-May 2021.
Uniswap’s Price from October 2020 to August 2021 (Sourced from CoinMarketCap)
Uniswap’s price is $30.32 USD, and it increased by 0.53% in the last 24 hours. It has a 24-hour trading volume of $750,616,056 USD. Its price reached the highest point of $44.69 USD in early May 2021.
10. Chainlink (LINK)
Founded in 2017, Chainlink is a blockchain abstraction layer that enables universally connected smart contracts. It uses oracles to connect blockchains and securely interact with external data feeds, events and payment methods. This provides the critical off-chain information needed by complex smart contracts to become the dominant form of digital agreement. The native token is LINK. Considering that the LINK token is popular in the cryptocurrency market, it is available on several exchanges such as Binance, Huobi Global, Coinbase Pro, Gate.io, Kraken and many more.
Chainlink stands out as a cryptocurrency due to its attractive price. While the shares are affordable, they are not termed penny stocks. This appeals to investors because it has demonstrated that it can increase in value, and there is still a lot of room for growth.
Chainlink Market Cap from October 2020 to August 2021 (Sourced from CoinMarketCap)
Chainlink ranks #12 with a market cap of $13,152,893,343 USD. It has a circulating supply of 449,009,553.92 LINK tokens and a maximum supply of 1,000,000,000 tokens. Its market cap reached its highest point of $21.87 billion USD in early May 2021.
Chainlink’s Price from October 2020 to August 2021 (Sourced from CoinMarketCap)
Chainlink’s price is $29.31 USD, and it has increased 8.85% in the last 24 hours. It has a 24-hour trading volume of $1,798,976,358 USD. Its price reached the highest point with $52.2 USD in early May 2021.
Conclusion
We hope you have a good idea of some of the top 10 best cryptocurrencies that are full of potential and worthy of investing in this year and beyond. Everything in this article is written based on our research and findings. Feel free to use it as your reference. However, we are not responsible for any investment outcomes. Bear in mind that investing comes with risks. Investment decisions should be made after spending time researching investment opportunities. Happy investing!
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