12 Best Crypto to Buy Now in March 2025

With the cryptocurrency markets being in a constant state of unpredictability, many crypto investors are wondering if it’s time to sell in order to secure their profits, or continue to hold, or even accumulate, to benefit from a potential price rally that could be in the store in the short to medium term.

Even though the crypto markets have always recovered from their bearish periods so far, every bear market has its “casualties” that never make a strong recovery. Therefore, it’s important to choose quality crypto projects that have a good chance of surviving the bear market and thriving when the market sentiment is bullish.

We’ve analyzed 200 of the top cryptocurrencies based on their liquidity and availability, technology, sector leadership, tokenomics, and other key factors. You can read more about our criteria a bit further down in the article.

By doing so, we’ve narrowed the list down to a dozen cryptocurrencies that present the most compelling opportunities at the moment. The top three coins on our list are updated weekly to reflect the most up-to-date developments in the crypto and blockchain sectors.

Examining the best cryptos to buy right now

Let’s start off by highlighting three cryptocurrency projects that have seen important developments recently or have big events coming up in the near future. We update these highlighted coins on a weekly basis to reflect the latest developments in the world of crypto and blockchain.

Before we dive into our list of the best cryptos to buy, we should note that choosing which crypto to buy is only the first step in your crypto investment journey. It's also important to choose the right platform to buy crypto, and you also have to decide how you will be storing your cryptocurrency.

In our opinion, the best way to invest in crypto is to transfer your coins to a hardware wallet after you buy it on an exchange. A great starting point is to buy cryptocurrency on KuCoin and store it in a Ledger hardware wallet.

1. Bitcoin

Bitcoin is a decentralized peer-to-peer cryptocurrency that was initially described in 2008 and launched in early 2009. Bitcoin was invented by a person using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, whose real identity is still unknown.

Bitcoin introduced the concept of a blockchain and provides a fully decentralized digital currency that’s extremely secure. It implements Proof-of-Work to make it very difficult to alter the history of transactions or double-spend coins. The network is secured by miners, who are rewarded with BTC coins for adding blocks to the Bitcoin blockchain.

BTC can be sent anywhere in the world on a 24/7 basis, and transactions cannot be blocked by any intermediaries. By holding their own private keys, users can self-custody their Bitcoin without requiring institutions such as banks.

Even though countless cryptocurrencies and blockchain platforms have been released after Bitcoin, BTC is still easily the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.

Why Bitcoin?

Bitcoin has dropped by 6% in the last week, driving negative sentiment that has also been reflected in the markets for altcoins, as 26 out of the top 100 cryptocurrencies have dropped by over 10% in the same time period. 

However, large investors appear to be using this as an opportunity to accumulate Bitcoin, as data from on-chain analytics platform Glassnode shows that Bitcoin whales have bought more than 129,000 BTC since March 11.

According to Glassnode’s data, Bitcoin whales are currently displaying the biggest accumulation rate since late August 2024.  

Glassnode analysts have also pointed out that whales with holdings of over 10,000 BTC are the only cohort of BTC holders that are currently displaying a decisive accumulation trend. Meanwhile, smaller holders are currently net sellers of Bitcoin.

Strategy, the world’s largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, has announced a massive new BTC purchase, acquiring 22,048 BTC with an investment of roughly $1.92 billion. This has brought the company’s holdings to 528,185 BTC, which is valued at over $43 billion at current market prices. 

In related news, GameStop has announced it will invest a portion of its corporate funds in BTC. The proposal received unanimous approval from the company’s board of directors. 

It wouldn’t be too surprising to see GameStop pursuing an approach similar to Strategy. Per a press release, GameStop is looking to raise $1.3 billion in capital by offering convertible senior notes. The proceeds from the offering will be used for “general corporate purposes, including the acquisition of Bitcoin”.

2. XRP

XRP is a cryptocurrency that was launched in June of 2012. It was developed by David Schwartz, Jed McCaleb and Arthur Britto, who started a company called OpenCoin together with Chris Larsen. 80% of the XRP supply was gifted to the company by the developers of XRP. OpenCoin has since been renamed to Ripple, and the company has put the majority of its XRP holdings into escrow.

XRP provides very fast and low-cost transfers, making it suitable for use cases like remittances. It uses neither Proof-of-Work nor Proof-of-Stake but instead implements the XRP Ledger Consensus Protocol. Every participant in the XRP network can choose a set of validators that they trust to behave honestly.

Ripple has implemented the XRP cryptocurrency into its products, most notably On-Demand Liquidity (ODL). ODL works in partnership with cryptocurrency exchanges and uses XRP to provide efficient cross-border money transfers.

Why XRP?

Recently, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse announced that U.S. securities regulator SEC will be dropping its case against Ripple. The legal battle between Ripple and the SEC has been a source of major uncertainty for XRP, and its conclusion certainly improves XRP’s position from a long-term perspective.

Despite this, the market has been bearish on XRP from a short-term perspective, as the coin has dropped by 15% in the last week.

Still, Ripple is continuing to build out new partnerships in the international payments sector. The company announced that it is teaming up with Chipper Cash, a payments platform operating across Africa, to facilitate cross-border transactions into the region through Ripple Payments.

Ripple Payments leverages XRP to deliver faster, more cost-effective, and efficient international transfers compared to conventional financial networks powered by RippleNet. 

Chipper Cash, which serves five million users across nine African nations, said the partnership will enable customers to receive money from around the globe quickly and at any time, significantly improving a process that is typically slow, costly, and inconvenient.

3. Solana

Solana is a smart contracts platform with a unique architecture that allows it to process thousands of transactions per second while keeping costs extremely low. Solana achieves this by utilizing a unique Proof-of-History algorithm and a Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism. SOL is among the cheapest cryptos to transfer on the market, as users pay less than $0.001 per transaction on average.

Solana was founded in 2018 by Anatoly Yakovenko. The platform’s mainnet launched in March 2020 and saw a huge boost in adoption in 2021. While SOL has lost a lot of its value in the 2022 bear market, Solana still has one of the most impressive ecosystems in the cryptocurrency sector and is potentially still one of the next cryptos to explode.

Why Solana?

Solana continues to be a compelling cryptocurrency to watch amid the negative market sentiment, as its ecosystem is still extremely active despite the sharp decrease in the price of SOL and an overwhelmingly bearish turn in the meme coin markets.

In notable recent news for Solana, Fidelity has become the most recent asset manager to file for a spot Solana ETF, joining Franklin Templeton, Grayscale, VanEck, Bitwise, 21Shares and Canary Capital. 

Fidelity is the largest among these firms in terms of AUM (assets under management), and it’s interesting to note that Solana is the only altcoin that Fidelity is currently pursuing launching an ETF for. 

Fidelity has seen considerable success in the crypto ETF space, as FBTC is currently the second-largest spot Bitcoin ETF and has an AUM of just under $17 billion.

The fact that Fidelity has joined the race to launch the first Solana ETF is certainly a positive sign. According to bettors on Polymarket, there is an 82% chance that a Solana ETF will receive approval in the United States in 2025.

4. Ethereum

Ethereum is a blockchain that supports smart contracts, enabling more complex use cases such as decentralized lending protocols and non-fungible tokens. The Ethereum project was founded by Vitalik Buterin, who published the Ethereum whitepaper in late 2013. The Ethereum blockchain launched in July 2015.

One of the first use cases enabled by Ethereum that gained a lot of traction was the ability to issue custom tokens that could be transacted over the Ethereum blockchain. This feature was utilized by many projects to conduct fundraising through Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) and other types of token sales.

Today, Ethereum has an extremely vibrant ecosystem of decentralized applications – including decentralized financial services, NFT marketplaces, publishing platforms, decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges, and more – which makes it a good investment in 2023, in our opinion.

ETH is the native asset of the Ethereum blockchain, providing an incentive for users to secure the network. The Ethereum network originally implemented a Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism but switched over to Proof-of-Stake in September of 2022.

Why Ethereum?

Ethereum developers have agreed to target March 2025 as the release for the next big upgrade, Pectra (the name is derived from Prague/Electra). The Pectra upgrade will deliver several improvements to Ethereum. 

This includes wallet UX improvements (EIP-7702), an increase to the maximum amount that can be staked by validators (EIP-7251) and several other improvements. In total, there are 11 Ethereum Improvement Proposals scheduled for inclusion in the Pectra upgrade. 

The Petra upgrade was deployed on the Sepolia and Holesky testnets in February, though it wasn't entirely successful. Due to this, the upgrade was delayed slightly, with the date moving from mid-March to April. Still, the Pectra upgrade shows that the Ethereum project continues to make significant strides on the fundamental level, improving both scalability and the user experience.

In more recent news, the U.S. Treasury recently lifted economic sanctions against Tornado Cash, a firm that makes cryptocurrency transactions more difficult to track. The firm was previously accused of laundering over $7 billion for North Korean and other hackers. This development could increase Ethereum's utility by enhancing privacy and token fungibility, potentially attracting privacy-conscious users and developers who value clearer regulatory environments, which could potentially drive Ethereum's price even higher.

5. BNB

BNB is a token that was launched by the Binance cryptocurrency exchange in 2017. BNB serves two primary functions. Holders of the token get access to special benefits when using Binance – this includes lower trading fees, access the exchange’s Launchpad and Launchpool programs, cashback on Binance Visa card purchases, and more.

The token is also used as the native asset of the BNB Chain blockchain. BNB Chain is a variant of Ethereum that offers significantly lower transaction fees to users, and it allows developers to easily deploy EVM-compatible decentralized applications. Previously known as Binance Coin, BNB has now gone through an extensive rebranding.

Why BNB?

BNB has been a strong performer recently, gaining 11% in the last 7 days despite Bitcoin seeing very modest growth of 0.90% in the same time period.

One of the main catalysts for this performance is likely the $2 billion investment into Binance from United Arab Emirates-owned investment firm MGX. The deal, which was announced last week, marks the single largest investment into a cryptocurrency company in the history of the sector.

Another reason for the BNB price increase could be surging activity on the BNB Chain blockchain platform, as it’s currently leading the DeFi sector in terms of 24-hour volume, surpassing both Ethereum and Solana.

Image source: DeFi Llama

Although BNB Chain’s time at the top of the DeFi trading volume rankings could very well be short-lived, it shows that BNB Chain’s DeFi ecosystem is not to be underestimated even though Ethereum and Solana typically enjoy the bulk of the market’s attention when it comes to DeFi.

Other news that could have boosted sentiment surrounding BNB is Binance Wallet announcing that it will be offering zero-fee token swaps for the next 6 months, as well as the wallet’s $4.4 million Liquidity Pool Support Program.

6. Uniswap

Uniswap is a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange that introduced and popularized the AMM (automated market maker) model. This unique design removes the need for order books, providing an elegant way for swapping between different tokens directly on the blockchain without relying on intermediaries.

The Uniswap protocol is decentralized, and anyone can create liquidity pools for any token. This means that the newest crypto assets are often traded on Uniswap before they make their way on centralized cryptocurrency exchanges.

The model introduced by Uniswap has been adopted by many decentralized exchanges on different blockchain platforms. However, Uniswap remains the most active decentralized exchange in terms of trading volume.

Uniswap is governed by holders of the UNI token, who can submit and vote for proposals. UNI was distributed to past users of the Uniswap protocol via an airdrop in 2020, and the token is now available for purchase on a variety of both decentralized and centralized trading platforms.

Why Uniswap?

The Uniswap project has announced plans to launch Unichain, a layer 2 blockchain that will function on top of Ethereum. Unichain is built using Optimism’s OP Stack framework, and will therefore be compatible with other networks in the “Superchain”. 

Unichain is a blockchain specifically designed for DeFi (decentralized finance), targeting 250 millisecond block times and low transaction fees (roughly 20 times cheaper than Ethereum). Currently, Unichain is available as a testnet, which can already be used to make test token swaps.

Unichain will also feature UNI token staking. By staking their tokens, UNI holders will be able to earn part of the sequencer revenue generated by Unichain.

The Unichain news has had a positive impact on the UNI market, helping the token surpass the $8 price level for the first time since July. Since the new blockchain platform will provide additional utility for UNI, it could be a long-term driver of demand for the token.

7. Aptos

Aptos is a layer 1 blockchain that aims to provide a highly scalable platform for smart contracts. Aptos utilizes the Move smart contracts programming language, which was initially developed for the Libra blockchain project. In addition to its strong performance, the Move language includes safeguards that help prevent unpredictable bugs in smart contracts.

According to developers, the Aptos protocol is capable of handling up to 100,000 transactions per second (TPS). This is possible thanks to a pipelined and modular approach to transaction processing, in which the different stages of processing a transaction are performed concurrently.

Why Aptos?

Aptos has been displaying an impressive amount of activity, with the number of monthly active accounts on the Aptos blockchain recently surpassing 3.6 million. In the last 30 days, the Aptos blockchain peaked at 435,000 daily active accounts, although this figure has dropped to around 145,000 at the time of writing. In the last months, Aptos has been seeing between 75,000 and 100,000 new accounts on a daily basis.

This activity is reflected in various decentralized applications on the Aptos blockchain – for example, decentralized exchange aggregator Panora recently hit the $1 billion trading volume milestone. According to data by DeFi Llama, Aptos is ranked 10th among all blockchains (including Ethereum layer 2s) when it comes to 24-hour trading volume, and 17th when it comes to TVL (total value locked).

In addition to the growth in activity, Aptos developers recently announced Move 2.0, a release that will add multiple new features to the Move programming language to make it more flexible and powerful.  

In terms of market performance, APT has been lackluster recently, losing -1.3% in the last month, which is on par with Bitcoin’s price action in the same time period. However, with all the activity surrounding the Aptos ecosystem, APT could have what it takes to stage an impressive rebound, especially if the overall sentiment in the altcoin markets goes on an upswing.

8. Sky

Sky is a decentralized finance protocol that issues and manages USDS, a decentralized stablecoin pegged to the US dollar. Users that hold assets that are supported as collateral (for example, ETH) can lock their coins into Sky’s smart contracts in order to issue USDS. The protocol also incorporates the SKY token, which facilitates decentralized governance.

The system is overcollateralized—in order to mint USDS, users need to provide collateral that exceeds the value of minted USDS, and users are required to monitor the value of their collateral in order to avoid liquidation.

Sky was founded under the name Maker in 2014, and the platform’s stablecoin was first launched in late 2017 under the name Dai. Initially, the protocol only supported ETH as collateral. With the launch of Multi-Collateral Dai in 2019, it also became possible to use other forms of collateral. Today, Sky’s stablecoin USDS is backed by a diverse range of assets.

Why Sky?

The recent rebranding of Maker to Sky has brought renewed attention to the highly established DeFi project, and their new stablecoin USDS has seen a rapid increase in supply. At the time of writing, there’s already $493 million worth of the stablecoin in circulation.

According to Sky co-founder Rune Christensen, the project is looking to position USDS as a stablecoin for users who are already familiar with Tether, but would like to access a straightforward way of earning rewards on their holdings. Currently, USDS holders are earning a 6.25% APY, and the yield is sourced from the revenue generasted by the Sky protocol. 

In a post on X (formerly known as Twitter), Christensen outlined the next steps for the Sky project. This includes the Sky Aave Force partnership with DeFi lending protocol Aave, in which USDS holders will be able to receive both the USDS Savings Rate and the regular Aave interest rates. 

The Sky protocol will also be launching on Solana, bringing the first decentralized stablecoin with integrated rewards to the high-performance blockchain platform.

9. Zcash

Initially proposed in a publication entitled "Zerocash" in 2014, Zcash is a decentralized public peer-to-peer cryptocurrency launched in 2016 that offers features similar to Bitcoin with a twist of unique privacy and security features found only in a handful of public digital currencies.

More specifically, ZEC was the first cryptocurrency to leverage 'zk-SNARKS', a zero-knowledge protocol that was considered among the top 10 breakthrough technologies of 2018 according to MIT's Technology Review.

New ZEC coins are introduced into the circulating supply through mining - Zcash is a cryptocurrency based on Proof-of-Work. Tokenomics-wise, Zcash has kept the same 21 million total supply cap introduced by Bitcoin. Similarly to Bitcoin, Zcash also has a halving mechanism. The first Zcash halving happened at block height 1,046,400 in 2020.

The Zcash project is very likely to adopt a Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism in the future, as Zcash’s main developer Electric Coin Company and the majority of the Zcash community have expressed support for transitioning away from Proof-of-Work.

Why Zcash?

Zcash has been seeing some interesting developments as of late, and ZEC has displayed robust price growth with a 24.3% increase in the last 30 days. 

Coinbase, which is one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world, recently added support for sending ZEC to TEX addresses. A TEX address is a special type of Zcash address that only accepts funds from transparent addresses. 

TEX addresses were introduced to Zcash as a way to keep ZEC listed on exchanges that were under pressure from regulators to delist privacy-enhancing cryptocurrencies. For example, all ZEC coins deposited to Binance must come from a transparent address. 

Another notable development for Zcash is a bundle of new updated to Zashi, a Zcash wallet developed by Electric Coin Company (which is also the primary developer of Zcash). 

The latest update introduces several handy features, including an address book, QR code payments, a redesigned send tab, an improved transaction history section, and various user interface improvements. For the full list of changes, be sure to check the official blog post.

10. Chainlink

Chainlink is a decentralized oracle network that allows blockchains to access reliable data outside of the blockchain. The project aims to address the “oracle problem” faced by blockchains—by reliably connecting blockchains to the “outside world”, Chainlink unlocks a wide range of use cases that wouldn’t be possible with on-chain data alone. 

Chainlink is already the most widely used oracle service in the decentralized finance sector, and is also gaining traction in the NFT and crypto gaming sectors. For example, a decentralized finance protocol could leverage the Chainlink network to feed data about crypto prices on centralized exchanges (which function off-chain) to its smart contracts. NFT projects can utilize Chainlink for provable randomness, which establishes trust in the fairness of NFT minting and distribution.

Why Chainlink?

World Liberty Financial, the DeFi (decentralized finance) project closely affiliated with U.S. president-elect Donald Trump, has made two separate purchases of LINK tokens, spending around $2 million in total. 

According to data from Arkham Intelligence, LINK is currently World Liberty Financial’s sixt-largest holding, following ETH, CBBTC (a wrapped Bitcoin token issued by Coinbase), USDC, USDT and AAVE. 

Notably, the World Liberty Financial platform itself uses Chainlink in its integrations with the broader crypto ecosystem, relying on the protocol for pricing and interoperability across blockchains. 

World Liberty Financial’s LINK purchases have driven bullish sentiment in the markets for LINK, as the token crossed the $30 price level for the first time since November 21. However, LINK still has a way to go before it can improve upon the $48 all-time high it reached in May of 2021. At the time of writing, LINK is down about 56% from its ATH.

11. Berachain

Berachain is a layer 1 blockchain platform that has an execution layer identical to the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), but implements a novel consensus mechanism called Proof-of-Liquidity (PoL). The PoL consensus mechanism is designed to prioritize users and applications and provide incentives for network and user growth.

On Berachain, validators stake BERA, which also serves as the chain’s native gas token, to secure the chain. The system also incorporates the BGT governance token, which validators distribute to users that provide liquidity to the Berachain ecosystem. BGT tokens are soulbound (non-transferable).

Why Berachain?

Berachain has been seeing impressive growth since its launch in early February. In the last 7 days, Berachain has seen 52% growth in active addresses, which is the second-highest growth in this time period among chain tracked by Nansen. During the same time period, Berachain handled $750.6 million in volume on its decentralized exchanges, which positions it in 8th place in the crypto ecosystem.

Another positive signal is that Berachain has seen $440 million in net inflows from users bridging funds from other blockchain platforms to Berachain in the last 30 days. According to data from DeFi Llama, Berachain is currently the sixth-largest blockchain in terms of the total value locked (TVL) in its DeFi ecosystem.

These metrics are especially impressive given that Berachain has only been on the market for about a month. If Berachain’s DeFi ecosystem can continue at this pace, we could easily see BERA advance through the crypto market cap rankings this year (the token is currently ranked at #95).

12. Sui

Sui is a highly scalable smart contract platform that uses the Move programming language for smart contracts. In Sui, simple transactions can bypass the consensus protocol, enhancing the platform's scalability. However, complex transactions still undergo the network’s consensus process to maintain security. The Sui protocol is capable of achieving consensus and executing transactions on different objects in parallel.

The native asset of the Sui blockchain is called SUI. The coin's supply is capped at 10 billion, and it fulfills four key roles. SUI can be staked to participate in Proof-of-Stake consensus, and is also required for paying gas fees. The coin also enables participation in governance, and can be used as a liquid asset across applications deployed on the Sui blockchain.

Why Sui?

Sui has announced a partnership with World Liberty Financial (WLFI), a DeFi project with strong connections to the Trump family. Through this collaboration, WLFI plans to incorporate Sui-based crypto assets into its Macro Strategy strategic token reserve.

Zak Folkman, co-founder of World Liberty Financial, highlighted Sui’s “American-born innovation” as a key factor in WLFI’s decision to partner with the project.

Given the partnership announcement between World Liberty Financial and Sui, we can expect SUI (and potentially other crypto assets on the Sui blockchain) entering the project’s reserves soon.

In addition to the World Liberty Financial news, we should also highlight reports that asset manager Canary Capital could be preparing to file for a Sui ETF. According to a report from The Block, an entity called “Canary Sui ETF” was registered in Delaware on March 6.

	Native asset	Launched in	Description	Market cap*
Bitcoin	BTC	2009	Decentralized peer-to-peer cryptocurrency	$1.64 trillion
XRP	XRP	2012	Highly efficient digital currency	$121 billion
Solana	SOL	2020	High-performance blockchain for smart contracts	$64 billion
Ethereum	ETH	2015	The leading blockchain for smart contracts	$219 billion
BNB	BNB	2017	BNB Chain's native asset and token used in Binance ecosystem	$88 billion
Uniswap	UNI	2020	The biggest decentralized exchange protocol	$3.5 billion
Aptos	APT	2022	Highly scalable blockchain with Move smart contracts	$3.1 billion
Sky	SKY	2015	A key decentralized finance project	$1.1 billion
Zcash	ZEC	2016	Privacy coin based on zero-knowledge technology	$631 million
Chainlink	LINK	2012	Leading decentralized oracle network	$8.5 billion
Berachain	BERA	2025	EVM-identical blockchain with unique PoL consensus mechanism	$720 million
Sui	SUI	2023	Scalable blockchain with Move smart contracts	$5.2 billion

*Data as of March 31, 2025, at 13:33 UTC.

Best crypto to buy for beginners

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 are 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 are plenty of high-quality hardware wallets out there, Ledger's devices stand out as the best choice overall, in our opinion.

Get a Ledger Hardware Wallet

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 are 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.

How to buy crypto for beginners

If you're new to crypto, the first step is to choose a reliable cryptocurrency exchange. We provide a list of the best crypto exchanges for beginners to help you get started. At the moment, the best all-around exchange for beginners is Kraken.

Create Kraken Account

After you create your account on a cryptocurrency exchange, you'll have to deposit some funds to your account. Most high-quality exchanges will support various payment methods, including bank transfers and credit/debit card transfers.

Next, decide on the amount you would like to invest and the cryptocurrencies you want to buy. If you're a beginner, we recommend starting with smaller amounts and sticking to well-established cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. After you become more comfortable with how cryptocurrencies work and conduct some extra research, you might also become interested in altcoins with a lower market cap. 

Next, place a buy order for the cryptocurrency you want to buy using either a market or limit order. For additional security, consider transferring your Bitcoin to your own wallet (preferably a hardware wallet) after completing your purchase instead of leaving it on the exchange.

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. We provide a number of resources that will help you identify interesting opportunities in the crypto market:

• Top Crypto Gainers and Losers
• Undervalued Cryptos
• Trending Cryptos

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.