As the world becomes increasingly digital, financial markets are becoming more global with almost instant access. But this also means that more and more people have exposure to cryptocurrencies and other crypto-assets such as bitcoin.
These alternative currencies have been around for years, but it wasn’t until May of 2017 that a major milestone was reached when one bitcoin traded for $2,950. This price was up from about $770 at the beginning of 2017. Shortly after hitting this milestone, the price of a single bitcoin began its descent to about $1,800 in September 2017, which is where it sits now.
Over the last year, it’s been impossible to avoid hearing about cryptocurrency. The topic has been all over the news, with reports on bitcoin prices regularly making front page headlines.
If you’re looking to invest in some cryptocurrency but want to avoid getting ripped off, then these 10 cheap coins may be worth a look.
- XRP
Ripple says XRP was built for payments and can settle transactions faster, more reliably and at a lower cost than is possible over standard global payment infrastructure. The company behind the cryptocurrency, Ripple, has created an open-source ledger called XRP Ledger that is used to record transactions, with each transaction validated by the consensus of other users.
According to the company, XRP Ledger enables “secure and instant transfer of money between two parties” with “low processing fees.” Today’s live XRP value is $0.438990 USD with a 24-hour trading volume of $1,627,906,000 USD.
- Dogecoin
Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency that was created as a parody in December 2013. Despite the fact that it was originally intended to be a joke, it has quickly become quite real for those who have profited from it. Doge price hit an all-time high of $0.682 per coin on May 8, 2021.
Dogecoin has been compared to bitcoin because of its very low transaction fees and fast transaction speeds. The mascot of the currency is Doge, an Internet meme featuring a Shiba Inu dog with its inner monologue written in broken English.
- Stellar
Stellar is a decentralized payment network that was inspired by Ripple. The Stellar Development Foundation created the platform for international payments. It’s also an open-source protocol. Stellar uses XLM (its native cryptocurrency) for all transactions on its network and charges fees for transactions that use lumens as their currency.
- Uniswap
Uniswap is built on the Swap contract, which was first developed by Kyber Network and then later standardized as ERC-1484 by Vitalik Buterin, CTO of Ethereum Foundation, according to The Block. Uniswap enables anyone who holds a coin to create a liquidity pool for any token pair they choose – without having to worry about technical details or security risks.
- Chainlink
The ChainLink network takes an approach similar to the concept of oracles in financial markets. For instance, consider a smart contract that pays out based on the weather in New York City. It can use ChainLink’s off-chain oracle network to securely retrieve real-time weather information from multiple sources.
The oracle doesn’t have any direct access to this information itself since it lives outside the blockchain, but it doesn’t need to, either. In fact, that’s the point – as far as smart contracts are concerned, the data is authentic and trustworthy.
- Cardano
Cardano is a decentralized public blockchain and cryptocurrency project that is the first to evolve out of a scientific philosophy and a research-first driven approach. Cardano was developed by Input Output Hong Kong, a technology company committed to using peer-to-peer innovations to provide relief to those in need.
- Polygon
Polygon is a new cryptocurrency that could be the solution to the issue of scalability. Polygon is a second-layer blockchain based on Ethereum and a collaboration between Coinbase and Binance. It is used to improve the functioning of applications built on the Ethereum blockchain, like MATIC, which is an early-stage decentralized application (Dapp) supported by Polygon.
- Sandbox
Pixowl created The Sandbox in 2011 to introduce blockchain technology to mainstream gaming, according to CoinMarketCap. According to CoinMarketCap, investors include Atari, Helix and CryptoKitties. With the current hype around metaverses and blockchain games like The Sandbox might just be getting started.
- Decentraland
Decentraland isn’t just about playing games in virtual reality. It’s an immersive platform that offers everything from buying and selling goods and services to visiting other people’s private properties. Its token is an ERC20 security known as MANA, which is used to power transactions between users.
The virtual world is powered by the Ethereum blockchain and its cryptocurrency unit, the Ether (ETH), which Decentraland accepted during their initial coin offering (ICO). In order to buy land in Decentraland, MANA must first be converted into ETH and then exchanged with the developers for LAND.
- NEAR Protocol
NEAR Protocol was launched in early 2019, with the goal of becoming a consumer-oriented blockchain platform. It is built on the Ethereum codebase and uses a consensus mechanism that combines Proof-of-Stake (PoS) and Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT). NEAR aims for high security and reliability at the expense of speed and scalability.