Which $5 Cryptos Are Worth Investing In?
While the crypto market has witnessed massive growth over the last few years, 2022 hasn’t been so good. Digital assets are currently facing severe pressure, which has seen bitcoin, the largest virtual currency by market cap, lose more than 50% of its all-time high price.
$5 Cryptocurrencies You Can Invest In
Investing in crypto doesn’t have to mean risking it all; there are several assets with prices around the $5 mark that could make for worthwhile punts. Remember that each crypto is unique, and you need to consult professional financial advisors and do your own thorough research before investing in these speculative products. With that out of the way, read on to discover which cryptocurrencies we feel are good value for $5 or less.
- UNUS SED LEO (LEO)
LEO is the utility token of the iFinex ecosystem. It was created in May 2019 after the hacking of the Bitfinex exchange, a wholly-owned subsidiary of iFinex, which saw investors lose 119,756 bitcoins, then valued at about $72 million.
Upon realizing that there was a possibility those funds may never be recovered, iFinex launched the LEO token to cover the company’s financial shortfalls. And to make their investors whole again, iFinex also devised a plan to gradually buy back the tokens from them until there were none left in circulation.
LEO has a unique buy-and-burn system that takes a certain number of tokens off the market each month.
Holders of LEO can use it to get special benefits on Bitfinex, such as lower trading fees and discounts on crypto and fiat withdrawals.
Our reason for putting LEO on this list is the fact that it has shown some of the best performances among its peers from January 2022 to date. Statistics show that the token gained about 42 percent in value even as the rest of the crypto market bled out. At the time of writing, it was trading at $5.41 and had a market cap just north of $5.1 billion.
- NEAR Protocol (NEAR)
NEAR is the native token of the NEAR Protocol, a layer-one blockchain meant to be a community-run cloud computing platform with faster transaction speeds, better output, and more interoperability than other blockchains.
The protocol features a highly secure framework that can manage high-value assets like money and personal data while giving people with non-technical backgrounds access to useful tools and features.
The platform uses a proprietary consensus mechanism called Doomslug to secure the platform without increasing costs. Additionally, the blockchain uses Nightshade technology to split up its transaction history to speed up processing.
The NEAR Protocol improves the complicated onboarding process of other blockchains by using human-readable addresses and developing decentralized applications with a registration flow comparable to what users have already experienced.
Furthermore, it gives developers a set of modular components that allow them to build applications like NFTs or token contracts much faster.
NEAR is currently trading at $3.62, a healthy 6.2% increase in value in the last 24 hours. And while the token has taken a battering in the last few months, it is expected that continuous improvements to the NEAR protocol ecosystem, including a music streaming service and an NFT marketplace, could see the cryptocurrency do much better in the future.
- Uniswap (UNI)
Uniswap is a popular decentralized exchange famous for its automated trading of DeFi tokens. The platform allows anybody with crypto to build a liquidity pool for any token pair of their choosing.
The trading protocol was launched in November 2018 to create liquidity for the nascent DeFi space. Two years later, Uniswap created its own governance token, UNI, and distributed it via airdrop to existing users of the exchange. The new token added the potential for profitability and created a mechanism for users to shape the platform’s future.
UNI has made some gains in the years since its creation. But 2022 has proven harder to crack as the altcoin market has been in a downturn. At the time of writing, UNI was trading at $4.94, representing a 15.82% increase in value in the last 24 hours. The token also had a market cap of $3.5 billion and was ranked 21st on the list of the biggest cryptocurrencies.
Despite failing to maintain its price, UNI proved to be quite a windfall for early adopters. But as we advance, the value of UNI depends on the continued success of the Uniswap platform.
Despite its significant volatility, Uniswap has the advantage of being an early entrant in the arena of decentralized exchanges. More than 94 million trades have been executed on the platform since its inception, with an average of $70 billion worth of crypto switching hands every month. The trading volume on the exchange also just topped the $1 trillion mark, albeit from only 3.9 million addresses, indicating significant room for growth.
- Synthetix (SNX)
SNX is the native token of Synthetix, a DeFi protocol designed to provide exposure to a slew of digital assets via highly liquid synthetic assets known as synths.
The Synthetix platform enables users to independently trade and exchange synths without liquidity or slippage concerns. It also offers a staking pool for token holders to stake their SNX tokens for a portion of the transaction fees on the Synthetix exchange.
SNX tokens also serve as collateral for synthetic assets using a system where a given number of SNX is locked in a smart contract whenever synths are issued.
SNX is currently priced at $2.98 and has had a trading volume of nearly $417 million in the last 24 hours.
What makes the token viable for investment is the recent surge in trading activity on Synthetix, which led to the remarkable recovery of the SNX token amid a brutal bear market.
The flurry of interest in Synthetix and SNX was triggered by the former’s partnership with Curve Finance, which will see it build Curve pools for Synthetic Bitcoin (sBTC), Synthetic Ether (sETH), and Synthetic USD (sUSD).
Additionally, several upgrades to the Synthetix platform, including the integration of an atomic swap function with the SIP-120 proposal, have led to more users adopting the Layer-2 scaling solution and driving up its average trading volume to over $100 million.
Synthetic assets are a revolutionary product in the market, and there is hope that the Synthetix platform can provide value to investors holding SNX for years to come.
Final Thoughts
The crypto market is currently in disarray, but there is hope that things will soon settle in tandem with the broader global economy. However, the coins above have shown some resilience in this market, and each has use-cases, high prospects, and strong teams and communities behind them.
Regardless, the decision to invest your money in any of them is entirely up to you.