Year after year, the Bitcoin cryptocurrency has provided solid returns for the holders of the asset. The latest Arcane research shows that Bitcoin performed extremely well in 2021 as a proven hedge against inflation, yielding a 73% return. And in the previous 10 years, Bitcoin has had annualized returns in excess of 220%, making it the good of the decade.
But as of this writing, Bitcoin is priced at $ 38.637 per coin - a five-month low and about 44% from its all-time high of nearly $ 69.000 a few months ago. While I'm still a huge fan of Bitcoin and currently hold it myself, there are other projects that are well positioned to perform better in 2022.
Ethereum is still the backbone of NFT and DeFi
Ethereum (quotation ETH) is the second largest currency by market volume. Critics have criticized it because of its very expensive transaction fees - which can exceed $ 100 - and scalability issues that cause network congestion that slows settlement times or cancels transactions due to timing out. However, this project has a lot of advantages.
Over the past two weeks, Ethereum's transaction fees have dropped 35% as developers continue to upgrade the network according to the ETH2.0 development plan. This plan will increase transactions per second to more than 100.000, which will further reduce transaction costs and settlement delays.
Since its last update last year, with the rollout of EIP 1559, the project has removed more than 1,5 million ETH from circulation, which is the equivalent of US $ 4,5 billion. This automatic reduction in supply is called a "burn" and increases the value of the coins that remain in circulation, making it also a more deflationary commodity overall. Both are good things!
Ethereum is still the main network that decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible token exchanges and transactions (NFTs) use. DeFi currently has $ 100 billion in assets locked onto the ETH blockchain, with more pouring into this automated banking system. And NFTs continue their explosive growth with all-time sales of nearly $ 18,5 billion according to nonfungible.com. The ETH project is well positioned to continue benefiting from these trends in 2022. It is currently trading at $ 2.793, a 43% discount from its all-time high, and could double or triple that price this year. Last year, it had a 450% return, so it's certainly possible given its use cases and positive outlook.
Cardano is making all the right moves
Cardano (ADA) is a smart contract project founded by Charles Hoskinson, a former co-founder of Ethereum. His plan from the start was to take the best elements of ETH and improve them. ADA has just entered its third phase of development called “Basho”, which is expected to significantly improve its network scalability and usability on competing blockchains.
The seamless transfer of assets across competing cryptocurrency networks and the ability to process one million transactions per second will be huge competitive advantages for ADA once these latest updates are made. Additionally, Cardano has one of the best consent models for approving crypto transactions.
Cardano's proof-of-stake consensus has gone through the most rigorous testing of any platform, with more than 60 peer-reviewed publications validating its efficiency, reliability, speed, redundancy, environmental sustainability, and more. No other project can make this claim. Developers are already building applications on the ADA network for the benefit of a number of industries including agriculture, retail and education - to name a few.
However, according to CoinMarketCap, Cardano is currently valued at $ 1,22 per coin, reflecting a 59% drop from its peak. It could quadruple its price this year and still be considered cheap.
