Introduction
Cryptocurrencies have essentially operated like a high-beta version of the stock market for a long time: when stocks rise, crypto rises much more, and vice versa. Sadly, stocks haven’t increased in late 2022: The S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average, and Nasdaq had all entered bear markets by the end of September. The tech-heavy Nasdaq was down 32.4% at the beginning of the fourth quarter while the S&P 500 was down 24.8%. Over that time, cryptocurrency has lost an incredible 56.6%.
The good news is that digital assets showed hints of resiliency in September, dropping just 3.1% while the stock market dropped 9.3%. The history of cryptocurrency price swings is littered with shocking volatility, and more interest rate increases are all but certain. However, for risk-tolerant contrarians, November may be an excellent time to invest in cryptocurrencies. The top 5 cryptocurrencies which gained in popularity in 2022 are right below.
Ether (ETH)
The only other cryptocurrency that can compete with Bitcoin is Ether, which is a native token of the enormously popular Ethereum blockchain. The Ethereum ecosystem swiftly established itself as a pioneering shelter for decentralized finance, or DeFi, apps, becoming a favorite of both consumers and developers.
With the introduction of smart contracts and non-fungible tokens, Ethereum, unlike the Bitcoin network, delivers real-world use outside of payments, essentially overnight spawning multibillion-dollar enterprises. One of the major criticisms of cryptocurrency in general in popular culture is its lack of energy efficiency.
The long-awaited “The Merge” event, which changed Ethereum from a proof-of-work to a proof-of-stake consensus and cut predicted energy usage by more than 99%, met that challenge head-on in September. The second-largest non-stablecoin in use has a market valuation of more than $160 billion, which is less than a third of ETH’s size.
Solana (SOL)
Solana, an Ethereum-like blockchain with its own thriving community of users and developers, is another pillar in the DeFi industry. Solana’s key benefit over its larger opponent is its drastically cheaper fee structure, which is even simpler to develop than Ethereum. Solana enjoys rates that are already incredibly low compared to Ethereum’s high transaction tax, even if Ethereum has a strategy in place to lower transaction fees, popularly known as Ethereum gas fees.
Solana will have a strong advantage to catch up until Ethereum drastically lowers costs, which isn’t anticipated until at least 2023. Currently, Solana costs around $34 per coin, which is just marginally higher than its 52-week low of $26.06 and much below its 52-week high of $260.06. If you’re looking for how and where to buy crypto with paypal – CEX.IO Exchange offers numerous options to do that.
Avalanche (AVAX)
The Avalanche blockchain, which bills itself as the world’s fastest smart-contracts platform, uses AVAX as its native currency. The platform of Avalanche is intended to resemble the AWS of cryptocurrency. AWS, or Amazon Web Services, is the largest cloud computing provider in the world and a branch of Amazon.com Inc. (ticker: AMZN). AWS powers the online operations of several financial institutions and big international corporations.
Avalanche envisions a future in which every business will want to build its own blockchain and seeks to do the same for blockchains. Through the use of subnets, a relatively recent technology, Avalanche is ideally positioned to support such a future. Avalanche has a $5 billion market worth, which places it in the top 20 cryptocurrencies even if it is completely unremarkable on the stock market. AVAX has a 52-week trading range of $13.79 to $146.22 and is currently at about $17.
Cosmos (ATOM)
The native coin of the Cosmos Hub blockchain is called ATOM. Owning the currency provides its holders a voice in how the project should be run because it is a governance token. With a trading history dating back to 2017, ATOM, a top-25 cryptocurrency by market size, has a strong track record in this emerging industry. There are many other blockchains already in use, as one may infer from this list alone, making Cosmos’ mission all the more relevant. Cosmos wants to make blockchains more approachable for developers while also directly facilitating more fluid connectivity between various blockchain networks. With a market worth of $3.8 billion and a 52-week trading range between $5.59 and $44.52, ATOM is now trading around the $13 mark.
Filecoin (FIL)
The final of the most popular cryptocurrencies to purchase is Filecoin, which has the smallest market valuation of all the names on our list. However, Filecoin is by no means a new technology; its history dates back to 2017. Similar to Cosmos, Filecoin is a little more speculative than the other projects on this list, but it’s worth keeping an eye on because of its distinctive project aim. The decentralized structure of Filecoin makes it especially well-suited for data someone would want to shield from censorship. Its stated objective is to store the world’s most critical information. The method also makes data easy to obtain, which makes it the perfect approach to chronicle purported war crimes by Russia in Ukraine in real-time, as Stanford’s Starling Lab is presently doing.
Conclusion
In this article, you had the opportunity to read something more about cryptocurrencies that have become even more popular in 2022 compared to previous years. We highly recommend you perform your own thorough research before investing in these or other coins.
