Small Cap Cryptocurrencies To Pay Attention To in 2022

The crypto market is booming again, and no one knows where and will it stop.

But even as it is, many traders and investors are rather happy.

How they would not be when we saw Bitcoin rising 1000%(and even 1500% at some point).

Ethereum grew from $100 in August 2020, to more than $4000 in March 2021.

Many other cryptocurrencies grew 10-100x over the last year or so, and currently, they may just continue to do so.

This is mostly due to fresh players entering the scene for the first time, and is true for both individuals and large companies.

What’s inside for us?

Trending and profitable markets are always tempting.

For anyone looking to increase their wealth, the cryptocurrency market is probably the most lucrative market of the decade and even the 21. century.

However, there are a lot of ways to take advantage of it(or at least try to do so- remember that crypto markets are also very risky and there are no guarantees).

For some, it could be day trading.

The market is very volatile and provides a plethora of ways and mediums through which we can scalp and take some nice bucks.

Others might prefer investing, finding projects with amazing potentials like Ethereum or Cardano, and simply holding to them.

And for those that don’t want to be involved in trading- there are plenty of other ways- like affiliate marketing for products that are highly related to crypto, or performing a certain service and getting paid in cryptocurrency.

They all have their advantages and disadvantages, and only you decide the best way for you to involve.

However, this piece of content is intended and targeted at those looking into the second option- investing in cryptocurrencies with large potential.

How to find amazing cryptocurrencies that are worth investing in?

There are plenty of them when it comes to amazing cryptos, including the ones we already mentioned above.

But are they worth investing in at this moment?

Probably not, as they already grew heavily over the last 12 months, and more importantly- their market cap is already extremely big, thus their continued growth requires a lot of additional fresh money.

This brings us to the first marker we’ll be looking at while researching for the best small-cap cryptos to invest in right now:

Market cap

It is a very simple measure to understand, and represents the total worthiness of some cryptocurrency, in U.S. dollars or some other currency.

How do we calculate it?

We simply multiply the number of coins in circulation by the current price per coin.

So the market cap of Bitcoin at this moment is:

18792600(number of Bitcoins in circulation) x ~$48859(current price of 1 Bitcoin) = ~9194700000000(the market cap).

So you see, the current market cap of Bitcoin is almost 1 trillion U.S. dollars.

And this is very important to understand, as it means that for Bitcoin to grow 100% from the current price, people need to invest another almost trillion U.S. dollars into Bitcoin- and that’s a ton of money!

Let’s now see the market cap of Ethereum:

117193902(current amount of Ethereum coins in circulation) x ~3290 U.S. dollars(current price per one Ethereum coin) = 385420000000 which is roughly 385.42 billion of U.S. dollars!

So for Ethereum to grow 100% from its current price, people will need to invest at least 385.42 billion U.S. dollars!

This is why it is crucial to find coins with a large potential, yet small market cap.

Those cryptocurrencies can grow 100%-1000% without needing extraordinary amounts of newly invested money.

Coin Supply

As we saw above, the coin supply is another big factor when investing in cryptocurrencies, and will be our second marker.

When you see that the 6th crypto by market cap in the world is XRP, with a price of $1.26 at the moment, you may think- aha, XRP is worth just over a dollar, while Bitcoin is worth more than $48000, which means XRP is ~48000 times easier to grow than Bitcoin!

But you would be wrong, and the reason is coin supply.

Yes, the current price of XRP is $1.26, but there are 46471846087 XRPs in circulation(coin supply).

So, the market cap of XRP is:

$1.26 x 46471846087 = $58330000000.

The market cap of Bitcoin is around $920 billion, while XRP is around $58 billion, which means it’s 920/58=16 times easier for XRP to grow 100% compared to Bitcoin.

In other words- Bitcoin needs a trillion to grow 100%, while XRP needs just 58 billion.

Once you understand the coin supply and market cap, we need just one more thing and those are fundamentals.

Coin Fundamentals

Fundamentals is the term first used in stock trading and investing, but it definitely works for cryptocurrencies as well.

In a nutshell, the fundamentals represent core company values, and include but aren’t limited to:

• Coin founders and team working on the project- who they are, what are their credentials, what they did in the past?
• Coin purpose- what’s the catch with this cryptocurrency- does it offer some unique value or is it just one of the thousands of Bitcoin copycats?
• Partnerships- do they have at least one meaningful partnership or are they just selling a story?
• A working product- do they already have an amazing product, or are they just promising?

There are more fundamentals to look into, but these are the cornerstone and should get you started properly.

Coin performance in 2021

As you know, most cryptocurrency coins saw amazing gains in 2021.

And this is true for both big and small-cap coins.

However, not all of them performed that well.

In fact, some of them went down(believe it or not).

And that’s something we have to take into account.

If most cryptocurrencies saw 100%-1000% gains, and some interesting crypto fell, that’s a clear indicator that something isn’t right with it.

It could be they rebranded, got hacked, or simply didn’t have luck.

Whatever it is- stay out of them.

And that’s exactly what I did.

Now that you are equipped with a few basic markers that can be used to identify powerful cryptocurrencies to invest in, let’s see if we can find some lucrative opportunities for 2021:

Small-cap cryptocurrencies to invest into in 2021

Chiliz(CHZ)

Current price(updated daily):

Price at the time of writing: 0.376 USD

All-time high: 0.8915 USD

Market cap: 2,215,918,372.62 USD

Coin supply: 5,893,953,082 CHZ

Coin rank(by market cap): 62

If you happen to read my blog, you know how fond I am of Chiliz.

I’m heavily invested in it and believe it is one of the most undervalued coins out there.

It has already risen 1000%+ this year only, but they work non-stop and have made 30+ strong partnerships this year alone.

In just the last 10 days or so, they announced partnerships with seven strong NBA basketball clubs, which, knowing the NBA’s popularity throughout the world should speak for itself.

And while that alone is a very big deal, this is the last 10 days only.

Former this year, and in 2020, they have made partnerships with some of the most popular football clubs in the world- like Juventus, Barcelona, PSG, Arsenal, and Atletico Madrid.

Besides football and basketball, they entered sports like Formula 1, and Indian Cricket and have made contracts with several national football teams like Argentina and Portugal.

There’s yet value to be given by this coin, but in my opinion, having such strong contracts has to produce a snowball effect, meaning the more strong clubs like this join Chiliz, the bigger incentive for other clubs to join as well and not leave their fans out.

What Chiliz created is a platform for fans, where teams can mint their own fan token, and then fans can use those tokens to influence their favorite teams, get discounts for club merchandise, and more.

With a total of 40+ strong partnerships, and many more expected to join, this is a coin definitely worth looking at, and if you feel like me also invest in.

The beauty of Chiliz is that it incentivizes clubs to promote their tokens and thus the Chiliz platform, and we all know how capable of promotion are those top world clubs and teams.

One of last week’s news that had such effect was the news that Lionel Messi got partially paid in crypto coin $PSG, which is a cryptocurrency coin minted on the Chiliz blockchain.

Flow(FLOW)

Current price(updated daily):

Price at the time of writing: 23.54 USD

All-time high: 46.16 USD

Market cap: 1,346,779,168.00 USD

Coin supply: 57,064,824 FLOW

Coin rank(by market cap): 81

Flow is a rather new cryptocurrency, which started trading in the January of 2021.

Still, within less than a year, it moved into the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.

The Flow coin is based on unique architecture, which allows it to scale without sharding, essentially being able to handle billions of transactions and customers.

They also came up with their own blockchain programming language(Cadence), which seems easier and more intuitive than most existing ones.

The way that Flow is secured is also rather unique and called “Proofs of Confidential Knowledge (SPoCKs)”.

SPoCKs allow any number of parties to prove their confidential knowledge, without revealing any of the sensitive info, which is what makes this network so fast.

If that sounds confusing, don’t worry. Let’s see some other data that any investor can understand.

Who are the founders of Flow?

Roham Gharegozlou(CEO)- Roham is the CEO of “Dapper Labs”, a well-known name that stands behind CryptoKitties, NBA Top Shot, and of course Flow. His education came from Prinston in the fields of Economics and Biological sciences.

Dieter  Shirley(Founder and CTO)- Dieter is another co-founder of CryptoKitties and the author of the “ERC-721” proposal which defined NFTs(non-fungible tokens) on Ethereum. Before that, he was a senior software engineer at Apple.

They also fill in another great requirement that we’re looking at, and that’s partners:

Who are the partners of Flow?

Flow is open to anyone to join, collaborate and build on it/benefit from.

However, here are some of the most prominent partners that helped with the testing and development of Flow:

• CryptoKitties
• NBA
• NBA Top Shot
• UFC
• Samsung
• Ubisoft
• Animoca Brands
• Warner Music Group
• …

Basic Attention Token(BAT)

Current price(updated daily):

Price at the time of writing: 0.87 USD

All-time high: 1.65 USD

Market cap: 1,312,172,392.01 USD

Coin supply: 1,489,832,620 BAT

Coin rank(by market cap): 82

What Basic Attention Token is trying to achieve is to reward users for seeing personalized ads, as well as provide better payment terms for advertisers.

To do this, they developed the “Brave Browser”- a new internet browser that was already used by more than 20 million users.

The premise of BAT is rather simple- pay both visitors and users for ads on the network in BAT, do it securely, and cut down on intermediaries.

Who are the founders of Basic Attention Token?

Brendan Eich(CEO)- Brendan is the founder and former CTO of “Mozilla”, and has invented JavaScript in the last decade of the 20th century. He was also heavily responsible for the launch of the Mozilla Firefox browser.

Brian Bondy(CTO)- Brian was a senior software engineer at “Mozilla”, a software developer at Corel, and the leader of the software development team at “Khan Academy”.

Harmony(ONE)

Current price(updated daily):

Price at the time of writing: 0.11 USD

All-time high: 0.22 USD

Market cap: 1,208,640,673.03 USD

Coin supply: 10,446,007,410 ONE

Coin rank(by market cap): 85

Harmony is a rather unique blockchain project, which aims to provide a fast and scalable system for creating dApps(decentralized applications).

The most notable property of Harmony is the ability to bridge between various PoW(proof of work) and PoS(proof of stake) blockchains.

For example, you can launch an Ethereum app on Harmony, and get 2s closure times as well 100x lower fees!

And most importantly, that app will work on Harmony the same as it works on Ethereum.

Besides Ethereum, Harmony can bridge apps from BSC(Binance Smart Chain), and also have plans for supporting at least 3 additional blockchains soon.

Who are the founders of Harmony?

Stephen Tse- Stephen is the only founder and current CEO of Harmony. He has a Ph.D. in cryptography and has worked with Microsoft, Google and Apple.

Besides himself, the Harmony website states that they have seven other employees who formerly worked at Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft.

Audius(AUDIO)

Current price(updated daily):

Price at the time of writing: 2.95 USD

All-time high: 4.99 USD

Market cap: 1,181,456,141.06 USD

Coin supply: 400,244,277 AUDIO

Coin rank(by market cap): 86

Audius is still a less than a year old project, yet it gained lots of traction and price increase in 2021.

It is a decentralized music-sharing website where creators can upload, stream and monetize their audio content.

Audius claims to be and always stays absolutely free for creators, plus offers a 320kbps download/listen quality for all, which makes it a solid competitor to Spotify, MixCloud, and Soundcloud.

Who are the founders of Audius?

Roneil Rumburg(Co-founder and CEO)- Roneil attended Stanford University, and afterward co-founded “Kleiner Perkins'” seed fund, as well “Backslash”, a peer-to-peer Bitcoin payment company.

Forrest Browning(Co-founder and CTO)- Forrest is most notable for his achievement into “Forbes 30 under 30”, and for being a co-founder of “StacksWare, an enterprise management platform for data centers, which started at Stanford.

Ankr(ANKR)

Current price(updated daily):

Price at the time of writing: 0.10 USD

All-time high: 0.22 USD

Market cap: 816,985,381.23 USD

Coin supply: 7,662,899,378 ANKR

Coin rank(by market cap): 108

Ankr started as a solution that provides cheap and easy to set up hosting for blockchain nodes(validators).

Over time it developed into a very robust solution that’s also used for staking and DeFi.

Right now, Ankr supports more than 50+ proof-of-stake blockchains, including Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, Avalanche, Kusama, and many others.

The Ankr network was founded in 2017 at Berkeley University.

Who are the founders of Ankr?

Chandler Song(CEO and co-founder)- Chandler worked with AWS(a centralized cloud hosting company), before founding Ankr.

Ryan Fang(COO and co-founder)- Ryan worked as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley, before co-founding Ankr with Chandler.

Stanley Wu(CTO and co-founder)- Before co-founding Ankr, Stanley was a tech lead at Amazon cloud services for more than 10 years.

Swipe(SXP)

Current price(updated daily):

Price at the time of writing: 4.11 USD

All-time high: 5.86 USD

Market cap: 764,741,876.73 USD

Coin supply: 187,368,789 SXP

Coin rank(by market cap): 109

Swipe is a unique and exciting crypto project.

The goal of this cryptocurrency project is to make a bridge between crypto-assets and traditional FIAT currencies(like the U.S. Dollar).

To achieve this, they’ve created an API to create global payment cards powered by SXP.

Besides that, it has a product called Swipe Swap, which is a swap function forked from Uniswap, SushiSwap, and THORChain.

The Swipe API currently connects two of the biggest crypto exchanges(Binance and FTX) with the largest credit/debit card provider- Visa.

Basically, what Swipes API provides is the conversion of cryptocurrencies into FIAT that happens the moment you swipe your card on a POS or ATM- which is how the “Swipe” name originated.

In other words, you can hold some cryptocurrency tied to a credit/debit card, and at the moment of payment Swipe automatically converts that into U.S. dollars or some other currency.

Who are the founders of Swipe?

Joselito Lizarondo- Joselito is the founder of Swipe and an early investor in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

However, and this is a pretty big deal considering the size and reputation of Binance- in July 2020, Swipe was acquired by Binance for an undisclosed sum!

This is a solid vote for the project, and also means that Binance finds it useful and will invest in it over the next few years.

Dent(DENT)

Current price(updated daily): 0.0011 USD

Price at the time of writing: 0.0075 USD

All-time high: 0.11 USD

Market cap: 753,264,731.60 USD

Coin supply: 99,007,791,203 DENT

Coin rank(by market cap): 110

Dent is one of the most awesome cryptocurrency projects I’ve ever stumbled upon.

It is tackling one of the biggest industries worldwide which is mobile communications and has done so much in practice already.

Dent is a digital mobile provider which offers eSIM cards, roaming-free possibility, and mobile data plans.

The Dent platform is already used by more than 26000000(26 million!) mobile devices in more than 140 countries!

Dent is already available on App Store and Google Play, as well Android APK and Samsung Galaxy store.

As soon as you install their free app, you will be rewarded with some free credits in their DENT token.

For the moment, you can top up the mobile numbers of over 220 operators in 56 countries.

With the DENT app, you can call worldwide, including real-world numbers that don’t have the app installed!

Who are the founders of Dent?

Tero Katajainen(CEO and founder)- Before founding Dent, Tero was a system administrator and Java programmer. He is the founder of “Pocket Indian Software Solutions”, former CTO of “Genetics AG” and was a senior Java/Android consultant for the United Nations in 2015.

Mikko Linnamäki(co-founder)- Mikko is a co-founder of “DOVECOT”, the largest IMAP service provider in the world. Mikko is a very successful businessman and entrepreneur, and has also found “Smartseed”, “Liquid Air Lab GmbH”, “HexMac Software Systems”, and “Buchungsmaschine AG”.

Who are partners of Dent?

Over the last year or so, the Dent project gained some strong partnerships in the industry, most notably:

• Basic Internet Foundation
• Samsung Blockchain
• G+D Mobile Security
• GSMA
• Mobile Ecosystem Forum (MEF)
• Enterprise Ethereum Alliance
• bunq
• Telecom Infra Project (TIP)
• and others…

Verge(XVG)

Current price(updated daily): 0.0028 USD

Price at the time of writing: 0.03 USD

All-time high: 0.3 USD

Market cap: 498,149,375.71 USD

Coin supply: 16,475,384,242 XVG

Coin rank(by market cap): 129

Verge is a privacy-focused cryptocurrency similar to Monero and ZCash.

It was built by modifying the Bitcoin code, to include the Tor network within its wallet, and providing the option called “stealth addresses”.

Verge automatically routes all traffic and payments through the Tor network which makes traffic anonymous and hides the IP addresses of its users.

The inception of Verge dates back to 2014, and it saw a growing number of supporters and contributors over time.

Payments on the Verge system usually take 5-10 seconds and the fee is only 0.1%.

Livepeer(LPT)

Current price(updated daily): 6.92 USD

Price: 22.14 USD

All-time high: 45.22 USD

Market cap: 468,657,191.86 USD

Coin supply: 21,164,655 LPT

Coin rank(by market cap): 133

Livepeer aims to be the first fully decentralized video streaming platform.

The Livepeer platform can be used for pay-as-you-go models, video journaling that’s unrestricted and uncensorable, as well decentralized applications that have video support.

Another interesting aspect of Livepeer is that it is secured by LPT holders which stake the Livepeer token and provide governance, but LPT can also be mined with GPUs- and that GPU power is used to process the videos added to the Livepeer network.

As we speak, there are more than 70000 graphic cards utilized on video processing and LPT earning on Livepeer.

Who are the founders of Livepeer?

Doug Petkanics(Founder, CEO)- Doug has a degree in computer science from Pennsylvania University. His former projects include “Groupon”, “Wildcard” and “Hyperpublic”.

Eric Tang(Founder, CTO)- has a degree in computer and electrical engineering from Carnegie Mellon. He worked as a software developer at “Next Jump”, and later was involved in “Clickable” and “Hyperpublic”, as well “Wildcard”.

NKN(NKN)

Current price(updated daily):

Price: 0.4517 USD

All-time high: 1.48 USD

Market cap: 313,028,666.15 USD

Coin supply: 700,000,000 NKN

Coin rank(by market cap): 161

NKN stands for the “New Kind of Internet”, and it is a peer-to-peer blockchain that can be used to create networks that share internet connectivity and network bandwidth.

NKN is secured by the innovative PoR(proof of relay) system, which allows secure data transmission that’s impossible to intercept or forge, and is very resistant to attacks.

Anyone can join or leave the network as a node or client, and they get a unique NKN address that as an overlay over standard IP addresses, thus cutting the need for centralized servers.

Unlike Filecoin, Storj, and similar proof-of-storage blockchains, as well Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other proof-of-work blockchains- NKN comes with something unique- and that’s its network.

The previously mentioned file storage and crypto payment coins work on the centralized networks, while NKN is the decentralized network!

NKN claims to be the biggest blockchain network in the world, currently counting around 90,202 nodes.

Who are the founders of NKN?

NKN was founded by three engineers and experts in networking and blockchain- Yanbo Li, Bruce Li, and Yilun Zhang.

In 2018, Whitfield Diffie, inventor of public-key cryptography, joined the NKN team as an advisor.

Then in 2019, another advisor jumped on board- The creator of software Mathematica and Wolfram|Alpha, Stephen Wolfram.

What are the projects built on NKN?

• dataRide- a low-cost, secure, and decentralized platform for communication, file transfer, and streaming between humans and/or machines. Current use cases include but aren’t limited to security camera communication, remote control of servers, direct file transfers, live chat support, chats and internet messengers, IoT(Internet of Things) communication, and many others.
• nMobile- a mobile app available on iPhone and Android phones. It enables 100% anonymous communication and is decentralized and secure.
• Surge- a p2p project similar to BitTorrent, built to work on a decentralized NKN network. Besides communication, it can also be used as a safe and secure NKN wallet.
• nConnect- a mobile and desktop app for remote connection with your other devices- fast and secure.
• D-Chat- a private and secure, decentralized chat application that works on NKN as an extension of Chrome or Firefox.
• nFile transfer- an app that works through NKN and can be used to send files securely.
• Vault- a desktop wallet that works on Windows and macOS.

Who are the most notable NKN partners?

• iQIYI- a Chinese video giant that provides online video streaming of movies, videos, and other content.
• China Mobile- a telecom leader in mainland China and Hong Kong.
• Synology Inc.- Taiwan-based data maintenance and protection services company with more than 6000000(6 million) installations.

StormX(STMX)

Current price(updated daily): 0.0056 USD

Price at the time of writing: 0.03 USD

All-time high: 0.24 USD

Market cap: 307,103,754.38 USD

Coin supply: 10,000,000,000 STMX

Coin rank(by market cap): 166

StormX is a mobile app and browser extension that offers cash back in cryptocurrency when its users buy online.

Currently, more than 1000 online stores support StormX, providing from 0.5% all to 87.5% cashbacks!

Right now, it is available on Google Play, App Store, as well as an extension for Chrome and Edge browsers.

Their main product is a StormX virtual payment card, which converts your StormX tokens to FIAT currencies at the moment of paying.

Where can you use StormX for payment and cashbacks?

As already mentioned, you can use StormX in more than 1000 stores already. Here are some of them:

• Uber
• Lenovo
• Lego
• eBay
• Samsung
• Nike
• Sega
• Microsoft
• AliExpress
• …

Who are the founders of StormX?

Simon Yu(CEO and Co-Founder)- Simon also founded “Penguin Delivery”, as well worked with Amazon and KeyBank.

Calvin Hsieh(CTO and Co-Founder)- Calvin worked at “Bomba Fusion LLC” as a developer and manager, before co-founding StormX with Simon.

Ultra(UOS)

Current price(updated daily):

Price at the time of writing: 0.77 USD

All-time high: 0.94 USD

Market cap: 219,735,000.70 USD

Coin supply: 282,786,730 UOS

Coin rank(by market cap): 185

Ultra is around 1-year-old cryptocurrency project that aims to provide a new game distribution ecosystem that will bring benefits to both gamers and game developers.

For developers, Ultra provides an easy way to set up stores, upload game files, manage versions, and distribute without hustle.

It also claims to bring in new streams of earning, as well new mediums of marketing.

On top of that, it takes around a 12% fee for distribution, compared to Apple and Google which charge up to 30% for similar services.

For gamers, Ultra is an easy-to-use platform to discover games, buy, resell or play them, involve in contests and tournaments, watch live gaming streams, and much more.

Who are the Ultra partners?

Ultra seems to have two major partners heavily involved in the gaming industry:

• AMD- one of the world-leading CPU and GPU producers.
• Ubisoft- is one of the world-leading game development and distribution companies.

Besides gaming partners, Ultra does have many partners in the cryptocurrency industry:

• Coinone
• Bitfinex
• Bithumb
• Cudo Miner
• Simplex
• among others…

Who are the founders of Ultra?

Ultra has two founders, who also serve as CEOs:

David Hanson- Before Ultra, David was a founder and CEO of multiple businesses- “Colorstone”, “Youcall”, “PixelBeam” and “Ruyi – Xiaobawang”.

Nicolas Gilot- Before Ultra, Nicolas worked at “Colorstone”, “Takion Group: Youcall”, “Pixelbeam”, “Gamika”, and “Subor – Xiaobawang (小霸王)”.

ECOMI(OMI)

Current price(updated daily): 0.00074 USD

Price at the time of writing: 0.0028 USD

All-time high: 0.013 USD

Market cap: 478,436,239.81 USD

Coin supply: 166,285,821,196 OMI

Coin rank(by market cap): 226

ECOMI is a relatively new yet fairly popular blockchain project specialized in NFTs(non-fungible tokens).

The main product of ECOMI is “VeVe”, an app available on Google Play and App Store, serving as a marketplace for digital collectibles.

It is a marketplace where people can buy, sell and trade various NFT items.

Who is the founder of ECOMI?

The founder/CEO of ECOMI is David Yu. Before founding ECOMI, David worked for and founded quite a few companies, most notably- Binji FinTech, Inc., Touchable Earth Foundation, Games R Us (NZ) Limited, Retail Management Group Ltd (N.Z.), Hobby Co Limited, Livewire Games Limited, Vagabond Games, Allegro Publishing Limited, and a few others.

Who are the ECOMI partners?

ECOMI seems to have quite a few partners and sellers, including:

• Marvel
• Harley Quinn
• NFL
• MLB
• …

Recent news includes VeVe as a platform where Marvel sold Digital Comics, and Visa bought the CryptoPunk NFT for almost $150000.

Alchemy Pay(ACH)

Current price(updated daily):

Price at the time of writing: 0.11 USD

All-time high: 0.19 USD

Market cap: 351,675,434.84 USD

Coin supply: 3,107,977,381 ACH

Coin rank(by market cap): 234

Alchemy Pay is a relatively new tradable crypto-asset, yet it gained a lot of popularity and traction in 2021.

It is primarily a payment system for stores, which gathers payments in crypto and pays in various local FIAT currencies- automatically.

Right now, it supports more than 300 crypto and FIAT payment methods, available in over 60 countries.

Who are the Alchemy Pay partners?

Alchemy currently has more than 100 partners, most notably:

• Binance- partnering with Binance allowed thousands of merchants to start accepting BNB and BUSD as payment methods.
• Shopify- Alchemy Pay is one of the official Shopify payment partners, allowing more than a million merchants on Shopify to accept payments in FIAT and crypto!
• Pricerite- Hong Kong’s biggest furnishing company now accepts payments in crypto through Alchemy.
• QFPay- Chinese leader in mobile payments, enabled cryptocurrency payments to more than a million merchants through Alchemy.
• Arcadier- a software technology firm present in 130 countries has partnered with Alchemy.
• Aldo- a Canadian footwear company uses Alchemy to process crypto payments.
• …

Like that’s not enough, Alchemy Pay is robust enough and also supports staking and DeFi.

Internet Computer(ICP)

Current price(updated daily): 5.11 USD

Price at the time of writing: 64.90 USD

All-time high: 737.20 USD

Market cap: 10,194,831,674.40 USD

Coin supply: 157,140,097 ICP

Coin rank(by market cap): 17

If there’s one crypto that made a huge buzz in 2021, that has to be ICP.

It is also the only cryptocurrency listed here that breaks our rule of having a positive chart in 2021.

But there is a good reason for it.

You see, ICP was first listed on exchanges on May 10, 2021. And even though it quickly dropped along with other cryptos, from $737 on CMC and around $1500 on Binance, it made an unseen breakthrough, now being ranked #17 on the list of cryptocurrencies with the highest capitalization.

What takes years for many other projects, happened with ICP overnight.

And there’s a good reason for that as well.

What is ICP(Internet Computer)?

ICP is a new kid on the block, by many considered the third major innovation in cryptocurrencies(after Bitcoin and Ethereum).

Similar to Ethereum, ICP can be used to build decentralized applications, but at web speed and with infinite scalability.

Unlike traditional blockchains, ICP comes with a single public key, which makes connecting all kinds of devices, and adding or removing nodes effortless.

This all leads to queries being executed within milliseconds and updates taking just 1-2s in total.

Even though the project was listed on exchanges in 2021, it was born 4 years ago(in 2016).

That’s why there are already many projects running on ICP:

• Fleek- a web development platform already powering around 14000 websites.
• DSCVR- a decentralized and tokenized version of Reddit.
• Distrikt- a decentralized social media platform similar to Linkedin, but with many blockchain benefits.
• Tacen and Enso Finance- are two decentralized exchanges already used by many.
• …

Who are the founders and main influencers in ICP?

ICP was founded by Dominic Williams, a recognized crypto specialist, and scientist, known for many inventions such as Threshold Relay and Probabilistic Slot Consensus.

Known as an early contributor to Bitcoin and Ethereum, he is also the founder of Airdocs and various other successful projects, including the “Fight My Monster” game that has millions of users.

Dominic is actually the founder of DFINITY, a scientific research organization behind ICP.

DFINITY has almost 100.000 scientific citations and more than 200 patents!

Most notable DFINITY members who were included in the buildout of Internet Computer:

• Jan Camenisch- a cryptographer who was the lead in the IBM cryptography department for 20 years.
• Ben Lynn- is a well-known cryptographer and Google engineer, one of the 3 people behind the Ethereum cryptography system.
• Paul Liu- one of the best Intel compiling architects.
• Andreas Rossberg- is another well-known Google engineer, who invented WebAssembly and was one of the leading engineers behind Google Chrome.
• and many others(you can find hundreds of DFINITY members listed on their website homepage)…

It may take time for this cryptocurrency project to get recognition and traction, but once it does, the growth might spread wide with the project’s speed and scalability.

Velas(VLX)

Current price(updated daily):

Price: 0.13 USD

All-time high: 0.21 USD

Market cap: 283,812,949.18 USD

Coin supply: 2,124,380,663 VLX

Coin rank(by market cap): 181

Velas is a new generation blockchain cryptocurrency powered by AI(artificial intelligence).

The main features of Velas are scalability and speed of 50k TPS(50.000 transactions per second).

Velas was built on Solana, which is very popular nowadays.

And it also supports Solidity, which is a programming language of Ethereum.

This means that all dApps and smart contracts built for Ethereum also work on Velas!

In a nutshell, you can use Vellas which is thousands of times cheaper than Ethereum, to run the Ethereum apps.

Who are the founders of Velas?

Velas is a company with headquarters in Switzerland, consisting of cryptographers, engineers, business leaders, and mathematicians.

It was created in 2019 by a well-known Canadian, Alex Alexandrov.

Before Velas, Alex founded “Mind AI”, a Korean AI start-up, as well as “CoinPayments”, one of the leading payment gateways for cryptocurrencies.

Alex is also a consultant for the FBI and Europol, as well several governments, in areas of blockchain, artificial intelligence, and other modern technologies.

Final words on crypto investing in 2021

This list of coins with high potential returns is not complete yet.

I’m pretty familiar with another 20 promising projects or so, however it takes time to present them in simple words that anyone can understand.

So, keep checking from time to time and you’ll find some more amazing crypto projects to follow and eventually invest in.

Hopefully, the list is already big enough to create a solid and balanced crypto portfolio.

Always keep in mind though, that crypto investing is highly risky!

While I’m trying to curate a list of strong and promising projects only, there’s no guarantee on if and when they will yield returns.

This is why you’re advised to do your own research, and never invest money you can’t afford to lose.

If you’re new to crypto trading, start small and build on it progressively as you gain more experience and confidence.

I would also like to hear your suggestions on which crypto projects deserve to get on my list.

Furthermore, feel free to share comments below or ask any questions in the comments or via my contact page.