On cryptocurrency exchanges, we can find a plethora of digital coins with a wide range of price tags per unit—from fractions of a cent to thousands of dollars. How can one avoid getting lost or making a wrong choice? Which cryptocurrency should you buy? Even professional traders can’t always make foolproof decisions when selecting the right asset for investment. Everyone makes mistakes and sometimes loses money.
Both beginners and experienced investors are still asking the same question: which cryptocurrency should they buy nowadays? Which coins will rise, and how can they invest wisely to make a good profit?
In this article, we’ll discuss why now is the best time to buy cryptocurrencies and which coins are worth considering. We'll also examine the most promising projects and their key assets.
Does it make sense to buy crypto now?
Many experts say yes! If you want to profit from cryptocurrencies, now is the best time to buy them.
Today, we’re seeing a significant drop in market quotes of many popular digital assets. But what’s driving this? There are actually several reasons:
- The hostilities in Ukraine
- High global consumer inflation
- Expectations of a global economic downturn (the aftereffects of the pandemic)
- Worldwide monetary tightening of major central banks to somehow curb rampant inflation
Your main task is to find the ideal moment to enter the market for buying cryptocurrency—when the asset's price is at its lowest, and the market is beginning to shift towards an uptrend.
The problem is that the crypto market is extremely volatile and unpredictable due to various factors—negative or positive news on economics and politics, bold statements from prominent policymakers, or sharp moves by market makers in the crypto industry.
This means that the coin you bought could sharply increase in value, or it could just as quickly plummet, and this can happen in just a couple of days. Finding the right moment and making the right choice is the main challenge.
When you decide to invest your free capital in buying cryptocurrency, always assess the prospects of your chosen project and consider the overall market situation. It’s wise to evenly distribute your funds among fundamentally different trading instruments and only invest money that you can afford to lose without much stress.
Below is a list of projects whose trading instruments are worth keeping an eye on to help you determine which cryptocurrency to buy in 2024.
Top 10 promising cryptocurrencies in 2024
Bitcoin
Bitcoin is the flagship of the entire cryptocurrency world. Many experts are betting on its steady growth and development. There are several reasons why this can be considered almost inevitable.
Bitcoin ETF approval
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) debated for a long time whether to approve a Bitcoin ETF. Eventually, they made it happen.
A Bitcoin ETF is an exchange-traded fund that uses Bitcoin as the underlying asset. In other words, the fund buys Bitcoin and sells shares to investors. Investors who buy these shares can profit from fluctuations in the coin's value.
At first glance, it might seem that you’ve always been able to make money on Bitcoin's price fluctuations. But this time, things are different—with a Bitcoin ETF, investor assets are under greater protection, as they won’t be directly interacting with cryptocurrencies. Crypto exchanges are often hacked, leading to losses of hundreds of millions of dollars. However, Bitcoin ETF issuers are responsible for safeguarding their clients' assets.
The approval of a Bitcoin ETF by the SEC is a very important, even pivotal, event. It has led to a significant influx of funds and increased liquidity across the crypto market.
Bitcoin recognized as digital gold
Thanks to its limited supply and decentralized nature, Bitcoin is seen by investors as digital gold. It is considered a reliable store of value and a hedge against price volatility (inflation). Demand for BTC as a store of value (like gold) is bound to grow in today’s environment of economic uncertainty and geopolitical risks.
BRC-20 standard
BRC-20 is an experimental token standard similar to Ethereum's ERC-20, but it operates entirely on the Bitcoin network.
BRC-20 enables the creation and transfer of tokens using ordinal numbers to track unique satoshis. This standard showcases additional advantages of using Bitcoin beyond just transferring value.
BRC-20 allows the development of tokens for various purposes, such as stablecoins, NFTs, and DeFi applications. However, it has been criticized for putting a heavy load on the network and potential security risks. The Runes protocol, launched in April 2024, is already working to address these issues.
Second-layer solutions (L2) for Bitcoin
These are technologies that operate on top of Bitcoin’s main network, enabling better scalability, faster transactions, and lower fees. There are several major L2 solutions for the first cryptocurrency:
- Lightning network is the most popular L2 solution, allowing for fast microtransactions with minimal fees.
- Stacks has its own STX token, enabling the creation of smart contracts and dApps.
- Emerging and rapidly developing L2 solutions: BVM, Merlin Chain, Bounce Bit, SVM, and BOB.
Ethereum
Pondering on which crypto to buy, Ethereum is certainly worthy of note. In 2022, this ecosystem successfully transitioned to the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) transaction confirmation algorithm, unlocking a massive amount of digital assets from staking. Additionally, developers have ambitious plans for further technical improvements.
Notably, unlike many PoS cryptocurrencies, Ethereum managed to avoid being added to the SEC's "blacklist," which labels most PoS assets as illegal (shadow) securities.
Ethereum's prospects are very high, and here’s why:
- The Ethereum network remains the leader in smart contracts and dApps.
- Ethereum successfully transitioned to the PoS algorithm (where network regulation is now done by validators, not miners).
- Second-layer solutions (L2) are actively developing.
- There’s a strong demand for liquid staking and restaking protocols.
- The Ethereum network has an active community of developers and regular users.
On top of all that, the SEC has finally approved spot Ethereum ETFs.
After Ethereum transitioned to the PoS consensus algorithm, the entire crypto community is now eagerly awaiting the next phase—sharding, a technology that will split the blockchain into smaller pieces (shards) to enable simultaneous transaction processing, significantly increasing the network's capacity.
Ethereum currently leads in terms of total value locked (TVL) in DeFi protocols, indicating that a vast number of users and developers trust the network.
Ethereum continues to win favor with the crypto community thanks to its innovations and appeals to investors. Its leadership in smart contracts and DeFi, successful PoS transition, and active development of second-layer technologies and liquid staking create favorable conditions for further growth and strengthening in the coming years.
Solana
The Solana cryptocurrency survived the collapse of the FTX exchange (its main investor) surprisingly well. Despite grim predictions of its downfall, the project not only survived but continued to actively develop.
Solana is a high-performance blockchain platform known for its high transaction speeds and relatively low fees. Despite facing technical challenges, the platform and its token have great growth potential. It has a strong chance of becoming one of the main platforms for DeFi, Web3 applications, and even NFTs.
High activity on the Solana blockchain is driven by the significant number of meme coins being launched, making it the most advanced platform for such projects. This attracts a large number of participants to the network and increases the trading volumes of its assets.
Avalanche
Avalanche’s consensus protocol supports high throughput, enables ultra-fast transactions, and ensures very low fees.
What makes Avalanche unique is its ability to generate customizable subnets, allowing developers to create applications with unique performance and security requirements.
Avalanche consists of three interconnected blockchains:
- Exchange Chain (X-Chain) – Used for creating, issuing, and exchanging tokens.
- Platform Chain (P-Chain) – Coordinates validators and develops subnets.
- Contract Chain (C-Chain) – Powers smart contracts and can connect to the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).
- The C-Chain is the most popular network among users, thanks to its compatibility with EVM, which makes it easier to develop and interact with existing Ethereum applications.
Avalanche is considered one of the leading platforms for DeFi applications, including well-known projects like Aave, Trader Joe, Curve, and Benqi. The network's architecture allows the issuance of digital assets and the creation of custom blockchains.
NEAR
NEAR is a blockchain focused on creating decentralized applications. While there are many similar blockchain platforms for dApps on the market, NEAR stands out for its simplicity, attracting users. It’s easier to use than its competitors, relatively inexpensive, and very fast—you can build an application on it in just 5 minutes, and it processes a block of data in just 1 second.
To give some perspective, the Solana network processes about 3,000 transactions per second, and more than 65,000 during peak periods. Ethereum can handle 15 transactions per second, while Bitcoin only manages 7. Solana can build a block in 0.4 seconds, Ethereum in 10 seconds, and Bitcoin takes 10 minutes.
NEAR is open-source, meaning any participant can contribute to its further development.
NEAR uses a unique sharding technology that divides the network into smaller parts (shards). This helps significantly increase throughput and drastically reduce fees.
Sharding technology is already fully integrated into NEAR, but it has yet to be implemented in Ethereum, though it is planned there as well.
The platform provides users with easily readable account names, simplifying interaction with the platform. NEAR also offers customizable security levels, allowing users to choose the appropriate level of protection (instead of relying solely on a seed phrase).
NEAR Protocol was co-founded by Ilya Polosukhin, who was born and spent part of his life in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Polosukhin worked at Google for three years before founding NEAR with schoolmates who, like him, were programming Olympiad champions.
Polosukhin has expertise in artificial intelligence, having worked on AI projects at Google Research for many years. Given his extensive experience in AI, he aims to integrate NEAR with AI, potentially making the blockchain more attractive to users in the near future.
Optimism (OP)
Consider the Optimism project, as it is currently one of the most popular second-layer solutions for scaling Ethereum.
Although Ethereum is the leader among ecosystem blockchains, it is technically not yet able to meet the growing demands of users.
There are already many competing blockchains with truly unique infrastructures. This is why modular blockchain solutions were developed to work on top of Ethereum, allowing transactions to be executed much cheaper and faster.
One such solution is Optimism. Unlike its major competitors, Optimism has an open-source codebase and uses the Optimistic Rollup technology, which increases network throughput and reduces fees while maintaining the security and decentralization of the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.
The Optimism blockchain scales the Ethereum network by collecting transaction information from its blockchain, bundling them into separate packages, and then completing these operations.
The data is later sent back to the Ethereum network, where validation takes place in the form of an additional data block.
Thanks to this mechanism, the fees required for transactions are significantly lower. If transactions were performed directly on Ethereum’s base layer, the fees would be much higher.
Optimism's full compatibility with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) makes it easy to migrate all decentralized applications to this platform, including highly popular DeFi applications (such as Aave, Uniswap, Curve, and Synthetix).
In 2022, the decentralized organization Optimism Collective was created, and a new cryptocurrency was launched—OP tokens. These tokens are used in the Optimism network for governance (allowing users to participate in voting on the project's future development).
Arbitrum (ARB)
Arbitrum is another Ethereum scaling solution that, like Optimism, uses the unique Optimistic Rollup technology.
The Arbitrum protocol, similar to Optimism, helps increase Ethereum’s blockchain throughput and reduce transaction fees, while maintaining a high level of security and decentralization of the main Ethereum network.
Arbitrum currently consists of two networks:
- Arbitrum One is the main Arbitrum network, offering high throughput and relatively low fees. The project’s ARB token is used to govern this network.
- Arbitrum Nova is a network designed and optimized for gaming and social applications. It offers even lower fees but does not have its own token.
The Arbitrum team is also promoting the concept of L3 chains built on top of Arbitrum.
Orbit is an innovative tool developed by Offchain Labs (the Arbitrum project team). It helps developers create and deploy their own L3 chains, providing control over the parameters of these chains and adapting them to individual needs and applications.
Aptos (APT)
Aptos (APT)
Aptos is a new Layer 1 blockchain developed to address scalability, security, and usability challenges.
From its inception, the project attracted significant attention due to its star-studded team of former Meta employees, who had previously worked on the Diem project (formerly known as Libra).
The Aptos protocol uses the Move programming language, initially created for Diem.
The move helps maintain a high level of security and flexibility when developing smart contracts. The blockchain enables simultaneous transaction execution, enhancing its throughput.
Aptos aims to achieve the maximum possible throughput and the lowest fees on the market. So far, the team has been successful in these goals: transaction fees are already very low, and the speed of operations is comparable to that of major competitors.
Aptos is partnering with various projects and companies, extending its reach beyond the crypto industry. For instance, in the fall of 2023, Aptos Labs announced a collaboration with Microsoft to develop innovative solutions in Web3 and AI.
Starknet (STRK)
StarkNet is another solution aimed at improving Ethereum's scalability, and yet another answer to the question of which crypto to buy.
This protocol uses ZK-Rollup technology, which provides high throughput, reduced fees, and almost complete privacy.
Unlike Optimistic Rollup, ZK-Rollup employs cryptographic proofs to verify transactions. StarkNet uses the Cairo programming language, specifically designed for building ZK applications.
StarkNet, like other Ethereum scaling solutions, has its own unique features. For example, it is not fully compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) because it uses an account abstraction model, which is quite different from EVM’s account structure. This abstraction is one of the network's key advantages.
In StarkNet, all accounts are considered contracts, creating flexibility and functionality for the entire network. Account abstraction allows for more complex authorization mechanisms and access control, increasing security.
Full EVM compatibility hasn’t been achieved yet, as StarkNet uses Cairo, but the StarkNet team is developing tools to improve compatibility and simplify interactions with EVM.
It’s worth noting that the StarkNet ecosystem is still underdeveloped and at a very early stage compared to other blockchains mentioned earlier. While this lesser-known and underdeveloped project may seem risky for investment, its technological innovations could form the foundation for creating innovative applications that cannot yet be built on other blockchains. For this reason, we find StarkNet to be a very promising and attractive investment.
Factors affecting cryptocurrency market quotes
When considering which crypto to buy, always take into account all the factors that can directly or indirectly influence its price.
In a bear market, it’s wise to focus on assets with growth potential in the near future. When analyzing projects to invest in, always consider the following:
Technology and security
Cryptocurrencies and tokens emerged from innovations in digital technology. The success of such projects depends on the underlying technology. When choosing a cryptocurrency, it’s essential to evaluate its technological prospects, scalability, and transaction security. Projects with strong technological foundations will continue to thrive, and their asset prices will grow.
Popularity among retail investors
Most buyers of cryptocurrencies are everyday users. Investors create demand, driving up the price. Choose cryptocurrencies that are popular among users, with a growing user base. As the number of supporters increases, so will its value.
Nonstop technological development
Successful digital projects never stand still. They evolve, regularly offering users new products, opportunities for passive income, and improved security algorithms. The newer and more innovative the technology, the larger the audience will grow, increasing demand and, ultimately, the asset's value.
Limited supply
If a project has a limited supply of coins, it is less prone to devaluation. Many crypto projects burn tokens to prevent devaluation due to oversupply. Limiting the supply keeps prices stable—fewer coins make them more valuable.
Market cycles
The crypto market goes through booms and busts, with prices fluctuating between cycles. During a bull market, asset prices rise, but during global economic instability, the market tends to fall, and prices decline.
Understanding these cycles helps traders determine the best times to buy or sell cryptocurrencies.
When is best time to buy cryptocurrency?
Deciding which crypto to buy is important, but so is knowing how to handle these assets. Two popular investment strategies are long-term and short-term investing.
Long-term investments are ideal during a market downturn. Experienced traders use market dips to buy promising coins at low prices.
This approach allows investors to build their portfolios slowly and effectively with promising assets. When the market shifts from a bear to a bull cycle, some assets can be sold at higher prices, with profits reinvested into new promising instruments. This strategy is logical and productive but requires experience and patience to wait for the right time and choose high-growth potential coins.
Short-term trades based on technical analysis. This approach suits investors who seek quick profits. Crypto trading allows users to increase their capital rapidly, but traders need skills and knowledge.
Technical analysis and various trading strategies help traders make informed decisions when the price reaches certain levels or when the market reverses. Short-term trades can be profitable during both rising and falling prices if a sell position is opened.
It’s important to remember that the crypto market is highly volatile, and asset prices can change quickly, potentially leading to partial or complete loss of capital.
To mitigate losses, stop-loss orders are often used during price reversals. Beginners should test trading strategies on demo accounts before real trading and avoid investing more than 3-5% of their funds in a single instrument.
Conclusion
Economies are recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, but tensions remain due to ongoing geopolitical conflicts. Military clashes, political instability, and accelerating global inflation are all hindering economic growth.
At the same time, digital technologies are developing rapidly, the decentralized finance sector is growing, and new solutions are emerging to make financial transactions even easier.
Today, nearly anyone can build personal wealth and earn passive income from financial investments. Cryptocurrencies are one of the most promising instruments to quickly multiply capital.
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