Popular Cryptocurrencies In: 2022

Back then, the only people who invested were people who loved cryptocurrencies. There were also only a few hundred to invest in, unlike today.

But now, the market has changed a lot, and serious investors are flooding the market. In addition, the number of cryptocurrencies has also increased. Instead of a few hundred, the number has increased to around 8,000.

Having a large number of cryptocurrencies can help you diversify your portfolio and give you options, but sometimes it can be very confusing.

Invest in Cryptocurrencies

Like stocks, real estate and gold, the decision to invest or not in cryptocurrencies is a well-calculated decision that cannot be coerced, induced or rushed. It is important that you come to a conclusion yourself. You are solely responsible for the losses that you incur.

Does this mean that you do not need help to identify the best cryptocurrency to invest in? Absolutely not! In fact, this is where you should have more trust in others. Before investing, you must understand your investment objectives, delineate them and then start working.

The Current State of the Cryptocurrency Markets

It all started with Bitcoin in 2009. Litecoin and Ethereum quickly joined and competed fiercely with Bitcoin for a part of the market population. Since then, thousands of new cryptocurrencies have appeared on the market, but none have enjoyed the success of Bitcoin – which reached an all-time high of over $68,000 in November 2021. In fact, 92 per cent of the blockchain projects that were launched since 2015 have failed. This makes it important to carefully consider which top cryptocurrency to invest in before putting your money into it.

Bitcoin (BTC)

Introduced for the first time in 2009, Bitcoin is the first implementation of a cryptocurrency network. Satoshi Nakamoto, an anonymous individual or group of people, sent Bitcoin's technical document to prominent cryptographers and programmers in 2008. That's how Bitcoin was born.

The document entitled "Bitcoin: a Peer-to-peer Electronic Cash System" described all the details and Bitcoin plans. In January 2009, Satoshi extracted the first block of Bitcoin, often called Genesis Block, for a reward of 50 coins. The extraction of the Genesis Block caused the Bitcoin network to get activated.

Unlike traditional currencies that rely on government and corporate bodies to create currencies, Bitcoin is different. Bitcoin is a decentralised peer-to-peer protocol that relies on its users to create more units. But by no means is it the first.

Nick Szabo reflected on the idea of a decentralised digital currency called Bit Gold. And Bitcoin can be seen as a direct implementation of the Bit Gold system. Instead of a private ledger held by a body in a centralised system, the Bitcoin ledger is public.

This public book is called the blockchain.

Tokens are created, and transactions are verified by a working test algorithm and a process called mining. The miners verify the transactions by solving a computing puzzle and then add a transaction block to the blockchain.

There will be only 21 million Bitcoins. This is the limit, and of these, Satoshi has 1 million. The Bitcoin Foundation is currently developing and maintaining the Bitcoin network.

Recent Bitcoin News 

• October 2021: Bitcoin experienced a big price leap of 3.54% after trading began on the first-ever Bitcoin Futures ETF.
• November 2021: Bitcoin activated the long-awaited Taproot upgrade, which makes smart contracts possible. The coin hit an all-time high of about $69,000. Aldo, El Salvador announced its plans to create a tax-free city in which Bitcoin would be legal tender.
• December 2021: The Omicron variant caused economic turmoil, and BTC experienced a large price drop.
• January 2022: Kazakhstan experienced political upheaval and went through a government-enforced internet shutdown. This nation is the globe's 2nd largest BTC mining area, so the cryptocurrency took a huge hit.

What Makes Bitcoin Feasible in 2022?

What makes Bitcoin a good option for investors is its great popularity. Since its inception, Bitcoin has always been a favourite among fans. But recent increases in the price also interest veteran investors – especially since it reached an all-time high of over $60,000 in November 2021.

Market Capitalisation of Bitcoin

Currently (early 2022), Bitcoin has a market capitalisation of $812.94 billion with a unit price of $42,967.80. Of the 21 million bitcoins that will exist, about 19 million have already been issued.

Problems with Bitcoin

Bitcoin, being a cryptocurrency that was developed in 2009, is much slower than other cryptos. Bitcoin also faces some scalability issues. That is why the Bitcoin Foundation incorporated the Segregated Witness system, or Segwit, to solve some of the problems.

The mainstream media, many cryptocurrency enthusiasts and also environmentalists have talked a lot about energy consumption due to Bitcoin. Bitcoin mining wastes a lot of energy. This is about 23 TWh, which is enough to supply the entire country of Ecuador with energy.

Litecoin (LTC)

Charlie Lee, a former Google employee, created Litecoinin 2011. Litecoin is one of the first cryptocurrencies created after Bitcoin. While it still looks like an altcoin, it's not really the same as Bitcoin. Litecoin is also a peer-to-peer open-source cryptocurrency project and is under license X11.

The main differences between Litecoin and Bitcoin are:

• Litecoin has a block generation time of 2.5 minutes, much lower than the 10 minutes of Bitcoin, and uses a different hash algorithm.
• Instead of Bitcoin's SHA256 algorithm, Litecoin uses scrypt as a working test algorithm. The main reason for using scrypt is that it is much more difficult to create FPGA and ASIC platforms for scrypt.
• Litecoin has a greater number of coins circulating in the market, 69 million to be exact. Like Bitcoin, the rate of generation of tokens per block is reduced by half every four years.

The Litecoin development team was extremely quick to solve problems related to scalability. Litecoin was one of the first cryptocurrencies to adopt a segregated control system.

Litecoin is compatible with the lighting network that allows you to process transactions approximately four times faster than Bitcoin.

Recent Litecoin News

• September 2021: A fake press release stated that Walmart would begin to accept LTC as payment. LTC almost immediately experienced a jump in the price of 24%, hitting an ATH. However, after the press release was found to be fake, prices dropped by 17% within the next hour.
• November 2021: After making a large deal with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, LTC's price jumped by 13%. Litecoin also launched a new debit card in collaboration with Unbanked, and analysts predict the coins price could reach $1,000 as a result.

Market Capitalisation of Litecoin

Litecoin currently has a market capitalisation of $10 billion and a total number of 69 million coins currently circulating. Litecoin also shows consistent progress over the years and has never ceased to amaze the crypto community.

In addition, Litecoin is relatively cheap, around $146.57. Both large and small investors can invest in this cryptocurrency.

Problems with Litecoin

The Litecoin Foundation has been very active with respect to the improvement of the cryptocurrency. There are no major setbacks with Litecoin. But like Bitcoin, Litecoin generation also wastes a lot of resources during the mining process.

Ethereum (ETH)

Ethereum is the pioneer in the field of smart contracts and the development of decentralised applications (DAPPs). It is an original idea of the adolescent genius coder Vitalik Buterin. Vitalik's father, a computer scientist by profession, got his son interested in Bitcoin and the concept of cryptocurrencies. Years later, Vitalik himself created a cryptocurrency with the support of some enthusiasts.

According to Vitalik, the main reason behind the creation of Ethereum was the fact that Bitcoin doesn't have its own programming language. So, Vitalik wanted to have a cryptocurrency network that was much smarter than Bitcoin. Ethereum has its own virtual machine called EVM.

This virtual machine allows the creation of intelligent contracts and decentralised applications. These contracts are created using special programming languages such as Solidity, Serpent, LLL and Mutan.

This cryptocurrency platform is the largest distributed computing system in the world. Ethereum is also the most used platform for creating ICO projects, with approximately 50% market share. This gives an idea of the popularity of Ethereum.

Recent Ethereum News

• November 2021: Time Magazine held Ether on its balance sheet. Time announced the plan for using ETH to create metaverse-related content.
• December 2021: Ethereum launched a new network upgrade, Arrow Glacier, as part of its shift from PoW to PoS — which would be a more green-friendly model.
• January 2022: Along with other crypto and crypto-related stocks, Ethereum dropped significantly.

Market Capitalisation of Ethereum

Currently, each Ethereum token, or Ether, is priced at $3,332.78. Ethereum has a market capitalisation of $397B. Although the platform has seen many ups and downs, it has never stopped progressing.

What makes Ethereum a great option to invest in is its popularity and quick updates.

Problems with Ethereum

Like Bitcoin and many other altcoins, Ethereum also uses the work proof system, Proof-of-Work, to verify transactions and create new tokens. But Vitalik realised the threat this poses to the environment. Then, the development team made the decision to slowly change the platform to be backed by proof of participation, Proof-of-Stake.

They made great efforts to quickly steer the network towards a Proof-of-Stake configuration.

There are no real problems with Ethereum since the development team is always updating it to follow and anticipate the new industry standards. But as always, bifurcation in large quantities can cause discrepancies and can introduce some errors or gaps.

Ethereum Classic (ETC)

Ethereum Classic and Ethereum are the same in their great majority, but they differ in some aspects. In May 2016, DAO, a decentralised autonomous organisation, created a venture capital fund on the Ethereum platform. They raised about $168 million very quickly.

Unfortunately, there were some loopholes in the system. Some security experts and blockchain activists rushed to point out the flaws, but these were not resolved in any way. As a result, in June, an anonymous user abused the system and withdrew 3.6 million Ether.

This 3.6 million Ether was valued at around $50 million at that time.

This divided the entire Ethereum user base into two. Some people wanted the Ethereum Foundation to carry out a huge bifurcation to restore the lost tokens.

But the most orthodox users demanded that it not be done since they considered the blockchain to be immutable. Anyway, the original foundation performed a bifurcation to restore the Ethers.

A different entity decided to separate from Ethereum to support the cause of the more orthodox. This is how Ethereum Classic was born. Since then, Ethereum Classic experienced massive changes and bifurcated quite often to further separate from Ethereum.

Is Ethereum Classic Still Relevant to Investment in 2022?

Yes, of course, it is still relevant. Although separated from Ethereum, it still follows its basic concepts. It has the ability to create intelligent contracts, as well as decentralised applications. Ethereum Classic is also updating its network to be supported by a participation test system.

Recent Ethereum Classic News

• June 2021: Digital Currency Group (DCG) purchased $50 million worth of shares of Grayscale Ethereum Classic Trust, making the coin's price double.
• January 2022: The ETC Cooperative began funding the development of the Core-Geth client, Ethereum Classic's main node.

Market Capitalisation of Ethereum Classic

At this time, it has a price of around $32.22 per token with a market capitalisation of $4B. Ethereum Classic is a very promising project and so far shows great figures.

Tether (USDT)

Tether (USDT) is another highly popular stablecoin, ranking at #4 for market capitalisation at the beginning of 2022. Tether, though, is pretty different from the cryptos mentioned above in that it's intended to be worth $1. That's right; it is supposed to be exactly equivalent to $1 – down to the cent. So, if the value of USD dropped overnight, USDT would drop by the exact same amount.

With coins like BTC having crazy figures (tens of thousands of dollars for one coin!), why would anybody want to invest in a cryptocurrency that's only worth $1? Well, USD is considered the ultimate safe-haven currency – so, logically, USDT would be as well. It's a way to invest in a safe-haven asset while still enjoying the advantages of cryptocurrency: flexibility, rapid payments, and privacy.

When the cryptocurrency market goes through slumps, USDT will remain stable as long as USD also remains stable. And there's yet another advantage: it's far cheaper and faster to transfer BTC into USDT than into USD.

Recent Tether News

• October 2021: Tether is fined $41 million for falsely claiming to have enough USD cash reserves to cover all the tokens it issues.
• December 2021: Myanmar adopted USDT as an official currency.
• January 2022: Tether froze $160M worth of USDT on the Ethereum blockchain

Market Capitalisation of Tether

At the time of writing, USDT has a market cap of $78B and a price of $1. In the past 24 hours, it has experienced a trading volume of $41B.

Tether Problems

In October 2021, Tether was hit with a huge fine for falsely claiming to hold USD cash reserves for each unit of USDT sold. Why is this such a big deal? Well, the whole concept of USDT (it is exactly equal to $1) hinges on Tether's collateral: in essence, they must have $1 USD worth of currency sitting in deposit. Without the reserve of dollars backed up, there's no way to ensure that the crypto is worth $1.

In May 2021, as an event leading up to the fine, Tether released its reserve breakdown. The company was found to only back 2.9% of USDT with cash equivalent.

There is a silver lining, though: ever since Tether found itself in hot water, it has been taking steps to improve the quality of its reserves. It has stopped investing in "repo" agreements for short-term securities.

Solana (SOL)

Solana was founded in 2017 and has built a pretty large audience since then, largely due to its perks over Ethereum: its blockchain has far lower transaction fees, has faster processing times, and is more scalable. And it's not by a small amount either. Ethereum can complete about 13 transactions per second, whereas Solana can carry out thousands per second! That's because Solana works on PoH and PoS models, while Ethereum is on PoW. ETH is poised to switch to PoS soon, but Solana got there first.

Another advantage of SOL is that its PoS and PoH verification processes are far more environmentally-friendly, making SOL a much greener alternative to the biggest stablecoins.

Due to the points listed above, in recent months, Solana has experienced a huge amount of attention, and it has experienced a YoY growth of 4,199%.

Recent SOL News

• November 2021: Solana became the third cryptocurrency to be added to the Bloomberg Terminal with a standalone tracker (the other two were BTC and ETH).
• December 2021: Solana became Grayscale's 16th dedicated crypto portfolio.
• January 2022: Bank of America stated that Solano will likely become the "Visa of Crypto" and would steal Ethereum's market share, thanks to the platform's ease of use, low transaction fees, and scalability.

Market Capitalisation of Solana

At the time of the update, SOL has a market cap of $46B and a price of $147.77. It also experienced a 24-hour trading volume of $1,153,270,811. SOL does not have a fixed max supply; instead, it has a fixed YoY inflation rate. The initial inflation rate was 8%, which reduces by 15% YoY – until it hits 1.5%, at which point it will remain stable. Currently, SOL's inflation rate is 7.07%, and it will hit 1.5% in about 10 years.

Solana Problems

Solana has a much smaller community of users than stablecoins, and the network is not as reliable. In September of 2021, Solana tweeted that its blockchain was experiencing instability, and as a result, the company's reputation diminished temporarily.

Cardano (ADA)

Cardano is another crypto market leader in regards to market cap, ranking at #6. Cardano is designed to be the next-gen Ethereum – and, in fact, it's led by one of ETH's co-founders, Charles Hoskinson.

Cardano has a sustainable, scalable, and flexible blockchain platform that's meant to run smart contracts: this enables a wide range of dApps , games, and crypto tokens to be developed, among other things.

Cardano's goal is to become the most environmentally-friendly blockchain. Rather than using a PoW system like ETH and BTC, it uses a PoS mechanism called Ouroboros.

Recent ADA News

• November 2021: Bitstamp, one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world, adds Cardano to its listings.
• December 2021: Cardano's founder revealed his plans for 2022, which include a formal, open-source project structure that would oversee the creation of decentralised products that take place on the network.
• January 2022: Pavia.io, the first Cardano "metaverse", was launched.

Market Capitalisation of Cardano

As of the time of writing, Cardano has a price of $1.42 and a market cap of $47B. It has experienced a 24-hour trading volume of $2.4B. Cardano has a max supply of 45 billion ADA, and approximately 33 million have been mined so far.

ADA Problems

In November of 2021, eToro announced that it plans on removing ADA from its listings, citing regulatory concerns. This seems to align with regulatory crackdowns that have been happening with other cryptos as of late, including XRP and USDT.

Another downside of Cardano is that it seems to be developing slower than anticipated, and the platform is behind schedule. In the past, delays pushed back releases multiple times.

Ripple (XRP)

Rippleis an open-source internet protocol that supports real-time gross settlements, fast remittances and currency exchanges. The developers created Ripple with a system of debt transfer between pairs. Ripple is structural and extremely different from the other cryptocurrencies.

The Ripple network supports a wide variety of fiduciary currencies and even digital tokens. Ripple is practically a hundred times faster than Bitcoin. You can process transactions with your advanced consensus system in four seconds, while Bitcoin requires at least one hour.

According to its founders, Ripple is not in the market to compete with other cryptocurrencies. Instead, they are developing a next-generation transaction system to counter the traditional, which is extremely slow.

Why Invest in Ripple?

The RippleNet Project is supported by several large banks and corporate entities such as Santander, UniCredit, UBS, Axis Bank, etc. In fact, network validators include MIT.

Many people do not pay enough attention to Ripple because their currency, XRP, has a very low price. But they do not realise that Ripple is not exploitable like most other currencies. The market already has the total of XRP that it will have in the future.

Recent XRP News

• September 2021: Ripple launches a Creator Fund worth $250 million.
• October 2021: A Judge on the SEC lawsuit extends the expert discovery deadline, which means the case will last even longer than expected. The deadline was moved to January 14, 2022.
• November 2021: Ripple signs a deal to form a stablecoin for the Island of Palau. That is, if it wins the SEC lawsuit.

Market Capitalisation of Ripple

As of the time of writing, Ripple has a price of $0.774 and a market cap of $37B.

Ripple Problems

In late-2020 and 2021, things started heating up for Ripple. The company was sued in 2020 by the SEC for allegedly offering unregistered securities. Ripple's legal team made the case that (1) XRP shouldn't be considered a security asset and (2) even if it is classified as one, they weren't given reasonable notice by the SEC.

The case has not come to a close yet, but it is anticipated to reach a conclusion sometime this year. If Ripple loses the lawsuit, analysts expect that there will be a massive sell-off of XRP, resulting in a price plummet.

Dash (DASH)

Dash is an open-source cryptocurrency among peers that has been operating since the beginning of 2014. In the beginning, it was called XCoin, but in 2015 it changed its name to DarkCoin. Finally, it was renamed Dash, which is an abbreviation of Digital Cash.

Dash aims to be an easy-to-use, self-financed and self-managed cryptocurrency network. As a matter of fact, it is the first decentralised autonomous organisation to be tested by Sybil.

Unlike Bitcoin, which has a single-level network, Dash operates on two levels. The first level consists of miners who extract new tokens, while the second level consists of Master Nodes that perform various tasks. These tasks include managing the platform and performing critical tasks such as InstaSend and PrivateSend.

Should I invest in Dash in 2022?

Dash is a promising cryptocurrency project that has an amazing business structure. It is also extremely safe. Transactions are fast, and the platform offers unique scalability features.

Recent Dash News

• July 2021: Dash launches an app that lets US consumers pay with their crypto in over 155,000 in-store retail locations.
• November 2021: Dash platform v0.21 was released on testnet.

Market Capitalisation of Dash

At the time of writing, Dash has a market limit of$1.45 billion and a token price of $138.

An Alternative to Buying Crypto: Trading CFDs

It is not a secret that investing in cryptocurrency is associated with a serious risk of losing money due to the high volatility of this market. For example, when you buy Bitcoin at the end of April 2018 with the hope that it would start growing again, you would now have lost 20%. Not very encouraging, right?

The market volatility dissuades many people from buying cryptocurrency, but some turn to an alternative: trading CFDs (contracts for difference). 

Contract for Difference: A contract between a buyer and seller; it states that the buyer has to pay the difference between an asset’s current value and its value at the time of contract. The difference is paid to the seller. 

Trading CFDs has become very popular over the last decade — why so? Well, when you trade CFDs, the asset’s underlying value is not considered. Only the price change between the entry and exit of the trade is considered. This means that traders might get to profit from a cryptocurrency’s price movements without actually owning the underlying asset. 

What’s more, profit isn’t limited to a positive price movement; you can speculate on a downwards price movement, too. 

CFDs also provide higher leverage than regular trading — this means that you can experience less capital outlay and, potentially, larger returns. Just keep in mind that this also comes with larger potential losses. 

CFD trading takes place between a client and a broker; there is no forex, futures, stock, or commodity exchange involved. Not all countries allow CFD trading; for instance, it is banned in the U.S. However, it is still allowed in many major trading companies, including Spain, Germany, Switzerland, and many more. So, before you try to sign up on a CFD broker site, ensure that it is legal in your country. 

If so, you can check out Libertex’s CFD trading, and new traders can practice through a demo account. Users can trade crypto CFDs with zero swap fees, exchange fees, or commissions. Libertex also offers a knowledge base for traders — it includes a 3-hour crash course on financial markets.