1. Bitcoin (BTC)
We can’t publish a list of the best cryptocurrencies without mentioning Bitcoin. As the OG cryptocurrency (having launched in 2009), it is leading the list by many measures, despite its scalability challenges.
Bitcoin has continuously maintained the largest market capitalization and the strongest liquidity of all cryptocurrencies, which we see as a sign of strong investor confidence. It is traded on virtually all crypto exchanges, making it an attractive option for both individuals and institutions.
Bitcoin's primary use case is as a digital alternative to traditional currencies, aiming to be a medium of exchange and a store of value. Even though it is already widely adopted for both use cases, we believe its volatility is still a challenge for regular transactions.
On the other hand, its fixed supply cap of 21 million coins (and the scarcity that comes with it), an incredibly strong and active community, and the expected performance boost triggered by April’s Bitcoin halving event make it the #1 on our best crypto ranking.
While Bitcoin has been stagnant for the most part of the year after reaching its new ATH in March, we’ve seen ongoing adoption from institutions and other new market participants. At the current price, Bitcoin is still a very volatile asset and not immune to short-term price fluctuation , but we think it’s likely that BTC will hit new ATHs once the dust has settled.
2. Ethereum (ETH)
Ethereum has established its market presence for quite some time now, reflecting its position as a leading platform for decentralized applications (dApps) and smart contracts. Widespread availability and large daily trading volumes make Ethereum easily accessible, without significantly affecting the price.
Ethereum’s strong use cases extend beyond a digital currency, leading to adoption in various sectors including finance, gaming, art. Similar to Bitcoin, Ethereum’s performance has been a mixed bag in the past, plagued by network congestion and high transaction fees.
These issues are being addressed with the multi-step Ethereum 2.0 roadmap, which include the large “Ethereum Merge” in September 2022, integrations of Layer 2 solutions, and most recently the Dencun upgrade in March 2024.
We also liked the introduction of EIP-1559 back in 2021, which shifted Ethereum’s tokenomics from an inflationary model to a deflationary model, therefore reducing overall supply over time.
Ethereum’s dev team is continuously working on upgrading the network, featuring prominent crypto figures like Vitalik Buterin and the Ethereum Foundation, paired with an innovative and widespread community. Additionally there are a lot of so-called Layer-2 blockchains, who expand the Ethereum ecosystem. These chains leverage the security of the Ethereum blockchain, while offering faster and cheaper transactions. Notable mentions include Polygon, Optimism, Arbitrum, ImmutableX and Metis.
On the regulatory front, the U.S. SEC has delayed a decision on approving Ethereum-based ETFs of BlackRock and Bitwise until November, which has sparked uncertainty in the market, especially regarding institutional adoption.
Overall, we believe that Ethereum is a very strong #2 on our list. It’ll be interesting to see if it can hold its position as new challengers gain in popularity.
3. Solana (SOL)
Solana has already seen massive growth in the first quarter of 2024–but it still has some room to grow before exceeding its previous all-time-high at 260$. Nevertheless, its large market cap and high liquidity already demonstrate serious investor confidence to us.
Solana is designed for high-speed and high-volume transactions at lower costs, supporting tens of thousands of transactions per second and making it a serious contender to Ethereum for dApps, decentralized finance (DeFi), and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
We’re seeing a strong adoption driven by a rapidly growing demand for quicker and cheaper transactions that will continue to grow exponentially as more use cases are added.
Solana’s development team is led by Anatoly Yakovenko, who brings significant experience from previous roles at major companies like Qualcomm. The development team and large community are known for their strong technical qualifications with a focus on rapidly building applications and tools for the network.
In September 2024, Solana has made significant strides, particularly at its Breakpoint 2024 event, where major announcements were made. Notably, Firedancer, a highly anticipated Solana validator client, was unveiled.
Due to its cheap transactions and massive community, we see Solana (next to Bitcoin) as one of the most attractive assets for new investors joining the crypto economy. If the rumored four-year cycle pumps the crypto market up in the fourth quarter of this year, Solana should be one of the major gainers.
4. Avalanche (AVAX)
Avalanche is a highly liquid player with a significant market capitalization in the blockchain space. It provides a more scalable, interoperable, and decentralized infrastructure for building decentralized applications (dApps) and executing smart contracts, although it follows a different approach than other “layer two” solutions.
Avalanche offers so-called subnets, which are child chains of the Avalanche C-Chain. This enables it to easily launch a dedicated blockchain for various use cases, as we have seen with DeFi Kingdoms or Shrapnel, two of the largest gaming projects in the web3 space. Its main use case revolves around high-throughput, scalable blockchain solutions, and it has been adopted by numerous projects seeking robust decentralized platforms.
The project’s tokenomics look solid, with a capped supply of 720 million AVAX and a unique mechanism where transaction fees are burned, reducing the circulating supply and potentially increasing the value of the remaining tokens.
The Avalanche development team is led by Emin Gün Sirer, a well-respected computer scientist and researcher, accompanied by a team of experienced professionals from academic and industry backgrounds. The rapidly growing community of devs, validators and users show massive engagement with active participation in governance proposals and community-led projects.
Avalance is close to a much anticipated network upgrade called Avalance9000, which will significantly lower the economic barrier to deploy an L1, resulting in nimble iteration and a faster go-to-market. The package encapsulates a full suite of upgrades that include more community proposals, a live testnet environment to build ideas, and lots of builder reward opportunities.
It will all come together at the official Avalanche9000 kickoff at Avalanche Summit LATAM, taking place in Buenos Aires, Argentina, from October 16 to 18, 2024.
5. Sui Network (SUI)
The Sui Network is a next-generation, high-performance layer-1 blockchain designed to improve scalability, speed, and user experience. Built by Mysten Labs, it focuses on supporting decentralized applications (dApps) and digital assets, using the Move programming language. This language, originally developed for Facebook's Diem (former Libra) project, enhances security and enables faster transaction processing.
Unlike traditional blockchains, which process transactions sequentially, Sui uses parallel transaction processing, allowing it to scale horizontally and handle a high number of transactions simultaneously. This leads to lower latency and faster finality.
The Move Programming Language offers enhanced security for smart contracts and reduces the risk of vulnerabilities, making it particularly appealing for developers seeking a more secure environment. Also, the Sui blockchain offers predictable and low gas fees by decoupling consensus from simple transactions, which allows for faster and cheaper operations.
The Sui Network is designed to support various decentralized finance (DeFi) applications and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Its efficient architecture makes it attractive for gaming, digital assets, and complex decentralized applications.
Sui has been gaining traction since its launch in early 2023, attracting developers and projects due to its robust infrastructure. In August 2024, Sui saw a significant increase in Total Value Locked (TVL) due to new native DeFi applications and developments like the Grayscale Sui Trust and the rollout of the Mysticeti consensus engine.
In our eyes, Sui is a serious competitor amongst the battle of Layer 1 networks like Ethereum, Solana, or Cardano. The network is positioned as a high-performance blockchain aimed at improving scalability and user experience, with a strong focus on DeFi, NFTs, and decentralized applications.
6. Cardano (ADA)
Cardano frequently ranks within the top ten cryptocurrencies by market capitalization and trading volume. ADA, the native token of Cardano, is highly liquid and available on nearly all major cryptocurrency exchanges.
Cardano positions itself as a "third-generation" blockchain platform designed for smart contracts, dApps, and to provide more advanced features than its predecessors like Ethereum.
It emphasizes scalability, interoperability, and sustainability, targeting use cases in education, retail, agriculture, and government. However, its adoption is still growing and somewhat behind more established platforms.
The capped supply of 45 billion ADA tokens is used for transaction fees and as a staking token in the proof-of-stake (PoS) system.
The project is developed by IOHK (Input Output Hong Kong), with Charles Hoskinson, a co-founder of Ethereum, as one of its principal leaders. The development approach is research-driven and based on peer-reviewed scientific methods, which stands out in the crypto community for its academic rigor.
Cardano is a very polarizing project with a strong community but also many adversaries. Their deep research approach to development makes them slower than other projects, but potentially more resilient. The project has made significant strides in its performance capabilities, especially with the introduction of the Alonzo and Hydra upgrades.
Cardano continues to expand its ecosystem, having reached 96 million transactions and deployed over 84,000 Plutus smart contracts. Additionally, 1,373 projects are currently building on the Cardano blockchain. Significant upgrades, including the Voltaire era, are transitioning governance to a decentralized community-driven model. Project Catalyst Fund 13, with 50 million ADA for distribution, also launched in late September.
7. Polygon (POL)
Polygon describes itself as a global network of aggregated blockchains. With daily active addresses hitting an all time high of 1.3 million in April, it is well positioned for growth in 2024 building on its already well established market cap and high liquidity.
Polygon (formerly known as Matic Network) is a multi-chain scaling solution for Ethereum, designed to provide faster and cheaper transactions in the Ethereum ecosystem. It has been widely adopted by decentralized applications (dApps), especially in the DeFi and NFT sectors, due to its enhanced scalability and low transaction costs allowing developers to efficiently build and deploy applications.
Polygon's POL token (previously called MATIC) has a fixed supply cap of 10 billion tokens. POL tokens are used for paying transaction fees, participating in network governance, and as staking tokens to secure the network. The tokenomics encourage holding and using POL for network activities, supporting its value.
The development team has demonstrated a strong commitment to advancing Polygon's technology and maintaining its position as a leading scaling solution.
While the business case of Polygon is in theory easy to copy, they managed to establish a great network effect resulting in steady growth. We’re excited to see if they can leverage this network effect into more growth opportunities.
The general market sentiment remains positive in October 2024, driven by Polygon's growing adoption and recent partnerships. Increased use cases in decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) continue to drive interest in POL.
8. Binance Coin (BNB)
As the largest so-called “exchange coin,” BNB continues to develop in different directions, offering more and more use cases for the token (e.g. Cosmos chain, EVM chain and bonuses for Binance CEX users) and keeping its spot on our top 10 crypto list in 2024
Its market cap has already doubled since the beginning of 2024, getting very close to previous 2021 all-time-highs. BNB is extremely liquid, given its primary listing on Binance, one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges. It also trades on other exchanges, ensuring substantial trading volume and easy accessibility for traders.
BNB's primary use cases include paying for trading fees on the Binance exchange at a discounted rate, participating in token sales hosted on Binance Launchpad, and making in-store payments. Its adoption is heavily tied to the Binance ecosystem, expanding as the exchange grows and introduces new services.
Binance conducts periodic "burns" of BNB, reducing the total supply to increase scarcity and potentially add value, with a final goal of burning half of the total supply (100 million BNB).
BNB is supported by the Binance team, previously led by Changpeng Zhao, who has stepped down as Binance CEO after his criminal conviction in late 2023. The Binance community is vast and active, benefiting from the strong brand loyalty towards Binance.
We think it is crucial to recognize that all of BNB’s features are built on a very centralized foundation and could crumble due to regulatory influence or fraudulent behavior of bad actors. Ultimately an investment decision here needs to be somewhat based on trust.
BNB's price is influenced by a recent token burn in July 2024 and crucial support levels around $555. While the market shows bullish potential, regulatory pressures and the launch of rival platforms could introduce volatility. Watch for potential rebounds or declines depending on how these factors play out.
9. Chainlink (LINK)
LINK is a highly liquid cryptocurrency with a strong market cap and availability on all major cryptocurrency exchanges. While it has shown strong growth over the past 6 months, it is still only at about 25% of its all-time-high in 2021. However, as a backbone infrastructure for all of web3 we believe it is likely that an overall growth of the market will impact Chainlink immensely, as the demand for their services should increase.
The Chainlink protocol is designed to enhance the security and decentralization of smart contracts on various blockchain platforms. Its primary use case is as a decentralized oracle network that enables blockchains to securely interact with external data feeds, events, and payment methods. It functions as the foundation for many dApps, especially in the DeFi sector.
The demand for LINK is intrinsically tied to the usage of Chainlink’s services. There is no hard cap on the total supply of LINK, which is a point of discussion in the community concerning its long-term value.
Chainlink’s development is led by Sergey Nazarov, who is highly respected in the blockchain community, as well as a team of experienced individuals with backgrounds in computer science and software engineering. The community is very active and instrumental in driving the platform’s adoption, participating in various network activities like hackathons and educational events.
Security and transparency are central to Chainlink, given its role as a bridge between blockchains and external data sources. The network uses multiple oracles to mitigate the risk of any single point of failure.
10. Kaspa (KAS)
Kaspa (KAS) is a cryptocurrency designed to be a scalable, decentralized, and highly secure platform. It is unique because it uses a novel consensus mechanism called BlockDAG (Directed Acyclic Graph), which allows for multiple blocks to be created simultaneously. This parallel block creation increases throughput and scalability, setting Kaspa apart from traditional blockchains that operate in a linear sequence.
Kaspa's PoW system ensures network security through mining, similar to Bitcoin, but BlockDAG allows for faster confirmation times and high transaction speeds without compromising security. This makes Kaspa particularly suited for high-throughput applications where efficiency is key, while still maintaining the decentralized principles of blockchain technology.
Kaspa was co-founded by Yonatan Sompolinsky, who is well-known for his academic contributions to blockchain technology, including his work on GHOST (Greedy Heaviest Observed Subtree), a protocol used by Ethereum. The Kaspa project has attracted a team of experienced developers and blockchain enthusiasts, contributing to the ongoing evolution and development of its ecosystem. While the project started with a strong technical foundation, it remains a decentralized, community-driven effort.
Key recent updates include the Kaspa Industrial Initiative (KII), which aims to apply Kaspa’s BlockDAG technology to various industrial sectors, enhancing efficiency and security. Another highlight is the launch of KRC-20 tokens, which will enable users to create their own tokens on the Kaspa network, opening doors for decentralized finance (DeFi) projects and other innovations.
Coin of the Month: Bittensor (TAO)
Bittensor is a decentralized, blockchain-based machine learning network designed to enable the creation and sharing of artificial intelligence models. It operates by incentivizing participants to contribute their computing resources and AI models in exchange for TAO tokens, the native cryptocurrency of the Bittensor ecosystem.
In the age of AI, everything comes down to data and processing power. Bittensor is designed to scale with the growing demand for the latter. It provides a marketplace where models can be continuously trained and improved by leveraging the collective intelligence of the network's participants.
Bittensor allows developers and data scientists to train, share, and evaluate machine learning models on a decentralized network. This enables collaboration across a distributed network rather than relying on centralized platforms.
The unique consensus mechanism of Bittensor ensures that participants in the network are rewarded based on the quality of their AI contributions, rather than traditional proof-of-work or proof-of-stake models seen in other blockchains.
What’s The Next Big Cryptocurrency in 2024?
We think it is very likely that blockchains with a solid foundation and significant traction prior to this year are going to maintain their dominance in 2024. This is largely attributed to the surge in attention and the proliferation of applications being developed on these platforms.
For the first time in history, crypto assets have been a hot topic in the US presidential debates, with Donald Trump being overly pro-crypto and Kamala Harris remaining on the skeptical side. The recent announcement from Trump to buy and hold Bitcoin in the US treasury if elected president, has given a bullish signal for investors.
Besides Bitcoin, narratives like DeFi, AI, NFTs and Gaming seem to lead the current market upswing, hot candidates for 2024 include Solana, Avalanche and Ethereum Layer 2 Solutions like Polygon, Arbitrum, Immutable and Optimism.
However, there are some newer cryptocurrencies that have the potential to turn into the next big thing, such as SUI, SEI, Render, Berachain and Ronin.
These projects show great promise, but will still have to prove that they can attract enough developers to build on top of their technology.
How We Evaluate Cryptocurrencies
Market Capitalization
Market capitalization is the price per coin or token multiplied by the total amount of coins or tokens in circulation.
In crypto, we often need to differentiate between “Current Market Cap” and “Fully Diluted Market Cap”. The first includes all coins or tokens, which are available to date, while the second also includes all coins or tokens which are still locked, but will get released in the future through processes like crypto mining or crypto staking.
If there is a huge difference between those two values, it is very likely that the price will fall in the future, as more tokens (supply) meet the market (demand).
These numbers are probably THE most important factor in determining a viable crypto investment, and is often overlooked when comparing the price of a single unit of a token.
Just because the price of some tokens is 0.00001€, it could still have a very high market capitalization if there are 100,000,000,000,000 of tokens in existence.
Trading Volume
A high and consistent trading volume on an asset is generally a very good sign. It means more and/or larger parties are interested, suggesting that the asset is likely listed across multiple cryptocurrency exchanges.
High trading volume means higher accessibility, making it easier for investors to buy or sell without significantly affecting its price.
Liquidity
Liquidity shows how easy you can exit your position, which is often a problem with newer coins or tokens.
If the liquidity is very low, let’s say less than 10x your investment, it will be impossible to sell that asset at current market price. So you should only invest in low-liquidity assets if you plan to hold that asset for a longer period of time and expect liquidity increase in the future.
Use cases and real-world adoption
When looking at a coin or token, it is important to ask yourself what that use case could be and if it is realistic that, at some point in time, the product will get there.
You can go even deeper into the analysis; consider estimating the scale of adoption needed—how many users need to engage with and pay for this product—to cover the operational costs.
Comparing this and the current market capitalization of a project might often lead to an interesting revelation.
Tokenomics
One of the most crucial questions to ask is: How does the token actually work?
Tokenomics describe the economics of a token and can quickly reveal a bad investment even if the product and team are exceptional.
Supply and demand dedicate the token price, so the balance between the two and how it could develop show the potential of an investment. Ask yourself:
- What do I need the token for? Is there demand for the token if the product is successful?
- Are new tokens generated in the future and if, how and when does that happen?
- Are tokens locked for the team and early investors, and when will they unlock? (They probably bought at a lower price and might want to take profits once they can.)
- Can tokens be burned (destroyed) and if so, what triggers this reduction of supply?
Development team
The technological backbone is of high importance in the age of digitalization. Ask yourself:
- What do I know about the team behind a token-based project?
- What is their background? Their skillset?
- Do you think they can deliver on the promise?
- Are they working as hard on the project as they should?
Many crypto development teams share insights into their GitHub profile, which shows the actual work they are doing.
If you don’t have the know-how to evaluate this yourself, it might make sense to talk to someone who can, before investing in a project.
Community support
Today’s community might turn into tomorrow’s users and clients of a product. It is important to factor this in and take a closer look at the community. Ask yourself these questions:
- Is the community real? Or are the followers on Twitter/Discord etc. just empty accounts?
- Are the people actually interested in the product or just speculators?
If the community consists of mostly speculators and people farming for quick rewards, free crypto, airdrops, whitelists etc. it is very likely that there is huge sell pressure, once the asset will be tradable.
Security and transparency
As we have seen repeatedly in the past, security and transparency can break a project and its value within seconds, if not executed well.
Interestingly, security breaches often stem from human errors—such as poorly written code or inadequate governance—rather than inherent flaws in the blockchain technology itself.
While security issues are not intentional in most cases, actual crypto scams are. Having enough transparency gives a better opportunity to detect fraudulent behavior early on. Ask yourself:
- Who has critical access to the code? What is a worst case scenario?
- Is there a single point of failure (e.g. one person holding the private keys to alter a smart contract)?
- Is any information obscured, which should be transparent?
<div fs-richtext-component="info-box" class="info-box"><div class="flex-info-card"><img src="https://assets-global.website-files.com/65098a145ece52db42b9c274/650c6f4cef4c34160eab4440_Info.svg" loading="eager" width="64" height="64" alt="" class="icon-info-box"><div fs-richtext-component="info-box-text" class="info-box-content"><p class="color-neutral-800">Nothing in this article constitutes professional and/or financial advice, nor does any information in the article constitute a comprehensive or complete statement of the matters discussed or the law relating thereto.</p></div></div></div>