If you’re reading this, the chances are high that you’re at least a little interested in the importance of cryptocurrency. While Bitcoin and Ethereum are still two of the most valuable, it’s important to remember that any cryptocurrency is a rapidly changing landscape. The more coins there are, the harder it becomes for any coin to stand out from the rest.

To achieve the goals of anyone who’s looking to invest in cryptocurrencies in the next few years, it’s important to look out for future potential and growth. The best cryptocurrencies to buy in 2022 are not going to be the price leaders today—far from it! But they will be those coins that have both an active community and an ambitious development team behind them, along with a unique value proposition that makes them stand out against their competitors.

For beginner cryptocurrency investors who are looking for a place to start their research and want to learn about some of the best altcoins (alternative coins) out there that can be bought in 2022 at affordable prices, here’s a guide for you—and if you’re reading this now, it’s not too late.

Polkadot

Chances are you have heard about DOT and wondered what is DOT, why should I buy DOT, and how to buy DOT? Polkadot is a project that aims to create a platform for all blockchains. This ambitious project, launched in 2017 by Gavin Wood and Jutta Steiner, will include several improvements over existing blockchain technology. These include better security, scalability, and interoperability between different chains.

Polkadot also strives to address one of the biggest problems with current blockchains: governance. The team behind Polkadot wants to build a democratic system where users have more control over their blockchain’s future. This new idea is called Proof-of-Stake-Governance (PoSg). In PoSg, users vote on decisions that affect their chain using the DOT token. 

Augur

Augur is a prediction market protocol built on top of the Ethereum blockchain. It serves as a decentralized oracle and allows users to create markets for any event, from the likely (e.g. “Will France win the 2024 World Cup?”) to the fantastical (e.g. “Will Will Smith go bald before he turns 50?”). 

Participants in these prediction markets are rewarded if their predictions are correct, which means they must have enough REP tokens, Augur’s cryptocurrency, to make their bets. Augur is currently one of the most popular altcoins in existence, and its current price, $11.91 at the time of writing, should seem relatively attractive to new investors. 

Monero

Monero is an untraceable cryptocurrency that’s based on the CryptoNote protocol and has a focus on privacy. Launched in 2014, Monero was originally called BitMonero. The name of the currency comes from the word for “coin” in Esperanto. The Monero team formed in April 2014, and one month later, on May 19, it was officially released under its new name as a fork of Bytecoin to make adjustments to its privacy features. 

Like most cryptocurrencies, Monero’s transactions are recorded on a public ledger visible to anyone with access to the Internet. However, unlike many other currencies (such as Bitcoin), which use a public blockchain for all transactions, Monero uses stealth addresses (which make each transaction unlinkable) and ring signatures (which hide both the sender and receiver of funds).

Nano

The Nano cryptocurrency is a distributed ledger currency that can be used for making instant payments. It was formerly known as Raiblocks and used a block-lattice architecture, where each account has its own blockchain. This means that the entire network processes transactions quickly, but there is no need to download the entire blockchain from other accounts’ ledgers if you want to send someone money. 

Because this technology uses a block-lattice structure rather than a classical blockchain, it can process thousands of transactions per second without requiring a transaction fee. Nano prices tend to fluctuate drastically and have some price volatility risk just like any other cryptocurrencies do. But with trading being instantaneous and free, there should be no reason why people would not use this cryptocurrency for small purchases as well.

DigiByte

DigiByte was launched in 2014 as a fork of Bitcoin and Litecoin. It’s one of the most secure blockchains due to its five mining algorithms: Sha256, Scrypt, Groestl, Skein, and Qubit. These algorithms prevent the centralization that is common with other cryptocurrencies because they allow anyone with a computer to mine it.

DigiByte is designed to be used as a payment method and decentralized application platform, but it’s also used as an altcoin for investing purposes by many people around the world. In 2018 alone, its value rose by over 1600%. If you’d invested $1 in DGB when this rise began in January 2018, you would now have almost $20—and that number doesn’t even include your profits from 2019.

Who knows how much this coin will be worth by 2022? That said, investors need to know about DigiByte before it hits mainstream adoption. After all, there could be major changes if DGB becomes more popular than Bitcoin or Ethereum.

Basic Attention Token

The Basic Attention Token (BAT) is a token that was developed by the team behind the Brave browser. The basic premise of BAT is that it will be used for users to purchase premium content, including news articles, videos, and e-books, on the Brave browser.

BAT can also be used to tip content creators and those who are providing value through social media channels like YouTube and Reddit.

BAT is built on top of Ethereum’s blockchain ecosystem, which many other cryptocurrencies and tokens use as well. This means that BAT has access to all of Ethereum’s smart contract functionality, which can lead to a variety of positive use cases for this cryptocurrency in the future.

When you’re thinking about buying a coin to invest in, you need to look beyond overall market trends and focus on your personal needs. Do you want something stable and established? A newer coin with a solid vision? Perhaps one focused more on privacy than most other cryptocurrencies in existence? Whatever your preferences may be, they’ll determine what sort of cryptocurrency makes sense for you—and only you can decide which one of these factors is most important.