The next Bitcoin halving is expected to happen in the spring of 2024, with current estimates pointing to early March as the most likely timeframe for the halving. Bitcoin halvings, which happen every four years, have so far been pivotal events for the crypto markets, marking the beginning of bull runs.
In this article, we’ll mostly be assuming that just like what we saw after previous halvings, the next Bitcoin halving in 2024 will also be followed by a period of bullish price action. Obviously, this scenario might not play out as there’s no guarantee that the price of Bitcoin will increase following the halving.
Small market cap altcoins typically have the biggest potential for gains when the cryptocurrency market is in a bull run. However, they also carry the biggest risks — rug pulls, smart contract exploits, and malicious or incompetent leadership are some of the common risks facing investors in small crypto projects.
So, instead of focusing on projects where there’s a meaningful risk of catastrophic failure even during a bull market, we’ll be highlighting five well-established crypto projects that are very likely to perform well if the cryptocurrency market as a whole enters a bull run thanks to the Bitcoin halving.
The 5 best crypto to buy before the Bitcoin halving
Without further ado, let’s get started with our list of the best crypto projects to buy before the next Bitcoin halving.
- Ethereum – The undisputed leader in smart contracts
- BNB – A scalable alternative to Ethereum with support from Binance
- Arbitrum – The leading layer 2 for Ethereum
- Solana – One of the fastest and most efficient blockchains
- Dogecoin – A meme coin with mainstream appeal
1. Ethereum – The undisputed leader in smart contracts
Ethereum is the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, and it is likely to stay that way for a long period of time. Ethereum has a market capitalization of $228 billion, while the next closest competitor, Tether, only has a market cap of about $83 billion.
If there is a crypto bull market following the next Bitcoin halving, Ethereum will almost certainly perform well. It is simply the go-to platform for projects looking to leverage the more advanced use cases offered by blockchain technology, including decentralized finance, non-fungible tokens, decentralized autonomous organizations, prediction markets and much more.
In the past few years, there have been a number of changes to the Ethereum protocol that have made ETH a much more attractive asset to hold over the long term.
Most importantly, EIP-1559 introduced an ETH burning mechanism, in which the base ETH transaction fee for all Ethereum transactions is burned. Ethereum has also fully transitioned over to a Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism, which has reduced the issuance of ETH significantly compared to the old Proof-of-Work system. There’s now only about 1,600 new ETH issued per day, compared to about 13,000 ETH per day under the previous consensus mechanism.
For the next cryptocurrency bull run, Ethereum will be positioned much better in terms of scalability thanks to the rapid developments we’re seeing in layer 2 scaling solutions. While many investors were priced out of the Ethereum network during the previous bull run, they will have several great layer 2s to choose from the next time the bulls dominate the crypto markets.
2. BNB – A scalable alternative to Ethereum with support from Binance
BNB is a cryptocurrency that was launched in 2017 by the Binance cryptocurrency exchange. However, BNB has taken on a life of its own in the years following its launch and is now the native asset of its own blockchain platform, BNB Chain.
The BNB Chain platform is compatible with the EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine), which essentially means that smart contract developers can use all the popular tools that exist in the Ethereum ecosystem to create decentralized applications for BNB Chain.
We should note that BNB Chain makes some compromises on decentralization in order to achieve better performance. The set of validators that add new blocks to BNB Chain is permissioned, which means that not just anyone can spin up the node and join the network as a validator.
However, many users seem to be happy with BNB Chain’s trade-off between decentralization and performance, as it’s one of the most widely used blockchains on the market today.
Interestingly enough, BNB is one of the cryptocurrencies that are the most correlated to Bitcoin. In fact, only Cardano is more correlated with Bitcoin than BNB in terms of price action.
While the Binance exchange has created some distance between the BNB token and itself (likely to avoid potential regulatory issues), it still continues to support BNB and the BNB Chain ecosystem. A blockchain with a strong backing from the world’s most popular crypto exchange certainly has a strong chance to perform well if the next Bitcoin halving ignites a new crypto bull run.
3. Arbitrum – The leading layer 2 for Ethereum
Arbitrum is one of the leading layer 2 scaling solutions for Ethereum. It utilizes optimistic rollups technology to provide much faster and cheaper transactions, while still leveraging the security of the Ethereum mainnet.
According to Ethereum layer 2 tracker L2Beat, Arbitrum is currently the most popular layer 2 for Ethereum. It has a TVL (total value locked) of $5.88 billion, while the next closest competitor, Optimism, has a TVL of $1.70 billion. It’s also the most active Ethereum layer 2 at the moment, handling more than 8.5 transactions per second at the time of writing.
So, if we see a bull run in the cryptocurrency market that brings in new investors who want to access on-chain opportunities, Arbitrum seems like a good bet as the go-to scaling solution for Ethereum.
The project’s ARB token already has a significant market cap of $1.56 billion, which makes it the 34th largest crypto asset at the time of writing. However, ARB could easily advance up the market cap rankings during a bull market.
4. Solana – One of the fastest and most efficient blockchains
Solana is one of the fastest and most efficient smart contracts platforms available today. To be clear, Solana has seen some notable setbacks in the last year — technical issues have caused the blockchain to halt on several occasions, and one of its biggest backers, the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, collapsed in one of the biggest scandals in the cryptocurrency industry’s history.
Despite these issues, Solana is still alive and kicking. Its impressive scalability allows it to support use cases that simply aren’t feasible on most other blockchain platforms. Solana is home to a number of popular cryptocurrency and blockchain projects, including the likes of Stepn, Helium, Magic Eden and Orca.
Solana’s DApp ecosystem is already much more diverse compared to competitors like Cardano. Another factor that makes SOL worth considering at the moment is simply the fact that the coin is trading more than 90% down from its all-time high. So, if you believe that Solana has strong long-term potential, acquiring some SOL at these prices could turn out to be a good decision, especially ahead of the next Bitcoin halving.
5. Dogecoin – A meme coin with mainstream appeal
We’re featuring Dogecoin as one of the best cryptocurrencies to buy before the Bitcoin halving since DOGE has demonstrated impressive longevity since its launch back in 2013.
During the last cryptocurrency market bull run in 2021, Dogecoin was one of the biggest gainers. We saw a huge influx of new investors entering the crypto market, and Dogecoin was an obvious choice for many due to its meme appeal, availability on mainstream trading platforms like Robinhood, and a low price per unit (although this is more a psychological advantage than a real one).
There was a viral trend on social media platforms like Twitter in TikTok where users encouraged each other to buy Dogecoin and bring its price up to $1.
If we’re going to see another spike in new investors entering crypto after the next Bitcoin halving, DOGE could very well be one of the best-performing cryptocurrencies. In the last bull market, Dogecoin soared high, but couldn’t quite reach the $1 mark. Will next time be different?
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Many crypto investors are hoping that there will be another crypto bull run after the next Bitcoin halving in 2024. If this will indeed be the case, it’s likely that the vast majority of cryptocurrencies will perform well — the crypto markets tend to be dictated by Bitcoin, and it’s rare to see other coins slumping while BTC is rallying.
Hopefully, our article helped you identify cryptocurrencies that could perform exceptionally well if we see another bull run after the Bitcoin halving. If you’re looking to invest in crypto over an even longer period of time, check out our list of the best long-term cryptocurrencies to buy.
Source: https://coincodex.com/article/28024/best-crypto-to-buy-before-bitcoin-halving/