2019 was a fruitful year for the world’s main financial markets, and many investors expected stability in 2020 as well. The coronavirus outbreak has caused many investors to take a safe side and look for investment opportunities in the global market a lot more carefully. Along with the main international markets, crypto mining and trading activities were affected by the outbreak. Still, some people could control the crypto market with advanced tools like this one, which helped them play safe even in harsh times.
Now that the virus is under strict control, financial markets are slowly recovering. Exchange platforms are gradually getting back to their normal functioning. Blockchain technologies and order processing are no longer turbulent. With the rise of Bitcoin, crypto miners even started using their old mining equipment to get the desirable coins. Investors’ fears are gradually vanishing, and putting money in cryptocurrencies makes sense for them. In this article, we’re going to highlight five cryptocurrencies to invest in 2020.
5 Cryptocurrencies for Investments
Over the last few months, the global stock market has largely influenced the cryptocurrency industry. The prices for digital coins were going up and down along with stock prices. It was especially noticeable in late February and early March. Thus, if the price of US securities goes up, it will positively influence crypto assets. According to cryptocurrencies monitoring services, investors have over 5000 crypto coins to choose from now. Below, there’s a list of five of them that are worth the investment.
1. Bitcoin
Recently, crypto trading platforms have experienced significant investment flow to the BTC ecosystem. Bitcoin miners have started mining it more actively, which is caused by the expected halving of this cryptocurrency in the middle of May. Due to 180-day volatility, Bitcoin has decreased to its historical minimum. It reminded experts of the Bitcoin’s biggest rally in December 2017 when the asset price reached $20,000. The most used strategy among crypto investors is “buy and hold” now. This is proven by the growing indicators of the Grayscale Bitcoin investment trust despite the cryptocurrency fall last week.
Considering the wait for Bitcoin halving, which implies that the miners’ block production rewards will be cut by half – from 12.5 to 6.25 BTC, analysts say it’s the perfect conditions for further price rise of Bitcoin. Still, some traders don’t expect the stable rise of the BTC market price because the current rally takes place within too low trading volumes.
2. Ethereum
Ethereum and Bitcoin are the two most discussed cryptocurrencies by analysts right now. Even though Bitcoin’s halving is one of the most awaited events, investors have high hopes about the promising release of ETH 2.0 this summer. With Ethereum 2.0, staking will replace mining. It means traders won’t need to use costly mining equipment or powerful GPUs and electricity lines. The new Proof-of-Stake (PoS) algorithm allows traders to earn by investing in the coin purchase rather than GPU and electricity units. Miners will become validators who get rewards for keeping their coins in wallets online. In expectation of ETH 2.0, many people buy Ethereum coins, which price is $206 now.
3. NEO
NEO is a “Chinese brother” of Ethereum. It follows ETH foundations and promotes the idea of the next-generation economy with digital assets, identity, and smart contracts. Smart contracts are specifically crucial for building trust between traders by setting strictly defined specifications for each trade. The NEO ecosystem develops rapidly, and popular blockchain-startups like Coindash and Agrello started cooperation with the NEO platform. The Red Pulse crypto project based in China intends to create a platform for financial investigations following the NEO smart contract system. NEO has a positive image in the market; that’s why it attracts investors all over the world now.
4. EOS
The EOS.IO company is another direct competitor of Ethereum that offers smart contract technology. Before the crisis caused by the pandemic, experts predicted the increase in EOS price by almost $100 in summer 2020. In reality, the EOS cost doesn’t exceed $2 at the moment. Analysts saw the bright future of this coin due to the network scalability and transfer of projects from Ethereum to EOS. Last week this cryptocurrency decreased by 11%, but it steadily goes up now and attracts many investors.
5. Ripple
Ripple or XRP is in the 3d position among other cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. The distinctive feature of Ripple is instant transactions; that’s why major banks and financial institutions highly support this project. The most optimistic outcome could be the $0.7-0.8 price for 1XRP, while the current price is $0.2. Some investors do not approve of this optimism. Recently, the Ripple company has been accused of the uncontrollable sale of XRP coins as unregistered securities. In fact, 11 major cryptocurrency companies were accused the same way this April. For now, it remains unknown whether these accusations are fair.
Final Words
The crypto market has always been volatile. It was turbulent long before the pandemic started, so the behavior of the crypto market is still hard to predict. Experts can only talk about the rise of cryptocurrencies due to the removal of some quarantine restrictions and the generally positive attitude towards this fact.
The market continues to recover, and the cost of specific cryptocurrencies is growing. Crypto trading platforms replenish the stock with various cryptocurrencies and prepare to sell coins more actively. Investors can get passive income by staking, i. e. keeping coins in their wallets online without any trading activity. Still, be careful when investing in cryptocurrencies. The risk of losing everything is still high, so only invest the amount that you wouldn’t regret losing.
Carolyn Coley is a blockchain reporter. She joined Smartereum after graduating from UC Berkeley in 2018.
