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The crypto market achieved some success after the introduction of bitcoins, making them the most widely accepted and recognized cryptocurrency. In fact, since their start in 2010, Bitcoins have shown tremendous growth and potential. A single coin that started with a price of less than $1 but now holds a value of approximately $59,484.
However, its rising value doesn’t mean it’s the only cryptocurrency or even the best one. Developers built several alternatives after bitcoins. These alternative coins, also called altcoins, are more advanced, open to technological changes, and in some cases offer faster speeds than Bitcoins.
Additionally, you have several options with altcoins. This variety can sometimes make it challenging to decide which cryptocurrency to choose.
This blog’s focus is on making that decision. It will introduce you to the best new altcoins in 2021 and the things you need to consider before choosing the best one for you.
Why Choose Altcoins?
Why go through all the hassle of researching altcoins? Why not just invest in bitcoins and be done with it?
The answer to this question is simple – altcoins provide more flexibility and fewer limitations. Presently there are around 14,000 different cryptocurrencies on the market for you to consider, meaning you can always find a cryptocurrency that is more profitable than Bitcoins.
Moreover, when compared to Bitcoins, altcoins are a newer concept. Their development started well after Bitcoin, which means their makers already knew the drawbacks of Bitcoins. Thus, altcoins shouldn’t have the same issues as Bitcoin. In short, you get all the pros of bitcoin and fewer cons.
Things To Consider Before Buying Altcoins
There are several altcoins on the market, with new ones added occasionally. While most of them provide the features and reliability you expect, not every coin will suit your needs.
You will need to research many things before deciding which altcoins will work best for you.
Parent Company
While many altcoins are decentralized, they all have a parent company. These companies may not hold your investment or control the network, but they are responsible for certain aspects like management. So, the first thing you need to know about an altcoin is its parent company and its background.
Check out their past works, controversies, progress, and possible customer reviews. It’s also crucial to determine the scale of their work and their future vision. Learn what problems their coins solve and the scope of their coins. And, of course, you need to know what their aim is and the market they are targeting.
Technology
Even the brightest ideas can fail if they are not backed with the proper technology. Maker Dao and Tether are perfect examples. The currencies had a future scope and followed innovative technology. However, they couldn’t maintain their market and even faced cyber attacks. The two coins recovered, but not without difficulty. For now, learn as much as you can about the technology backing the coins you are considering.
You should have at least a rough idea of whether the coin uses Proof of Stake or Proof of Authority. Additionally, it’s good to know the tokenization process and how the coins stabilize their value.
Exchanges
There are numerous exchanges all over the internet where you can buy, sell or exchange cryptocurrencies. Most crypto exchanges tend to stick with a particular number of cryptocurrencies. Therefore, you must check how many exchanges deal in your preferred altcoins. It’s never a good idea to go for a cryptocurrency with limited exchanges.
Popular Features
Crypto makers usually focus on every part of the cryptocurrency network and try to provide a universal solution. However, every currency has one better and more desired attribute than the rest of its features. For instance, if you go for Zcash, privacy is a significant benefit. This currency has better encryption and privacy features than most other cryptocurrencies. Similarly, if you are looking for increased scalability, then Cardano is preferable to most other altcoins. Thus, before selecting altcoins, learn about their popular feature and ensure it aligns with your requirements.
Security Record
Altcoins like Bitcoin are entirely online, which means they are vulnerable to cyberattacks. It’s a rare occurrence, thanks to blockchain encryption, but it can occur. Thus, it is never a good idea to invest in any coin without checking its security and loss recovery features.
In most cases, you can rely on records, customer reviews, and controversies for this. You can gather details of the attacked currencies, what led to the attack, and how the parent company handled it.
For newer coins that do not have such records, consider their working mechanisms. It is a bit tricky and will require a lot of research, but you can always consider getting help from expert investors for this part.
Best New Altcoins To Invest In
As the popularity of altcoins increased, so has the number of options available. There are over a few thousand altcoins that you can purchase, and you can’t possibly research them all. It would be too time-consuming. Therefore, it’s best to focus on the best new altcoins available on the market first. Here’s a small list of the top coins of this year.
Solana
With a market capitalization of nearly 66 billion, Solana coins are the top most invested currency of the present market. Solana started this currency in the year 2020 as a decentralized blockchain to build user-friendly applications. So far, the blockchain is a part of over 500 decentralized applications.
One section that has taken a particular interest in this currency is finance. The currency is best suited for decentralized finance (Defi) solutions due to its high transactional speed. The platform offers you speed and reliability better than most other blockchains, including the popular Etheruem. Moreover, it also takes less processing power than Ethereum and has greater scalability. And yes, you can use Solana for NFTs marketplaces. Solana’s Solanart is a perfect example.
Ripple
Ripple coins, also famous as the Opencoins or XRP, have been in the market for quite a while now. The coin was started in 2012 by an enterprise blockchain company of the same name. The coins are built over distributed open-source protocol and are both a digital payment network and as cryptocurrency.
Ripple is also popular due to its distinct working mechanism. The coin, unlike most other altcoins, didn’t use blockchain mining. Ripple introduced a consensus mechanism that uses bank-owned servers from banks like Axis and Yes bank to approve transactions. It helped them maintain a high speed of transactions and also made them highly scalable. The Ripple coins are also a preferable option for micro-transactions, e-commerce, and many other peer-to-peer type services.
This year, Ripple has stepped into the NFT market. They have invested in Mintable and have also introduced a $250 million creators fund to help creators sell their NFT with XRP.
Polkadot
Polkadot is yet another new altcoin that was introduced to provide an alternative for Ethereum. The currency came to light in 2016 with a sharded version of ETH. The co-founder of Ethereum, Dr. Gavin Wood, proposed the white paper in mid-2016. Later Dr. Wood was joined by Parity’s Peter and started the Web3 Foundation as a non-profit firm that handled the research and development of Polkadot and raised funds for it. It took four years for the currency to reach the mainstream. It was launched in May of 2020 with the title Phase One. At this stage, the currency used Proof-of-Authority as the method for approving transactions. Six validators from the Web3 foundation managed these approvals.
However, the currency’s next phase came in June 2020 switched to Proof-of-Stake. This change brought attention to the coin, making it an option for many. Presently, Polkadot has a supply allocation of one billion Polkadot coins, also known as Dots. It has attained a market capitalization of around $40 billion and is associated with 511 projects.
Cardano
When it comes to scalability, few can beat Cardano coins. The company started in 2015 as a decentralized, public blockchain platform. The co-founder of Ethereum, Charles Hoskinson, started this project after he left the Ethereum foundation. They eventually launched the first version of the Cardano and its popular coins, Ada.
The original version worked with Proof-of-stake and offered multiple benefits in terms of speed. It was also significantly better in terms of electricity or power consumption. The platform was flexible and programmable. Unlike most other altcoins or even Bitcoins, Cardano allowed private developers to create smart contracts using their blockchain.
The company gained even more popularity in 2021 after the release of its stable version. This launch made Cardano a preferable option for all sorts of investors, visionaries, and innovators.
Presently, Cardano acquires a total market capitalization of more than $62 billion, with each Ada token valid at $1.87. At the time of writing, Cardano ranks 6th amongst all the cryptocurrencies available in the market. It’s definitely worth considering.
Zcash
John Hopkins Methew Green and his graduate students came up with the concept of Zcash in the year 2013. They used Bitcoin’s codebase to design the coin, and it shares properties with Bitcoin but with many additional features. One of these features is the privacy policies, which was the ultimate aim of its founder.
Like most cryptocurrencies, John and his student wanted to create a currency with completely anonymous transactions rather than pseudonyms. Any transaction on Zcash is non-traceable. There are no public identification marks that data scientists or forensics can use to find information about users. Although, the coins do have an optional data reveal feature available to users. It allows you to share transactional data for audits and regulatory compliance purposes selectively.
Another fantastic benefit of this new altcoin is its algorithm. It uses a Proof-of-Work algorithm with SHA-256 hash, the same as Bitcoins. Thus, you can expect decent reliability, speed, and cyber-attack protection.
The currency is excelling due to these features. It has acquired a market capitalization of around $2 billion, with each token valued at $153.56. The coin has a total supply of over 21 million coins, out of which around 13 million are in circulation.
Tron
If you are a content creator and need crypto transactions regularly, Tron coins are just the thing for you. The coin started in 2017 with an initial coin offering that raised around $70 million for its parent company. Its founder Justin Sun and his team designed the coin with artists and content creators in mind.
Tron provides a three-layer architecture with separate sections for storage, core processes, and application. Thus they won’t have any problem storing their data and sharing it using Tron.
The platform also allows for direct contact with their audience, thus eliminating the need for other centralized platforms like streaming services and websites, saving on commission costs. You can use the Tron coin or the TRX for every transaction.
Another good thing here is that everything you share and every transaction you make is private. The platform is decentralized, so no one has control over your information or can store it. Its peer-to-peer transaction and smart contract further improve security. The Proof-of-Stake algorithm of the currency makes it fast and reliable.
The currency has acquired a market capital of $7 billion with around 71.6 billion TRX in circulation. The platform ranks 26th amongst all the altcoins and has an all-time high price of $0.3 per token. That may not seem like much, but that’s greater than the cost of oneTRX, which was around $0.025 at its launch. So, it does have potential, and you should look into it when considering your investment options this year.
Conclusion
The trend of altcoins is not fixed or constant. It keeps changing according to both stock market and users trends. However, the currencies mentioned above are the best of their class and are leading in terms of security, speed, or both. They are worth taking the time to look into as a possible investment.
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