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Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history.
Abraham Lincoln
Bitcoin the pioneer coin of cryptocurrencies has risen from his 2022 ashes like a phoenix and is up over 100% year-to-date making a loud and clear statements for the crypto comeback in 2023.
Ladies and gentlemen of crypto land crypto is back!
Following the implosion of FTX in 2022 which dragged the overall cryptocurrency market capitalisation to a low of $796 billion, there has been a resurgence in crypto that are taken its total to market cap to over $1.3 trillion, an over 70% resurgence.
“Cryptocurrency” is a radical idea that is transforming the global financial system that has gone mainstream and it is seemingly not going back to the cave.
The history of our financial system is updating and as investors of today’s financial market we cannot escape this history.
If you had taken a $100 chance on Bitcoin in the early days when it was worth 6 cents, your investment would be worth over $58 million today. 58 million US Dollars!
Unfortunately you didn’t plant that tree 14 years ago, none the less, like the Chinese says “the second-best time is now“.
Here are five best cryptocurrencies under $1 to write to the moon:
1. Ripple (XRP)
XRP was launched in 2012, it is the native currency of Ripple’s XRP Ledger (XRPL), an open-source blockchain technology designed to be scalable carbon-neutral and fast in settling transactions at a low cost fee.
XRP ledger uses a consensus protocol to validate transactions and create new blocks.
This protocol is controlled by designated servers known as validators and there are currently over 120 active validators on the XRP ledger.
In theory, the validator pool is expected to grow, thereby ensuring decentralization overtime.
But in the meantime XRP ledger critics has argued that its small validators pool today makes it a centralised consensus protocol which ultimately defeat the idea for decentralization in its system.
That notwithstanding, XRP is currently the fifth largest cryptocurrency by market cap and is enabling instant cross-border payment settlements for individuals and institutions.
There are 100 billion XRP tokens in existence pre-mined by its founders in 2012, and unlike bitcoin, no more XRP can be mined.
Ripple controls the circulation of XRP in the secondary market and as such XRP coins only enter the secondary market whenever Ripple decides to sell more XRP coins from its pre-mined stash.
For transparency and predictability, Ripple can only sell a maximum of $1 billion XRP coins per month.
XRP is currently up over 100% year-to-date and has a market cap that’s over $35 billion.
How do I buy XRP?
You can buy, sell, send, and receive XRP coins by creating an account on Etoro or other established crypto exchanges like Binance.
2. Stellar Lumens (XLM)
Stellar is a decentralized blockchain-based payment system designed to facilitate faster and cheaper cross-border payments bridging the gap between FIAT currencies and cryptocurrencies.
Stellar Lumens (XLM) is the native cryptocurrency that powers Stellar’s payment network.
XLM was launched in 2014 following a collaboration between Ripple’s Co-founder and former CTO, Jed McCaleb and Patrick Collison, the CEO of Stripe.
This collaboration led to the creation of Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), the non-profit organisation charged with overseeing the development and growth of the network, and also manage the supply of Stellar Lumens.
Stellar, unlike most crypto currencies uses Stellar Consensus Protocol instead of the popular bitcoin “proof-of-work” for validating transactions and creating new blocks, making it faster, cheaper, and a more eco-friendly blockchain technology.
On lunch, there were 100 billion pre-mined XLM coins but in 2019 Stellar burned (removed) 50 billion XLM, bringing the total supply of XLM down to 50 billion today.
Stellar stands out in its real word application, and workability with existing fiat currencies.
If a bank in Germany wants to send money to a bank in Japan, Stellar automatically converts Euro to XLM, send the payment using blockchain, and then convert XLM into Japanese Yen, all in a matter of seconds.
This makes it a truly competitive system as opposed to traditional remittance companies like MoneyGram and Western Union.
Like Ripple’s XRP, XLM cannot be mined and new XLM coins enters the secondary market when SDF decides to release more XLM from the pre-mined stashed.
XLM is currently up over 70% year-to-date and has a market cap that is over $3 billion.
How do I buy XLM?
You can buy, sell, send, and receive XLM coins by creating an account on Etoro or other established crypto exchanges like Binance.
3. Cardano (ADA)
ADA is a native tree to currency of Cardano, an open source decentralized blockchain platform that is designed to facilitate peer-to-peer transactions and execute smart contracts.
Unlike Ripple or Bitcoin, Cardano achieves consensus relying on a proof-of-stake protocols (known as Ouroboros) to validate transactions in a more efficient and effective manner without the high energy costs associated with bitcoin’s proof-of-work or the perceived centralisation of the Ripples consensus protocol that relies on a little over 120 designated validators.
Dubed a “third generation” blockchain project, Cardano was launched in 2017 as the “first to be founded on peer-reviewed research and developed through evidence-based methods”.
It was founded by Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson and aims to provide to power smart contract and decentralized applications using ADA.
The Cardano blockchain is separated into two layers; the Cardano Settlement Layer (CSL) that facilitates peer-to-peer transactions and the Cardano Computational Layer (CCL) that executes smart contracts.
The supply of Cardano ADA is fixed at 45 billion and there are currently over 35 million ADA coins in circulation.
Cardano ADA cannot be mined but you can earn more ADA by “staking” ADA and becoming a value data in the network.
Cardano validators are responsible for transaction validations and creation of new blocks.
ADA is currently up over 40% year-to-date and has a market cap that is over 12 billion US dollars.
How do I buy ADA?
You can buy, sell, send, and receive ADA coins by creating an account on Etoro or other established crypto exchanges like Binance.
4. Polygon (POL)
Polygon (POL) is an Ethereum-based scaling solution that aims to increase the efficiency, scalability, usability, and size of Ethereum while also reducing the cost and sophistication of transactions on the Ethereum network.
As such it is a layer-2 blockchain that uses sidechains to increase the scale of transactions per second.
It uses POL, the native cryptocurrency of the polygon network, as its unit of payment and settlement.
Polygon relies on a proof-of-stake consensus protocol, like Cardano, to create new POL tokens used to pay for transaction fees and joints taking pools.
Polygon, formerly known as MATIC network, was created in India in 2017 by Sandeep Nailwal, Jaynti Kanani, Anurag Arjun and Mihailo Bjelic.
In 2019 POL token, formally known as MATIC, was launched with a fix supply of 10 billion POL and currently has over 9 billion in circulation.
Many decentralized applications, DApps, are built on Polygon including Sushi, Ocean Protocol, Uniswap, Mai, Slingshot and Routing Protocol.
How do I buy POL?
You can buy, sell, send, and receive POL coins by creating an account on Etoro or other established crypto exchanges like Binance.
5. TRON (TRX)
TRON (TRX) is a decentralized blockchain designed to facilitate DApp deployment and run smart contracts through a secure, scalable, and efficient system.
It uses a delegated proof-of-stake (DPoS) consensus system where 27 “super representatives” are responsible for the validation of transactions and production of new blocks.
Tronix (TRX) is the mainnet native token of the Tron protocol for users seeking to use applications (games and services) built on the Tron network.
Tron was founded in 2017 by Justin Sun, the former permanent representative of Grenada to the WTO (2021 to 2023), one of the most popular names in crypto.
Tron is largely an unoriginal blockchain platform developed by borrowing ideas from existing projects and gained mainstream attention when it acquired BitTorrent, a pioneer in peer-to-peer networking with close to 100 million monthly users.
TRX has a total supply of 92.52 billion and according to coinmarketcap, it has maxed out its total supply as it has 92.5 2 billion TRX in circulation.
Tron coin is a trader’s honeypot and not one of the best plays for long-term crypto investors as it lacks a unique practical use case which is the ultimate qualifier for crypto projects.
That not withstanding, TRX is currently up over 70% year-to-date and has a market cap that is over $7 billion USD.
Some of the top projects built on the Tron network includes Transit Swap, JustLend, SoundSwap.io, and Zilant Bot.
How do I buy TRX?
You can buy, sell, send, and receive TRX coins by creating an account on Etoro or other established crypto exchanges like Binance.
Henry John is a Stock Portfolio Manager that focuses on companies developing cutting-edge technologies.
Keeping track of cutting-edge techs, companies and stocks is what I do almost everyday. And I love it. Whether it’s artificial intelligence, 5g, or autonomous vehicles; I’m all in.
I’m a self-made millionaire who made most of his money investing in technology companies while working in finance.
Yes! I owe it all to tech and finance.
