According to Coinmarketcap, the cryptocurrency market has a capitalization of over $900B. It has over 10,000 cryptocurrencies listed on crypto exchanges. The vast market makes it challenging to pick the best cryptocurrencies to invest in, with a good share being scammed.
To make it easier, we will discuss the best 12 promising cryptocurrencies. These crypto assets are resilient and have the potential to surge in the future.
Read through the end and hopefully learn and discover the next best crypto to buy now in 2022.
What are cryptocurrencies?
Cryptocurrencies are digital assets built on blockchain. Blockchain is a network of transactions distributed across many devices globally; cryptocurrencies have inherent monetary value derived from their token holders. Through blockchain technology, digital currencies can transfer from one wallet to another.
The decentralized nature of Blockchain networks gives them the ability to exist outside the control of central authorities.
Many blockchain networks out there have differences in terms of performance and utility. We will review some hidden gems built on various blockchains and discuss a total of 12 exciting coins.
Bitcoin was the first cryptocoin built on the blockchain; many have since emerged trying to compete with Bitcoin, generally referred to as altcoins. The competition is why you might read Bitcoin vs. Ethereum comparisons on many cryptocurrency list options that you will find online.
Blockchain technology has applications in the metaverse world, payment services, blockchain-based games, and non-fungible tokens.
Factors to consider when buying crypto coins
Thorough research is required to compare your crypto options.
You can examine hot coin comparisons, Bitcoin Vs. Ethereum. Conduct a cryptocurrency market capitalization analysis. All this research will give you a better idea of which options work best for you.
Factors we recommend checking before purchasing digital assets include:
- The crypto project website should be up-to-date, engaging, and informative
- Read the white paper to understand the project
- Scrutinize social media channels and followers
- Analyze the crypto project partnerships, and the team behind it
- Analyze the crypto price analytics, past performance, and predictions
- Check the coin’s utility
The following are the best Cryptocurrencies to buy in 2022.
| Crypto | Symbol | Blockchain |
| Bitcoin | BTC | Bitcoin |
| Ethereum | ETH | Ethereum |
| Binance Coin | BNB | Binance Smart Chain |
| Cardano | ADA | Cardano |
| Avalanche | Avax | Avalanche |
| Polygon | Matic | Ethereum |
| Chainlink | Link | Ethereum |
| Hedera Hashgraph | Hbar | Hedera Hashgrah |
| Sandbox | Sand | Ethereum |
| Ripple | XRP | Ripple |
| Polkadot | Dot | Polkadot |
| Solana | Sol | Solana |
Bitcoin
Bitcoin was the first digital currency built using blockchain technology; according to its whitepaper, the coin was created by a pseudonym, Satoshi Nakamoto.
Many theories have emerged on who Satoshi Nakamoto is, making it a mystery waiting to be solved. Bitcoin has since held the number 1 spot by market capitalization.
How does Bitcoin work?
Bitcoin is built on its blockchain network from which it derives its name. The blockchain runs on a proof of work consensus mechanism, whereby computers compete to verify transactions by solving complex equations incentivized by new BTC tokens. This process is called mining and consumes a lot of energy.
Reasons for buying Bitcoin
Bitcoin has been the indisputable leader of the crypto world since its inception. It has a long blockchain of transactions which gives it immunity from bad actors and robustness.
The complex equations verifying every block make it impossible to solve or redo the entire blockchain. Blockchain technology is transparent and operates outside the confines of centralized authority.
There are no restrictions on Bitcoin; it is free from censorship. The feature makes it possible to transact without intermediaries who usually invoice huge fees.
In terms of security, the blockchain network has never encountered a problem. The decentralization aspect of the blockchain makes it impossible to interfere with how transactions are handled.
The above factors have helped Bitcoin curve its niche in the crypto space and have helped it curve a loyal following of crypto enthusiasts, influencers, developers, and miners. Crypto analysts agree that Bitcoin is here to stay and will remain undisputed as the crypto king in the future.
Ethereum
In 2013, programmer Vitalik Buterin conceived the idea of the Ethereum blockchain that, unlike Bitcoin, would enable programmers to create smart contracts. A smart contract is an application built on a blockchain; the blockchain receives and executes commands through code incorporated into the smart contracts. The team later crowdfunded the Idea, and on 30 July 2015, the Ethereum blockchain went live.
How does Ethereum work?
Like Bitcoin, Ethereum runs on a proof of work consensus mechanism where computers compete to solve complex mathematical equations. Solving the equations is energy-intensive, putting Ethereum on the spot over environmental concerns for Carbon emissions. The concerns led to the “Merge.”
The Merge is an upgrade on the Ethereum blockchain that moves Ethereum from a proof of work consensus mechanism to a proof of stake (POS) consensus mechanism. POS mechanisms are more sustainable and do not require computers to solve complex equations. Validators are tasked with verifying the blockchain. To act as a validator, you must stake a minimum of 32ETH to the network. Bad validators have their staked ETH slashed.
Reasons for buying Ethereum
The advent of Ethereum meant that the community could use blockchain technology for more than just payments. Through Ethereum, contracts can be written on the blockchain, bringing new opportunities like Decentralized finance (Defi), decentralized apps (Dapps), decentralized autonomous organizations, and non-fungible tokens.
The contracts cannot be censored, are publicly verifiable, and are robust. Decentralized exchanges have been built on the blockchain and are fully functional without needing a centralized entity.
Ethereum network is already one of the most prominent players in the crypto world; at press time, it comes second to Bitcoin by market capitalization. There’s a lot to like about Ethereum, and it has more real-world utility than many other crypto projects. While nobody can predict its performance over time, Ethereum has a better chance of seeing long-term growth.
Binance Coin
Binance Coin (BNB) is the native token of the Binance Cryptocurrency exchange. According to Coinmarketcap, Binance is the world’s largest crypto exchange, trading volumes with deep liquidity and trading licenses in multiple countries.
How does Binance Coin work?
Binance coin is built on the Binance Smart chain blockchain. BNB was first launched as a traditional ERC-20 token on the Ethereum blockchain but started being issued from the Binance blockchain after Binance announced its own.
The blockchain runs a POS consensus mechanism with smart contract compatibility like Ethereum. The blockchain is on a mission to become an infrastructure services provider for the entire blockchain ecosystem.
Binance Coin has gained popularity among crypto enthusiasts and went through a significant price surge at the beginning of 2021, which enormously benefited the exchange.
Reasons for buying BNB
Because of the current landscape of the cryptocurrency market and the progress of Binance, BNB is considered an excellent utility token.
Along with its use of making transactions on the Binance exchange, you can invest in this coin to earn profit. In addition, users can use the coin to purchase gift cards, crypto credit card bills, entertainment, travel, and more.
Utility of the Binance coin on the Binance exchange includes:
- 25 percent discount on all spot trading and margin trading fees paid in BNB.
- Binance allows BNB holders to save 10 percent on Futures trading fees.
- BNB holders can participate in Initial Exchange Offering through the Launchpad feature on the exchange.
- Users holding BNB can also qualify for the Binance VIP programs with lower transaction fees and more significant transaction amounts.
- Binance offers up to 4% referral commission as a bonus to BNB users.
- BNB holders can earn passively by staking BNB through the BNB vault.
The Binance chain has growing applications in the NFT sector, metaverse, and play-to-earn games.
Cardano
ADA (Cardano) is the native cryptocurrency of the Cardano blockchain. It is named after the Italian mathematician Gerolamo Cardano, while the cryptocurrency itself is named after English mathematician Ada Lovelace.
Cardano was developed by Charles Hoskinson, a former Ethereum founder who left after a dispute with Vitalik Buterin. The Cardano blockchain went live in 2017.
How does Cardano work?
Cardano uses a proof-of-stake protocol named Ouroboros; this contrasts Bitcoin and Ethereum, which use proof-of-work protocols. Proof-of-stake blockchains use significantly lower energy than proof-of-work chains; Ouroboros can run permissioned and permissionless block transactions.
Cardano runs on two layers. Layer 1 is the settlement layer similar to Bitcoin and keeps track of transactions. Layer 2 is the computation layer, enabling smart contracts and applications to run on the platform.
Reasons for buying Cardano
Cardano is arguably the natural evolution of crypto from Bitcoin and Ethereum. It provides more utility than the two networks and has been dubbed the “Ethereum Killer.” Cardano offers an exciting array of real-world use cases beyond mere speculation and offers the development platform without the high processing fees and enormous energy consumption like Ethereum Ethereum.
The Vasil Update could help cement Cardano’s lead, a phased platform development approach. The current phase, Basho, focuses on scalability. As part of the Basho era, Cardano plans to launch a hard fork called Vasil upgrade.
Vasil aims to improve Cardano’s performance by reducing the cost of transactions by lowering their size. When the upgrade happens, Vasil will be the latest in a series of ongoing updates that will help keep Cardano relevant in the face of stiff competition.
Avax
Avax is the token of the Avalanche blockchain network. The blockchain was founded as an Ethereum competitor by Ava Labs and computer scientists at Cornell University, one of whom, former professor Emin Gün Sirer, is a veteran in cryptographic research, according to CoinMarketCap.
How does Avalanche work?
Unlike Ethereum, where nodes must all validate each transaction, Avalanche’s three individual blockchains, each with unique utility, can validate transactions independently.
The X-Chain (Exchange Chain) platform is used for trading and creating digital assets. The C-Chain (Contract Chain) is the chain used for smart contracts. The P-Chain (Platform Chain) is the chain for staking and validating AVAX; Stakers or validators of Avax will receive AVAX rewards on this chain.
The chains make Avalanche more scalable and better at handling large volumes of transactions.
Reasons for buying Avax
Avax runs on a proof of stake consensus mechanism that rivals Ethereum and Bitcoin in terms of performance.
We like tokens that have a burn program which reduces the number of tokens in circulation. Avalanche’s burn of 100% of platform transaction fees is the most aggressive of all the top coin projects. For example, Solana burns 50% of its transaction fees, the next most aggressive blockchain with that mechanism.
Avalanche is EVM-compatible, which can be easily bridged with the Ethereum network. The interoperability enables users to leverage the strengths of both networks.
Deploying Smart contracts on Avalanche cost just a tenth of what they cost on the Ethereum network. Front running, high gas fees, and other adverse effects of slow smart contract blockchains are now a thing of the past.
Avalanche Virtual Machines (VMs) enable developers to launch blockchains with many application-specific features. The Ethereum Virtual Machine is fully running on Avalanche, with more VMs.
The interoperability of blockchains is the future. The Avalanche Bridge (AB) enables easy transfers of Ethereum and Avalanche assets between blockchains.
Polygon
It was developed by a team that made significant contributions to the Ethereum blockchain platform. Polygon network is a decentralized Ethereum scaling solution that enables developers to build scalable, user-friendly dApps with low transaction fees without sacrificing security.
How does Polygon work?
Polygon is a “layer two” solution; it expands Ethereum into a multi-chain system, improving transaction and verification speed and lowering gas fees.
Polygon offers a wide range of scaling architecture solutions for Ethereum, such as the Matic PoS chain and the Plasma Chain. The architecture results in much lower gas fees when compared to using Ethereum directly, and Polygon can reach 10,000 transactions per second, making it one of the fastest networks.
At press time, Polygon hosts over 19,000 decentralized applications, including some from companies like Meta and Stripe.
Reasons for buying Polygon
The Polygon network brings tangible utility to Ethereum owing to its scalability issues through its innovative technology. While the utility is commendable, the Polygon dev team has more scaling solutions in the pipeline; these include Polygon zkEVM, Polygon Avail, Polygon Miden, and Polygon Zero. These combined solutions make the Polygon layer 2 solutions a force in the crypto world.
The Polygon ecosystem is rapidly expanding with new partnerships. For instance, Instagram is adopting the Polygon blockchain through digital collectibles to showcase Non-fungible tokens. Prada and Adidas Original launched NFTs on Polygon, while Stripe launched global payouts on the network.
Another plus is its investment in carbon neutrality with a vision to become Carbon positive in the future, which recently has prompted price rallies.
Chainlink
Blockchains are designed in a way that they interact with themselves, creating the challenge of deriving information from the outside world. Chainlink comes to play; it is the link between the outside world and blockchain networks. Chainlink uses a decentralized oracle network to facilitate safe interactions between blockchains and external data feeds, payment methods, and events the developers hope will allow smart contracts to become the dominant form of digital payment.
How does Chainlink work?
Chainlink divides the execution process into three steps to facilitate communication between its users and external data sources: Oracle Selection, Data Reporting, and Result Aggregation. Decentralized Oracle Networks (DON) is designed to enhance and extend the capabilities of smart contracts on the main chain or target blockchain through functions that are
not available natively. They provide the three primary resources in computing systems: storage, networking, and computation. A DON aims to offer these resources with vital confidentiality, integrity, availability of properties, and accountability.
Reasons for buying Chainlink
Chainlink brings some significant benefits to the blockchain. Oracles are essential to network expansion; they are at the core of some of the most exciting developments in the crypto industry. For instance, decentralized exchanges utilize oracles to determine the price of cryptocurrencies without requiring an order book.
Chainlink allows firms to continue to leverage this powerful technology in a trustless open verifiable manner. Users can rest assured that the data they receive is not corrupt, up to date, and timely. In the event of a single node failure, the system automatically replaces it with a better ranking alternative.
Hedera Hashgraph (HBAR)
Hedera platform uses a distributed ledger technology that is an alternative to blockchains. The technology is patented by the Hedera company and uses its native token Hbar. The only public distributed ledger utilizes the fast, fair, secure Hashgraph consensus mechanism.
How does the Hedera Hashgraph work?
Instead of mining, nodes on the Hedera Hashgraph communicate with each other/ gossip and compare notes on the network’s transaction history, unlike blockchains that bundle data into blocks or use miners to validate transactions. Each “gossip” message contains one or more transactions plus a digital signature, timestamp, and cryptographic hashes of two earlier events. The Hedera white paper co-authored by Baird explains that “at the end of each round, each node calculates the shared state after processing all transactions that were received in the round and before,” and it “digitally signs a hash of that shared state, puts it in a transaction, and gossips it out to the community.”
Reasons for buying HBAR
The Hedera Hashgraph network achieves 10,000 HBAR cryptocurrency transactions per second, in a single shard and on-ledger, without compromising network security or stability.
Hashgraph consensus is incredibly lightweight, making the cost per HBAR transaction minimal, about $0.0001. With high throughput, micropayments using Hbars tokens are a practical reality.
Never wait for block confirmations again to complete transactions. HBAR transactions achieve fast finality, on-ledger, within three to five seconds. Be confident in payment settlements and offer modern digital experiences within your ecosystem.
Sandbox
The Sandbox is a virtual Metaverse where players can build, play, own, and monetize their virtual experiences. It is a user-generated platform that allows anyone to build and monetize from the metaverse.
SAND is the native utility token of The Sandbox built on the Ethereum blockchain. Users can use it within its ecosystem to create asset tokens, buy and sell assets on the marketplace, and participate in transactions involving land parcels.
How does Sandbox work?
The Sandbox virtual world comprises digital lots of real estate bought with LAND tokens, where players can become digital property developers and interact. Players can use NFTs to assign verifiable ownership to their digital assets that integrate into games and trade on marketplaces.
Reasons for buying Sandbox
The Sandbox has celebrity-generated hype, and hype tends to exacerbate otherwise already-volatile moves. Hype is a double-edged sword in the crypto market that has recently resulted in severe volatility in SAND tokens.
The amount of celebrity interest behind The Sandbox is intriguing. Icons like hip-hop legend Snoop Dogg have scooped up virtual real estate on The Sandbox’s platform. DJ Steve Aoki recently purchased land in the metaverse enabling users to participate in virtual concerts.
Virtual real estate prices could remain elevated as more celebrities join the fun. The Sandbox provides many options for capital appreciation for investors outside of SAND tokens as an investment opportunity. Accordingly, this space is a vibrant one, driven by a vibrant community, with hype key factors investors will have to continue to consider over time.
The Sandbox has garnered significant investments. Companies like Facebook owner Meta and Atari are betting on the metaverse as the next iteration of the internet, where people will work, play, socialize and shop so that users will make that money.
Ripple
Ripple is a blockchain-based digital payment network and protocol, released in 2012 with XRP as the native cryptocurrency token. The Ripple network is a real-time gross settlement system, currency exchange, and payment network created by Ripple Labs Inc., a US-based technology company. The Ripple technology is built on a distributed open-source protocol and supports tokens representing fiat currency, cryptocurrency, commodities, or other value units.
Ripple claims to enable “secure, instantly and nearly free global financial transactions of any size with no chargebacks.”
How does Ripple work?
Ripple uses a consensus mechanism with mining or delegating, and it uses a group of bank-owned servers to confirm transactions.
Reasons for Buying Ripple
Ripple’s expansion into central bank digital currencies will be a big win. With the rising popularity of cryptocurrencies over the last decade, governments and central banks worldwide have been scrambling to create digital currencies created and controlled by central banks.
In March 2021, Ripple announced that it is creating private ledgers, which would be able to address these. Ripple also claimed that its ledger technology can handle tens of thousands of Transactions per second and has the potential to reach hundreds of thousands of transactions per second.
Many cryptocurrencies created weren’t founded by a company but rather by a few individuals, unlike Ripple, which has a team of over 500 employees to continue building and expanding its network. The advantage is enormous, especially as Ripple and XRP become more mainstream. The advantage gives Ripple the workforce to send salespeople out to banks and other financial institutions to promote their technology and explain the use cases, which could be a significant advantage in helping Ripple to grow.
Polkadot
It is a versatile software that incentivizes a global network of computers to operate its blockchain, on top of which developers can launch their blockchains. Its native crypto is the Dot token. Polkadot provides interoperability and interconnectivity across blockchains by enabling independent chains to securely exchange messages and perform transactions with each other without the need for a third party. The interoperability enables cross-chain transfers of data or assets between different blockchains and for cross-chain decentralized apps to be built using the Polkadot Network.
How does Polkadot work?
Polkadot uses three types of blockchains: the Relay Chain, the main Polkadot blockchain. Parachains are custom blockchains that utilize the relay chain’s capabilities to confirm that transactions are valid. And bridges, which allow interoperability with other blockchains.
Reasons for buying Polkadot
Polkadot is gaining interest from investors because it is more interactive with more use cases. Blockchain devs can link blockchains to the Polkadot system and even create entirely new blockchains.
As digital currencies become more popular, upstarts like Polkadot will take some of the market shares from major players like bitcoin and ethereum. Investors and venture capitalists are turning toward upcoming blockchain networks that provide alternatives to Ethereum, “Ethereum killers,” as some crypto investors have dubbed these newcomers.
Polkadot can handle about 1,000 transactions per second. When fully operational, Polkadot is anticipated to deliver over 1,000,000 TPS. Polkadot found a solution to a fundamental scalability dilemma.
Solana
Solana is a decentralized blockchain developed to enable scalable and user-friendly applications. The Solana network is famous for its low transaction costs and speed; a transaction costs less than $0.01 with a 400 millisecond block time. With the Solana blockchain, there is no need for layer 2 and sharding solutions that increase the complexity of a network.
How does Solana work?
Solana operates on a decentralized network of computers using a blockchain digital ledger with a proof of stake consensus mechanism. Validators manage and track the currency and record every transaction made in it.
Reasons for buying Solana
Solana is a potential “Ethereum killer” altcoin investors look to; Solana’s high-powered platform is impressive and drives innovation in several ways. For starters, it is the ease at which consumers can make online payments using Solana.
Solana is recently gaining market share fast in the NFT world. NFT buyers on other blockchains like Ethereum have noted congestion issues and much higher transaction fees. As discussed earlier, Solana’s low fee, high-speed network has proven beneficial for NFT investors looking to nab a popular piece of digital artwork.
Conclusion
Each of these 12 cryptocurrencies has a unique technology, making them stand apart. However, the one thing that’s clear and common across all of them is that each of them has showcased a significant return on investment since inception, be them at the official ICO periods, at the start of the project’s life, or just a year ago.
