Top 10 Cryptos Under $100 Cryptos to Watch Out For in 2022

INTRODUCTION

The third week July has also been off to a great start in terms of positive price action. It began early last week, when the market seemingly bottomed out and is showing signs of rapid and strong recovery. Now that creates an environment that is ideal for investments. Why? Because an investor can easily piggyback on major players and whales in the market who are quickly picking up coins which are available at reasonably attractive valuations.

With that in mind, you might be wondering which coins you should consider investing in. Here’s a comprehensive list of 10, sub-$100 cryptos you might want to add to your portfolio.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Crypto market cap has hiked 23% while Bitcoin has rallied only 17% in the same time frame (13-19 July)
• These sub-$100 cryptos are coins which are have an attractive price point
• Along with them being accessible these coins have a history of very high returns in the past and can possibly give such returns again

TOP 10 CRYPTOS under $100 (by Market Cap)

Prices as of 20th July, 2022

Check latest Crypto INR Prices, Charts, and Data.

1. AAVE

Aave (AAVE) is a well-known decentralized lending protocol, that allows borrowers and lenders to interact without the need for any centralized intermediary. The protocol, which was initially hosted on the Ethereum blockchain, is now integrated across multiple blockchain networks thanks to its immense popularity.

As with other DAO crypto projects, holders of the AAVE token have the right to talk about the protocol’s governance. These include how Treasury funds are used and potential upgrades to the system. Furthermore, AAVE can be used as collateral within the ecosystem, which helps in significantly reducing fees.

AAVE has lost over 90% from its all-time-high thanks to the bear run in the crypt0 market than began early in 2022. Once trading around $600-700, it is now trading just below $100. According to data from DefiLlama, Aave is the biggest DeFi protocol run by its own DAO with a total-value-locked of over $8.86 billion.

Also Read: Best Cryptos to Invest under $1

2. ZCASH (ZEC)

ZCash is a unique crypto that, at an underlying level shares several characteristics of Bitcoin – however has a layer on enhanced security features, such as shielded transactions. All transactions related data on ZCash are essentially completely encrypted – by it information regarding senders, recipients and amounts – everything is hidden.

Usually, all transactions are posted on the public ledger of this blockchain network but can choose the confidential option to encrypt all the data, essentially making the transaction untraceable. Proprietary zero-knowledge proofs allow transactions to be verified without revealing the sender, receiver or transaction amount. This is what is called as a private crypto, depending on the users choice.

On paper, it has an all-time-high of over $3000 from back in October 2016 when it was initially launched. But since then it has been falling, before making a recent high in May 2021 of around $390 and since then has fallen nearly 86% to around $50. But the past two weeks of recovery has resulted in a price rally of over 30% to $64 as of writing this.

Also Read: Top 10 Crypto to Invest

3. LITECOIN (LTC)

Popularly referred to as the silver to Bitcoin’s gold, Litecoin was created by Charlie Lee and was launched just 2 years after the launch of Bitcoin, in 2011. It was essentially created via a hard fork from the main Bitcoin blockchain network. Initially, it was designed to address developer’s concerns that Bitcoin was becoming too centrally controlled.

While eventually unsuccessful in preventing enterprise miners from taking over the lion’s share of Litecoin mining, the crypto has reworked itself into a minable coin and a peer-to-peer payment system. So it largely shares characteristics of Bitcoin but works on an entirely different algorithm. It was built with the goal of becoming a medium for daily transactions.

Down 89% from its ATHs, Litecoin has followed a similar chart trajectory to that of Uniswap’s. It created its last ATH back in May 2021 and since then hasn’t been able to reach those heights again.

4. SOLANA (SOL)

Solana, was launched in March 2020 – had become incredibly popular. It was one of the few blockchain platforms in the market that was able to deliver extremely high transaction speeds with no loss of decentralisation at its core. Thanks to a bunch of new technologies including a fresh new kind of consensus mechanism called as proof-of-history. Solana can process around 50,000 transactions per second, compared to 15 or less for Ethereum as of now.

Thanks to its speed, it is also able to ensure that network congestion and transaction fees remains low. Developers hope high speeds and low fees will eventually enable Solana to scale to compete with centralized payment processors like Visa.

Much like the altcoin king Ethereum, Solana is yet another blockchain platform that can interact with smart contracts. These smart contracts are the code behind a wide range of blockchain based applications, including NFT markets and DeFi games.

Solana is a crypto token that has taken a beating in the market even before the bear run began. From its all time highs, it has fallen over 90%. From its all time highs of $260, it fell to below $25 before recovering to around $45 in the past week.

5. FTX TOKEN (FTT)

FTT is essentially an utility token used on the FTX platform, an international crypto derivatives exchange. It if often described as the ‘backbone’ of the FTX exchange, and provides its holders with a slew of benefits. If you are an FTT token holder, you can enjoy lower trading fees and access a bunch of perks on the FTX platform. These tokens can also be used as a collateral to trade derivatives.

Another aspect of its value proposition is the fact that the FTX exchange regularly repurchases and burns its tokens. It does that by means of using 33% of the trading fees it has generated on its platform to buy those tokens from circulation and burning them.

This token was launched back in May 2019 and since then has had an insane rally all through 2020-2021. Also it has been one of the better performing crypto assets so far, and has lost only about 74% from its all-time-highs of around $84. It has also responded well to the broader market recovery and has gained over 30% in the same timeframe.

6. AVALANCHE (AVAX)

Avalanche is a blockchain network that describes itself as an open, programmable smart contracts platform for decentralised applications. It has various utilities, including paying transaction fees and even can be staked to secure the network. Avalanche is compatible with Solidity, Ethereum’s programming language, and can be used to deploy custom private or public blockchains as “subnets.”

Launched in September 2020 by Emin Gun Sirer, this is one of the most popular Ethereum sidechains, and it has a system of three networks on which it functions. Those include the Platform Chain (P-Chain) which coordinates validators and the creation of subnets, the C-Chain for the creation of smart contracts, and the X-Chain for managing and exchanging assets.

Like Solana, Avalanche has also lost over 90% since the beginning of the current bear market from its all-time-highs, down from $150 to $13. However, in line with the broader market, AVAX has managed to secure some gains and is currently trading around $26.

Additional Read: Terra vs AVAX

7. AXIE INFINITY (AXS)

One of the most popular blockchain based games, Axie Infinity is a is a non-fungible token based online video game developed by Sky Mavis in March 2018. It is one of the best metaverse crypto project for its in-game economy which uses Ethereum-based ERC-20 tokens. The objective of the players in this game is that they can play, mint and collect NFTs which represent digital pets known as ‘Axies’. These so-called pets can be bred and battled with each other within the game.

The virtual world of Axie Infinity is built on the Ronin Network, an Ethereum-linked sidechain developed by Sky Mavis. There are two main tokens associated with this world – Smooth Love Potion (SLP) and Axie Infinity Shards (AXS). Of these two, AXS is primarily a governance token that is allotted to holders and top players which can be staked or used to implement new protocols in the network.

However, just a couple of months ago, in March 2022 – hackers compromised the Ronin Network, stealing approximately $620 million worth of AXS and ETH tokens from the project. This was a major blow to stakeholders, investors and players alike and resulted in a loss of faith, which was evident on the price charts too. It has lost nearly 92% of its value from its all time high back in November 2021. But, in the rally over the past two weeks, AXS too has gained nearly 42% from the lows, currently trading around $17.

8. ETHEREUM CLASSIC (ETC)

ETHEREUM CLASSIC (ETC) is basically an open-source, decentralised, blockchain based distributed crypto platform that has the ability to run smart contracts. It was initially created out of a hard fork back in 2016, as a result of a hack on The DAO that was running the Ethereum blockchain. The hard forked new chain was named as Ethereum while the older, original one was renamed to Ethereum Classic. It basically maintains the original, unaltered history of the Ethereum network, including the hack on the DAO.

The basic functioning of this coin is largely not to dissimilar from the Ethereum we all know as the altcoin king. It typically serves as a cheaper investment alternative to Ethereum as it costs hardly a fraction of the actual ETH. Due to that, its price action more or less tends to mimic that of Ethereum’s, with the volatility magnified.

It lost about 90% from its ATH back in May 2021, but amid the recovery in Ethereum – has managed to almost double in value in the past two weeks alone and is currently trading around $25.

Additional Read: Ethereum Classic Price Prediction 

9. HELIUM (HNT)

Helium was built with the idea of creating a decentralised wireless network that allows low power smart devices (or miners) to send and receive data to the internet. Its native crypto, HNT is essentially the means of incentivising the use of these low-power devices to add to the blockchain network to provide connectivity in a specific region using the hardware feature called Hotspot.

This token essentially uses a novel kind of consensus mechanism – called as a proof-of-coverage where these low-power devices ‘hear’ each other’s RF transmissions and confirm each other’s presence by sending a beacon, a specially crafted LoRa packet. Thus the medium of communication is known as LPWAN. This is a token that is not too popular in the public domain but a good one to consider for diversification of one’s crypto portfolio with unique blockchain utilities in the real world.

Much like other coins in the crypto market, this one too has lost around 90% of its value from its ATH as of writing this article. It has been trying to recover along with the broader market but its recovery hasn’t been too convincing yet.

10. COSMOS (ATOM)

Popularly known as the ‘internet of blockchains’, Cosmos is a crypto that powers an ecosystem of blockchains to bring about scale and enable different blockchains to interoperate with each other. It’s this focus on customisability and interoperability that sets Cosmos apart from other projects.

So, rather than creating its own blockchain network, it strives to nurture a network of interconnected blockchain networks which can communicate with each other, and share data and tokens through the rule of code only and no centralised intermediary. In effect, Cosmos itself is a proof-of-stake chain. ATOM holders can stake their tokens in order to maintain the network and receive more ATOM as a rewards.