Beyond Bitcoin: These 3 Altcoins Could Surge — Are They Safe Investments?
Written by
Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy
Edited by
Nicholas Morine
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Bitcoin passed its previous all-time high Nov. 2021 record of $69,044.77 earlier this month. Although the asset is now experiencing huge volatility ahead of the so-called halving next month, many experts anticipate it to reach $100,000 this year.
As of March 20, Bitcoin was at $63,655, up 128% in the past year, up 44% year-to-date and up 22% in the past month.
Now, the crypto bull run is triggering a lot of interest in altcoins, with investors looking for the next big thing. But whether Bitcoin’s rise will translate into a sustained surge for these smaller coins remains to be seen.
Altcoins Pinging the Investment Radar
Richard Gardner, CEO of Modulus, argued that altcoins are “a lot like microcap stocks.”
“There are going to be some winners that turn out to completely transform industries,” he said. “There will be others that continue to plod along. And many that will ultimately go belly up.”
According to Gardner, the problem with the term altcoin is that it doesn’t differentiate between coins with high market caps-such as Cardano and Solana, and those that are nothing more than what he deemed “scamcoins.”
“The best way to determine whether an altcoin can be trusted is to dig into the technical details. Determine whether the altcoin has real-world applications. It is important to do your due diligence,” he added.
Which ones could experience a surge?
Solana SOL Token
- Price as of March 20: $154.54
- Past month: up 54.3%
- Past year: up 640.8%
In this current cycle, SOL has benefited most from the rise in Bitcoin’s price, which has many suggesting that SOL will be the darling of this cycle the way ETH was the darling of the last, according to Frank Corva, digital assets analyst for Finder.
And other experts — such as Brian D. Evans, CEO and founder of BDE Ventures — echoed the sentiment, saying that Solana is garnering a lot of attention from the general public, particularly as the Solana blockchain is performing, and there are a huge number of users and applications gravitating to it.
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“This is poised to be beneficial for the native token of the Solana Network, SOL,” said Evans. “The more that users interact with applications on Solana, the more SOL they’ll have to buy to pay for gas fees. I suspect that over time SOL will accrue more value as this dynamic continues to play out.”
Ethereum (ETH)
- Price as of March 20: $3,349.82
- Past month: up 15.6%
- Past year: up 89.4%
Jeff Owens, co-founder of Haven1, argued that as a foundational layer of the Web3 space, Ethereum is an “obvious choice” — especially for retail investors that are just familiarizing themselves with crypto.
“It typically moves in tandem with Bitcoin, and marked upticks of over 70% this month against its opening price for 2024,” said Owens. “Combined with the Dencun upgrade, which was successfully deployed last week and reduced Ethereum layer-2 gas fees by 10 to 100 times, these figures suggest that ETH may start outperforming BTC soon.”
AI Tokens
Artificial intelligence tokens have also been riding the broader AI wave lately and garnering a lot of interest. As CoinGecko indicated, these tokens are cryptocurrencies that power AI-related projects. Their market cap as of March 20 stood at $24 billion, according to CoinGecko data, a significant jump from just $2.7 billion last April, as per Reuters.
“I think anything AI is going to continue to do well because of the growing need to verify data, including when it comes to authenticity and provenance,” said Markus Levin, co-founder of XYO Network. “This includes oracle networks like ours, XYO, and others, because these sorts of networks can provide clean, verified data to all sorts of systems.”
Some of the top AI coins by market cap include Render’s RNDR token, which is up 709% in the past year and up 86.4% in the past month. In addition, Fetch.ai’s FET is up 568% in the past year and up 196.2% in the past month.
Are These Crypto Investments Safe?
While it can be tempting to quickly jump on this crypto bull ride, due diligence and caution are key.
There will likely be more investors piling into new, untested altcoins without conducting their due diligence first, and many of these investors may be first-time entrants into the crypto space.
“And so, while we’ll undoubtedly witness the creation of new crypto millionaires overnight, we will also likely see some spectacular losses,” said Haven1’s Owens. “The bull run always brings with it a proliferation of new projects, and this makes it a particularly risky time to hunt for a quick buck. So as the altcoin season begins in earnest, it’s more important than ever to ramp up the research and never invest in a project if something doesn’t add up.”
And for the Bitcoin purists, the asset is the only way to go, as they argue that it is the safest investment in the crypto space.
“It’s the asset investors — especially newer investors — should stick with,” said Finder’s Corva, noting that its scarcity makes it unlike any other asset.
