• Market Capitalization: $1.4 trillion
• All Time High: $73,750
• 90d Price Change: +63%
• Trading Volume: Very High
• Liquidity: Very High
• Use Case/Adoption: Great (clear, widespread & big market)
• Tokenomics: Medium (negligible inflation and ultimately capped supply)
• Development Team: Great (large and proven)
• Community Support: Great (massive community)
• Security & Transparency: Best-in-Class
• Performance: Great

Bitcoin continues to take the top spot on our list for a reason. It is considered to be the best crypto to buy right now by many and comes closest to being used as actual money. 

Bitcoin has endured and grown over the past 15 years, has a clear use case and benefits greatly from widespread adoption, being the first crypto asset to have an approved spot Bitcoin ETF. A must-have for every well-diversified portfolio.

Another hot topics for Bitcoin investors: The Bitcoin Halving 2024

With Bitcoin’s large market capitalization, the days of short-term 1000x gains on Bitcoin are likely over. So if you are looking for high risk and big gains, Bitcoin might be the wrong asset.

If, however, you're looking for more info on Bitcoin, be sure to check out our popular series of guides: What is Bitcoin?

• Market Capitalization: $425 billion
• All Time High: $4,891
• 90d Price Change: +48%
• Trading Volume: Very High
• Liquidity: Very High
• Use Case/Adoption: Great (clear, widespread & big market)
• Tokenomics: Great (deflationary and capped supply since the ethereum merge)
• Development Team: Great (large and proven)
• Community Support: Great (massive community)
• Security & Transparency: Great (while the blockchain is secure and transparent, malicious smart contracts can be dangerous for ordinary users)
• Performance: Great

Ethereum ranks second on our “best crypto” lists. It is a blockchain platform that enables developers to build decentralized applications (dApps) and execute smart contracts. 

Although expensive and slow, multiple layer 2 solutions are running on Ethereum to solve these limitations.

While Ethereum has proven itself in the past and is rightly the second-largest crypto asset by market capitalization, not everyone believes that it will stay in that position forever.

For good risk management, it should not be missing in a crypto investor's portfolio.

• Market Capitalization: $82 billion
• All Time High: $260
• 90d Price Change: +85%
• Trading Volume: High
• Liquidity: High
• Use Case/Adoption: Great (the high speed of Solana makes it the best solution for many use cases which led to strong adoption in a very short period of time)
• Tokenomics: Medium (with an initial inflation rate of 8% scaling down to 1,5% the tokenomics are not favorable, but also not too bad)
• Development Team: Medium (it remains to be seen if the big issues of Solanas unique consensus algorithm can be fixed in the future)
• Community Support: Great
• Security & Transparency: Bad (due to the high resource cost needed to run a Solana node, the control of the network lies in the hands of few actors, who have high power over it, as seen by multiple chain halts in the past)
• Performance: Great

Solana is designed for high-speed and high-volume transactions. It provides a more scalable and efficient alternative to other blockchain networks, making it well-suited for applications that require fast and frequent transactions. There was a time when it was considered the best crypto for staking.

Solana suffered a lot due to its connection to Sam Bankman-Fried, the fraudulent founder of FTX and proponent of the blockchain.

If the project manages to rid itself of some remaining technical hurdles and deliver on their promise of great usability (e.g. with their own smartphone), I think SOL could rise back like a phoenix.

Risk and reward with Solana is probably higher than most other top projects, making it an alluring cryptocurrency to buy right now.

• Market Capitalization: $20 billion
• All Time High: $146
• 90d Price Change: 35%
• Trading Volume: Medium
• Liquidity: Medium
• Use Case/Adoption: Good (with many gaming projects recently launching on Avalanche, the protocol has established itself as the go-to technology for gaming)
• Tokenomics: Great (part of the fee token get burned, resulting in a deflationary asset)
• Development Team: Great
• Community Support: Medium
• Security & Transparency: Great (over 100 independent nodes)
• Performance: Great

Avalanche is another promising cryptocurrency on our list that 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, one of the largest gaming projects in the web3 space.

• Market Capitalization: $11 billion
• All Time High: $52.88
• 90d Price Change: +17%
• Trading Volume: Medium
• Liquidity: Medium
• Use Case/Adoption: Great (Chainlink plays a crucial role in enabling smart contracts to interact securely with external data sources, APIs, and payment systems and is used by almost every major protocol)
• Tokenomics: Medium (the fixed supply cap adds scarcity and a growing network adding demand will drive the price)
• Development Team: Medium
• Community Support: Medium
• Security & Transparency: Good (multiple independent nodes are incentivized to maintain their reputation and excellent data quality with LINK token)
• Performance: Great 

The Chainlink protocol is designed to enhance the security and decentralization of smart contracts on various blockchain platforms. It achieves this by providing reliable, tamper-proof data feeds, various off-chain computations, and end-to-end decentralization. 

The LINK token already made great gains in 2023, but as a backbone infrastructure for all of web3 we believe it is likely that an overall growth of the market in 2024 will impact Chainlink immensely, as the demand for their services should increase.

• Market Capitalization: $23 billion
• All Time High: $3.10
• 90d Price Change: +3.40%
• Trading Volume: Medium
• Liquidity: Medium
• Use Case/Adoption: Great (clear, widespread & big market)
• Tokenomics: Okay (burn mechanism to reduce supply is great, but the initial sale is still concentrating a huge amount of the total supply in the hands of founders and early investors, who could enact immense impact on the market)
• Development Team: Great
• Community Support: Great
• Security & Transparency: Great (while the blockchain is secure and transparent, malicious smart contracts can be dangerous for ordinary users)
• Performance: Great

Cardano is a blockchain platform that aims to provide a more efficient, sustainable, and interoperable platform for building and running decentralized applications and executing smart contracts.

It is designed to enable the development and execution of smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApps) while also addressing the issues of scalability, interoperability, and sustainability that have plagued other blockchain platforms.

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.

• Market Capitalization: $4 billion
• All Time High: $44.70
• 90d Price Change: +8.72%
• Trading Volume: Medium
• Liquidity: Medium
• Use Case/Adoption: Medium (clear target market but still early in adoption)
• Tokenomics: Okay (still inflationary, new utility for the token is being implemented, using Cosmos Hub token as a security layer for independent chains, who do not want to run their own validators)
• Development Team: Great
• Community Support: Medium
• Security & Transparency: Great (the interchain transfers between CosmosSDK chains far surpass traditional bridges due to being completely decentralized)
• Performance: Great

Cosmos is a blockchain which acts as a facilitator for the so-called “internet of blockchains.” It provides a way for different blockchain networks to communicate and work together, allowing for greater scalability, security, and functionality.

While development is still going strong, we will need to see great usability in the form of widely adopted use cases built on the many different blockchains of the ecosystem. 

• Market Capitalization: $10 billion
• All Time High: $2.93
• 90d Price Change: +2.18%
• Trading Volume: High
• Liquidity: High
• Use Case/Adoption: Great (with the simple use case of offering a cheaper alternative to Ethereum, Polygon is seeing great adoption)
• Tokenomics: Great (part of the fee token get burned, resulting in a deflationary asset)
• Development Team: Great
• Community Support: Great
• Security & Transparency: Great (over 100 independent nodes)
• Performance: Great

Polygon (formerly known as Matic Network) provides a more scalable and interoperable infrastructure for building decentralized applications (dApps).

It is designed as a “layer two” to the Ethereum network, allowing developers to build and deploy Ethereum-compatible dApps on the Polygon network.

Polygon is seeing great adoption by many projects due to its low-cost structure. While the business case of Polygon is in theory easy to copy, they managed to establish a great network effect resulting in steady growth.

• Market Capitalization: $86 billion
• All Time High: $690
• 90d Price Change: +74%
• Trading Volume: High
• Liquidity: High
• Use Case/Adoption: Great (large user base and continuously new use cases introduced by Binance)
• Tokenomics: Medium (burn mechanism to reduce supply is great, but the initial sale is still concentrating a huge amount of the total supply in the hands of founders and early investors, who could enact immense impact on the market)
• Development Team: Great
• Community Support: Great
• Security & Transparency: Bad (sadly Binance Smart Chain, Binance Chain and Binance as an exchange itself are controlled by a small group of powerful entities, which pose a definite security risk)
• Performance: Great

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.

It’s still important 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.

• Market Capitalization: $3 billion
• All Time High: $21
• 90d Price Change: +72%
• Trading Volume: Medium
• Liquidity: Medium
• Use Case/Adoption: Medium (decentralized cross-chain swaps are an amazing and very much needed use case, but so far Thorchain sees little adoption)
• Tokenomics: Great (validators are required to stake RUNE and every liquidity pool needs a mirrored amount of RUNE locked in it, resulting in high demand of the token with increasing adoption)
• Development Team: Great
• Community Support: Medium
• Security & Transparency: Great (Thorchain aims to be the solution for the very many bridge hacks we have seen in the past when it comes to swapping assets between different blockchains)
• Performance: Medium

Thorchain aims to solve one of the biggest problems in the decentralized finance space, the trustless trade of assets between independent blockchains.

While I think the vision is very promising, it will be hard to deliver and take lots of time and dedication.

However, if successful, Thorchain will revolutionize a big part of web3.