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.

 

List of the best cryptocurrencies to invest in July 2026:

  1. Bitcoin – Decentralized peer-to-peer cryptocurrency
  2. Zcash – Privacy coin based on zero-knowledge technology
  3. Chainlink – The leading decentralized oracle network
  4. Bittensor – Decentralized platform for machine intelligence
  5. Ethereum – The leading blockchain for smart contracts
  6. Solana – High-performance blockchain platform for smart contracts
  7. Hyperliquid – Leading decentralized futures trading platform
  8. XRP – Highly efficient digital currency
  9. NEAR Protocol – AI and scalability focused blockchain   
  10. Sky – A key decentralized finance project
  11. Stellar – Efficient blockchain focused on payments and tokenization
  12. BNB – A popular cryptocurrency utilized in the Binance ecosystem

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 is up by a modest 0.8% in the last 7 days, but it has started the week off with a 2.4% daily price drop. 

This decline was primarily caused by the ongoing escalation of the U.S. - Iran conflict, with the United States hitting multiple targets deeper within Iranian territory and Iran saying it will retaliate by attacking U.S. military bases. The escalation is fueling risk-off sentiment, which bodes poorly for crypto assets in the short term. 

On a positive note, we should highlight that Bitcoin ETF flows displayed a positive turnaround as spot Bitcoin ETFs in the U.S. saw $197 million in net inflows last week. While this isn’t a staggering number, it’s still a welcome respite from the relentless selling that dominated the Bitcoin ETF market in the previous 8 weeks. 

Weekly Bitcoin ETF flows

Weekly Bitcoin ETF flows have turned positive after an 8-week negative streak. Source: SoSoValue

Another notable event for the Bitcoin market comes from Strategy (MSTR), by far the largest Bitcoin treasury company. While Strategy did not increase its BTC holdings last week, it raised a substantial amount of capital by selling MSTR shares.

Strategy raised roughly $466.7 million by selling 4.82 million MSTR shares between July 6 and July 12, according to an SEC filing. The company did not buy or sell any Bitcoin during the week, instead using $450 million of the proceeds to increase its cash reserve to $3 billion.

Strategy continues to hold 843,775 BTC, acquired for about $63.7 billion at an average price of $75,476 per coin. The holdings represent roughly 4% of Bitcoin’s maximum supply and are currently sitting on approximately $10.7 billion in unrealized losses.

  

2. 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 a standout performer recently, gaining 14% in the last 7 days while Bitcoin only posted gains of under 1%. ZEC is now up 21% in the last month as it continues its impressive comeback from a 50% crash which was triggered by the disclosure of a serious vulnerability that could have allowed an attacker to mint an arbitrary amount of shielded ZEC coins. 

Zcash’s recent gains are in a way directly related to the crash, as developers have set the timeline for the Ironwood upgrade, which will help ensure that no counterfeit ZEC was created before the vulnerability was patched. Zcash development organization Shielded Labs explains that the existing Orchard shielded ZEC pool will stop accepting new activity, and funds transferred to the new shielded pool will have to go through an accounting checkpoint:

“As users migrate funds from the existing Orchard pool to the new pool, any hypothetical counterfeiter faces a choice: attempt to move counterfeit funds and risk exposing their existence, or leave them behind and risk being unable to move them in the future.”

Ironwood is scheduled to activate on block height #3,428,143, which is expected to be mined on July 28. 

Another recent development that has cause positive momentum for Zcash is that the protocol was audited with the help of Anthropic’s cutting-edge Mythos AI model, which found no serious vulnerabilities.

  

3. Chainlink

Chainlink is a decentralized oracle network that allows blockchains and smart contracts to securely retrieve reliable information from external sources. It addresses the so-called “oracle problem,” which refers to the difficulty blockchains face when accessing data that exists outside their native environments. By connecting on-chain applications with off-chain information, Chainlink supports use cases that would not be possible using blockchain data alone.

Chainlink has become the leading oracle solution in decentralized finance and is increasingly being adopted in areas such as real-world asset tokenization. DeFi protocols can use Chainlink to supply smart contracts with cryptocurrency prices from centralized exchanges, while RWA platforms can access accurate market valuations with reduced risk of manipulation. This can help tokenized real estate, commodities, and other assets maintain reliable, up-to-date valuations on-chain.

Why Chainlink?

Crypto investors should be paying close attention to Chainlink this week following two major integrations that strengthen its position in cross-chain interoperability and real-world asset tokenization. 

Robinhood Chain, the financial platform’s new Ethereum Layer 2 network, has selected Chainlink as its exclusive oracle and cross-chain infrastructure provider. The integration gives Robinhood Chain access to Chainlink’s CCIP, Data Feeds and Data Streams, providing the secure data and connectivity needed to support tokenized financial products at scale.

Chainlink has also secured another important adoption milestone through Mantle, which is replacing its existing LayerZero-based bridging infrastructure with Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Token standard and CCIP. The migration will initially support MNT transfers between Ethereum and Solana before expanding to additional networks. Mantle’s decision reflects a broader industry shift toward cross-chain solutions that prioritize security, particularly as blockchain bridges remain frequent targets for exploits.

Together, these developments suggest that Chainlink is becoming an increasingly important infrastructure layer for both institutional-grade tokenization and secure asset transfers between blockchains.

4. Bittensor

Bittensor is a decentralized platform that provides a peer-to-peer market for machine intelligence. Bittensor consists of multiple subnets, which are specialized for particular tasks, for example text prompting, transcription or audio generation. There are currently more than 30 Bittensor subnets in operation. 

Bittensor incorporates a very unique consensus mechanism called Yuma Consensus, which allows validators on different subnets to shape what the network should learn. 

The computational resources required to perform machine learning tasks on the Bittensor network are provided by miners, and TAO tokens are used to incentivize them. Users who require machine learning services have to pay with TAO tokens to access them. 

By providing a decentralized and cost-effective network of machine learning algorithms, Bittensor makes these advanced solutions accessible to everyday users.

Why Bittensor?

The Kraken crypto exchange has completed native integration of Bittensor’s dTAO model and plans to list subnet tokens soon. The exchange highlighted 7 subnet tokens: Chutes, Targon, Vanta, Score, Lium, Ridges AI and Hippius. 

This could make individual Bittensor subnet economies more accessible to traders and investors, increasing liquidity and visibility for the broader ecosystem.

The dTAO model gives each Bittensor subnet its own token, allowing investors to gain exposure to specific markets within the network, such as machine intelligence, model training, data, or compute, rather than only holding TAO as the base asset. 

Since subnet tokens can also be staked to validators and earn a share of emissions generated by subnet activity, Kraken’s upcoming listings could draw more attention to Bittensor’s expanding token economy and its role in decentralized AI infrastructure.

It’s also worth highlighting that Yuma, a Digital Currency Group subsidiary focused on the Bittensor ecosystem, recently launched the Yuma Total Market Fund. The fund is designed to give institutional investors broad exposure to TAO as well as Bittensor’s subnets. 

  

5. 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.

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 Stacks?

Ethereum continues to trade near one of its most important long-term support levels as large investors show mixed behavior during the ongoing market downturn. Several dormant wallets that had held ETH since 2017 recently became active, selling more than 33,000 ETH after remaining untouched through multiple bull markets. At the same time, other whales continue accumulating, with one investor swapping nearly $28 million worth of Bitcoin for Ether and long-term holder Chun Wang adding almost 87,000 ETH over the past month. On-chain data also shows that, for the first time since 2019, every major Ethereum whale cohort is sitting on unrealized losses, a condition that has historically coincided with long-term market bottoms.

The $1,500 level has emerged as the key technical battleground for Ethereum. Analysts describe it as one of the network's strongest long-term support zones, having repeatedly held during major corrections since 2022. A sustained defense of this level could provide the foundation for a broader recovery, while a decisive breakdown would expose ETH to the $1,070–$1,370 range, where another major accumulation zone sits. As Bitcoin continues to drive broader market sentiment, traders remain focused on whether Ethereum can preserve this multi-year support.

Institutional interest in Ethereum also remains active despite persistent price weakness. Crypto treasury company Sharplink resumed buying ETH after an eight-month pause, acquiring nearly 40,000 ETH worth approximately $62 million over the past week. The purchases coincided with the launch of Ethlabs, a new research initiative backed by Sharplink, BitMine, Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin, and other ecosystem participants that aims to prepare Ethereum for the next wave of institutional adoption. While spot Ether ETFs continue to record net outflows, ongoing accumulation by corporate treasury firms suggests some large investors remain confident in Ethereum's long-term role as the leading smart contract platform.

  

6. 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?

South Korea-based Toss Bank has signed a strategic memorandum of understanding with the Solana Foundation to test whether blockchain infrastructure can be applied to global remittances and other next-generation financial services. 

The agreement, signed on June 19 at Toss’ office in Seoul and announced on June 22, marks the first direct one-to-one strategic partnership between a South Korean internet-only bank and the Solana Foundation.

The collaboration will begin with a proof of concept for remittance and settlement infrastructure using the Solana network, with Toss Bank also reviewing blockchain-based payment models and the potential use of stablecoins, digital assets and tokenised assets.

Toss Bank said the project is intended to gradually explore blockchain applications in its existing financial services, while Solana Foundation chair Lily Liu said the partnership could help create faster and smoother global remittance experiences by combining traditional finance with blockchain efficiency.

Another notable development for Solana is that it has been seeing a big surge of trading volume for tokenized equities, helped by the recent debut of SpaceX on public markets. According to data from SolanaFloor, Solana-based platforms facilitated $1.29 billion in trading volume for tokenized equities last week. 

  

7. Hyperliquid

Hyperliquid is a layer 1 blockchain that’s designed to enable decentralized trading with very low fees and slippage. With the ability to handle around 100,000 orders per second, Hyperliquid provides a decentralized trading platform with an orderbook that offers a user experience similar to a centralized exchange. 

The platform offers a broad range of crypto assets for trading and provides up to 50x leverage on select pairs. Hyperliquid also has copy trading functionality, which is a fairly unique feature in the decentralized finance ecosystem.

In November 2024, the Hyperliquid project launched its HYPE token via an airdrop to more than 90,000 users. The community responded positively, largely due to the generous token distribution and the absence of venture capital involvement.

HYPE functions as both a utility and governance token within the Hyperliquid ecosystem. It has a capped supply of 1 billion tokens, with over 76% allocated to the Hyperliquid user community.

Why Hyperliquid?

HYPE gained nearly 15% in the last 7 days and reached new all-time highs above the $70 mark. With the move, Hyperliquid has strengthened its position as the 9th largest crypto asset by market capitalization, surpassing Dogecoin. 

While Bitcoin ETF flows have been on a negative streak for the past 10 trading sessions, the freshly-launched Hyperliquid ETFs have been enjoying net inflows. Last week, the BHYP and THYP spot HYPE ETFs registered $66 million in net inflows, according to Hyperliquid ETF flow data from Farside Investors.

The bullish momentum for the HYPE token is coming as Hyperliquid is quickly positioning itself as a rival to established trading platforms and prediction markets, and with good reason. Since the Iran war started in late February, the platform’s HIP-3 market has regularly processed millions of dollars in trading volume for perpetual futures linked to traditional and real-world assets (RWA), including oil, gold, and U.S. stock indexes.

Recently, the success of Hyperliquid has even been highlighted by Jeffrey Sprecher, the CEO of New York Stock Exchange operator Intercontinental Exchange. 

Sprecher said ICE has met Hyperliquid’s founders multiple times and became especially interested because the platform offers 24/7 trading, including oil derivatives on weekends when traditional ICE energy markets are closed. He framed this as evidence that demand for always-on derivatives markets already exists, including from non-crypto traders seeking off-hours exposure.

We should also highlight that major crypto exchange Coinbase recently took a deeper role in Hyperliquid by becoming the official treasury deployer for USDC under the network’s Aligned Quote Asset framework. This positions USDC as the core settlement asset across Hyperliquid markets and gradually phases out USDH, potentially strengthening liquidity and market infrastructure on the platform.

  

8. 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?

Ripple, Mastercard, JPMorgan and Ondo Finance have completed a pilot transaction showing how tokenized U.S. Treasuries can be redeemed and settled across borders using both blockchain networks and traditional banking infrastructure.

The test began with Ondo Finance processing a redemption of OUSG, its tokenized U.S. Treasury fund, for Ripple on the XRP Ledger. Mastercard’s Multi-Token Network then routed the payment instructions through Kinexys, JPMorgan’s blockchain-based payments platform. JPMorgan ultimately delivered U.S. dollars to Ripple’s bank account in Singapore.

Ripple said the pilot demonstrated how the XRP Ledger can be connected with global banking rails to support cross-border transactions in a single flow. Ondo described the transaction as a milestone, saying it showed that tokenized assets can settle through public blockchain infrastructure and traditional financial systems in real time.

The test adds to a growing number of experiments involving crypto companies, payment networks and major banks that are exploring faster, cheaper, around-the-clock settlement systems. JPMorgan, Chainlink and Ondo conducted a similar tokenized Treasury settlement test about a year earlier, involving both public and permissioned blockchain networks.

Ondo’s OUSG product, which launched in 2023, had previously been available on Ethereum, Polygon and Solana before expanding to the XRP Ledger.

9. NEAR Protocol

NEAR Protocol is a high-throughput blockchain platform that leverages sharding to deliver robust scalability. The project places a strong emphasis on AI-focused applications, made possible by the network’s dynamic sharding, rapid finality, and private execution features. Together, these characteristics make NEAR well suited for supporting AI agents.

Smart contracts on NEAR can be developed using widely adopted programming languages such as Rust and JavaScript. The protocol also provides a built-in incentive for builders, as developers receive 30% of the gas fees that are burned whenever their smart contracts are executed on the network.

Among the most notable innovations emerging from the NEAR ecosystem is NEAR Intents, a multichain transaction framework that lets users specify their desired result while external parties compete to fulfill it in the most efficient way. In real-world use, NEAR Intents are most commonly applied to frictionless cryptocurrency swaps across multiple blockchain networks.

Why NEAR Protocol?

Crypto investors should be paying attention to NEAR because several narratives are converging at once: institutional demand, AI infrastructure, scalability upgrades, and privacy-focused products.

The biggest fundamental catalyst is NEAR’s upcoming dynamic resharding upgrade, scheduled for June 2026, which is designed to let the network automatically add capacity as usage grows. That matters because NEAR is positioning itself as infrastructure for an AI-driven on-chain economy, where autonomous agents may need to transact quickly and cheaply at scale.

NEAR is also leaning into privacy: Trezu’s Confidential Treasuries use NEAR infrastructure for private multisig, payroll, balance management and cross-chain payments, while NEAR AI has introduced local PII anonymization for prompts sent to models like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. Together, these moves support the idea that NEAR could become a settlement layer for AI agents and confidential finance. 

That said, some of the rally appears narrative-driven, so investors should watch whether fees, usage, AI adoption and revenue capture actually grow enough to justify the renewed market attention.

  

10. 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?

SKY has been a solid performer recently, gaining a modest 1% in the last week while most major crypto assets sustained losses. The Sky decentralized ecosystem is on a positive trajectory, as evidenced by its performance in 2025.

Sky DeFi delivered breakout growth in 2025 while becoming meaningfully more efficient. Protocol revenue climbed to $338M, driven by strong growth of the USDS stablecoin, whose supply rose 74% YoY to $9.2B, clearly outperforming broader stablecoin market growth. 

At the same time, Sky sharply reduced costs as core operating expenses fell 63% YoY, reaching just $8.8M in Q4. Growth initiatives were delegated to autonomous Sky Agents and the core protocol remained lean. With one-off transformation costs related to the project’s rebrand now behind it, the Sky Ecosystem heads into 2026 structurally more efficient.

USDS strengthened its position as a capital-efficient institutional stablecoin. Sky maintained over $4B in instant redemption liquidity via the Peg Stability Module, while zero-slippage USDC–USDS swaps reinforced USDS’s role as a low-friction settlement and liquidity asset.

Adoption remained resilient despite a lower-yield environment. Even as DeFi rates compressed and the Sky Savings Rate declined from 12.5% to 4%, USDS continued to attract users. The number of holders grew from 509K to 582K, while grewy from $5.3B to $9.2B.

  

11. Stellar

Stellar is a cryptocurrency project that was founded by Joyce Kim and Jed McCaleb, who also played an instrumental role in creating XRP. The technological foundations of XLM are quite similar to XRP, although the two projects have diverged to an extent in the years after Stellar’s launch in 2014. 

The Stellar platform is focused on payments and asset tokenization, and implements a unique consensus mechanism called the Stellar Consensus Protocol that isn’t based on either Proof-of-Work or Proof-of-Stake. This allows it to offer extremely efficient transactions, as the minimum transaction fee is only 0.00001 XLM. Realistically, users will be paying about 0.0001 XLM in transaction fees.

The Stellar protocol features built-in decentralized exchange functionality, which allows users to easily buy and sell different types of digital assets issued on the Stellar network. The Stellar Development Foundation has also created a smart contracts platform called Soroban that brings advanced smart contracts functionality to the Stellar blockchain.

Why Stellar?

XLM has delivered a 72% price increase in the last 7 days, fueled primarily by the news of the DTCC (Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation) announcing plans to integrate its tokenized securities platform with the Stellar network. The tokenized assets are expected to become available on Stellar in the first half of 2027.

The move is part of DTCC’s broader multi-chain strategy for bringing traditional financial assets onto blockchain rails, supporting issuance, settlement and lifecycle management of tokenized securities across multiple networks.

The integration follows DTCC’s December 2025 SEC no-action letter, which cleared the way for DTC to tokenize certain custodied assets, including Russell 1000 stocks, major index ETFs and U.S. Treasuries. DTCC plans limited live transactions in July 2026 and a broader launch in October 2026, though Stellar support will come later.

Stellar will be the second public blockchain connected to the service after Canton Network, highlighting DTCC’s willingness to use non-Ethereum-compatible networks despite its AppChain being built on EVM infrastructure.

Stellar’s design may be particularly relevant for DTCC because tokens on Stellar are native base-layer assets rather than smart-contract-based tokens.

  

12. 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?

Recently, the 33rd quarterly BNB token burn has been completed, in which 1.44 million BNB (worth approximately $12 billion at the time of the burn) was permanently removed from circulation. 

Compared to the 32nd quarterly BNB burn (1.59 million BNB worth $1 billion), the most recent burn was smaller in terms of BNB burned, but larger in terms of the dollar value.

The burn has reduced the supply of BNB to 137.7 million tokens (the goal is to cut the supply to 100 million). The supply reduction was conducted using the BNB Auto-Burn mechanism, which is based on two parameters: the BNB price and the number of blocks produced by BNB Chain during the given quarter.

BNB has been by far the strongest performer among major cryptocurrencies recently, gaining 20.6% against the US dollar in the last 30 days. In the same time frame, Bitcoin gained 5.2% and Ethereum gained 3.8%.

Recently, BNB was listed on Coinbase, a major cryptocurrency exchange that trades on the NASDAQ. This news is especially notable since Binance (which still plays a key role in the BNB ecosystem) is a major competitor to Coinbase. 

The listing is also a signal of a favorable regulatory environment for the token, as BNB has always been controversial from a securities law standpoint since it was initially created and sold by Binance.

  
 Native assetLaunched inDescriptionMarket cap*
BitcoinBTC2009Decentralized peer-to-peer cryptocurrency$1.26 trillion
ZcashZEC2016Privacy coin based on zero-knowledge technology$8.5 billion
ChainlinkLINK2017The leading decentralized oracle network$5.7 billion
BittensorTAO2021Decentralized platform for machine intelligence$2.3 billion
EthereumETH2015The leading blockchain for smart contracts $214 billion
SolanaSOL2020High-performance blockchain for smart contracts$44 billion
HyperliquidHYPE2024Leading decentralized futures trading platform$16 billion
XRPXRP2012Highly efficient digital currency$67 billion
NEAR ProtocolNEAR2020AI and scalability focused blockchain$2.5 billion
BittensorTAO2021Decentralized platform for machine intelligence$2.3 billion
SkySKY2015A key decentralized finance project$1.3 billion
StellarXLM2014Efficient blockchain focused on payments and tokenization$6.2 billion
BNBBNB2017BNB Chain's native asset and token used in Binance ecosystem$76 billion

*Data as of July 13, 2026, at 14:45 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.

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:

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.