If you’re a new entrant in the cryptocurrency space, it’s probably best to stick to cryptocurrencies that have been around for a longer period of time and have a well-developed ecosystem of resources for users. This will make it easier for you to set up your wallet and find answers if you encounter any problems along the way.
If you’re a beginner, consider sticking to cryptocurrencies that satisfy the following criteria:
- The coin has a significant market capitalization ($1 billion and up)
- The coin is listed on many cryptocurrency exchanges and can easily be exchanged against fiat currencies
- The coin has solid liquidity (at least $100 million in 24-hour trading volume)
- The coin is already a working product and is not based on future promises
If you stick to coins that meet these criteria, you’ll automatically be filtering out a lot of low-quality projects and reducing your chances of falling victim to scams. You will also easily be able to sell your coins and convert them to fiat currency if you ever decide to do so.
Here’s a few examples of cryptocurrencies that are worth considering for beginner investors in crypto. These coins have a lot of liquidity, well-developed ecosystems and a lot of educational resources and tools that will help beginners get up to speed.
- Bitcoin
- Ethereum
- Litecoin
- Polygon
- Solana
Please note that cryptocurrencies are risky investments and typically display a lot of price volatility. This is true even for established cryptocurrencies with multi-billion dollar market capitalizations. Never invest more than you are willing to lose.
Best crypto to buy for long-term investors
Many crypto investors prefer to passively hold their cryptocurrencies over the long term instead of actively trading them. Frankly, this is a good decision if you don’t want to put a lot of time and effort into following everything that’s happening in the crypto and blockchain space.
If you’re trying to invest in crypto for the long term, we recommend that you only stick to the most established cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. While they are still risky, their fundamentals are much more robust than projects that heavily depend on just a few developers and community leaders.
In order to invest in crypto successfully over the long term, we recommend that you store your coins safely using a hardware crypto wallet. Although there’s plenty of high-quality hardware wallets out there, Ledger’s devices stand out as the best choice overall in our opinion.
How we chose the best cryptocurrencies to buy
With thousands of different cryptocurrencies on the market, it can be challenging to narrow down the list to only about a dozen coins. When creating this list, we aimed to showcase a variety of cryptocurrency projects, ranging from well-established projects to more speculative projects that could potentially have a lot of upside. Here’s the factors we considered when deciding which cryptocurrencies to feature.
Availability
It’s important for a cryptocurrency to be easily available across a variety of cryptocurrency exchanges, including both centralized and decentralized options. We also considered whether the cryptocurrency can be traded directly against fiat currencies, which makes the process of buying and selling much more straightforward.
Market capitalization
The coins featured on our list of the best cryptocurrencies to buy in 2023 are all among the 100 largest crypto assets by market capitalization. By itself, a large market capitalization doesn’t mean that the project is of high quality. However, it is a good indication that there’s a lot of community interest in the project, and coins with a larger market cap are more resilient to market manipulation attempts as moving the market requires large amounts of capital.
Sector leadership
The cryptocurrency market can be divided into several sectors. For example, we have Proof-of-Work cryptocurrencies and Proof-of-Stake cryptocurrencies, which represent two of the main approaches towards achieving decentralized consensus. We can further identify other sectors such as decentralized finance, non-fungible tokens, layer 2 projects, meme coins and others.
We attempted to highlight projects that are leaders in their respective sectors in order to showcase the variety that can be found in the crypto and blockchain space.
Working products
It’s important that the cryptocurrency we’re featuring has a working product already and isn’t simply based on future promises. When it comes to cryptocurrencies, we generally avoid highlighting coins that don’t have a working mainnet yet. When it comes to tokens, we try to focus on tokens that are used as utility tokens in a working product or as governance tokens in an actively used decentralized protocol.
Occasionally, we will highlight coins that are about to launch their mainnet or key product soon. However, we try to limit this only to top tier projects that are highly anticipated by the crypto community.
Team and development
Most high-quality crypto and blockchain projects are transparent about their team and their credentials. We prefer to highlight projects developed and managed by highly qualified individuals. In addition, we put a lot of value on activity. If a project is being developed actively, we’re much more likely to feature it over a project that is only improved occasionally.
Of course, a project’s team or founders being anonymous is not a dealbreaker in every single case. After all, we still don’t know who created Bitcoin.
The bottom line: What crypto to buy now?
What is the best crypto to buy now is mostly dependent on your own individual risk profile and investment goals. If you are interested in cryptocurrencies that have long-term potential, then staples like BTC and ETH are probably the right choice for you.
If your risk appetite is greater, you can try to pursue investments in cryptos under 1 cent or participate in the latest crypto presales if you are feeling especially frisky.
In any case, please keep in mind that the cryptocurrency market is highly volatile and that investing in cryptocurrency is subject to considerable risk. Always do your research and consider your financial situation before making any investment, and never invest more than you are willing to lose.