Lower in the market cap rankings, cryptocurrency tokens have made notable gains in 2021, such as Cardano (ADA-USD), KuCoin, and Ripple (XRP-USD).
A small capitalization cryptocurrency token has much more leeway and investors can hope for bigger profits than the larger capitalization offers. like Ethereum (ETH-USD) and Bitcoin (BTC-USD). However, tokens with lower market capitalization are subject to higher volatility than the cryptocurrencies at the top of the rankings. Many lesser-known crypto tokens like Cardano, KuCoin and Ripple did well in 2021.
Cardano started the year trading at $ 0.15 (GBP 0.1) and is now at $ 1.34. The coin ranks seventh in the cryptocurrency rankings by market capitalization. During the year, the competing blockchain project Solana (SOL-USD) skipped Cardano and is now in fifth place. Since January 2021 until today, Cardano has increased its value by almost ten times. The cryptocurrency hit an all-time high of $ 3.10 on September 2.
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The blockchain platform is still going through its rigorous development roadmap. The idea of the developer Charles Hoskinson was founded in 2015 and started its testnet phase in 2017. It has evolved from its “Shelley” era of development to the current “Goguen” era, which offers the ability to deploy smart contracts on its blockchain. Cardano has to go through a total of five development phases before it becomes a completely self-sufficient system. It’s only now in its third era.
The two before that, the Byron and Shelly eras, were primarily aimed at building a foundation and decentralization. However, this hasn’t stopped investors from buying in its native token called ADA, which rose 940% in value in 2021.
The Cardano logo is displayed on a smartphone. Photo: Getty Images
However, there are doubts about Cardano’s continued success through 2022 and 2023. The project will be removed from the list by eToro for its US clients starting January 1, 2021. The trading platform cited regulatory concerns as the reason for its actions.
The story goes on
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Another project that has performed well in 2021 is the native token of the centralized cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin – the KCS offering. Similar to Binance, Kucoin is also connected to a blockchain, the Kucoin Community Chain (KCC). Similar to the Binance Smart Chain (BSC), the KCC is a clone of the Ethereum network and is not considered to be fully decentralized. However, the Kucoin token, KCS, appreciated significantly in value in 2021.
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The current price of the KCS token is $ 21.44 – it started the year at a low of $ 0.70. This is in line with the growing popularity of the KuCoin exchange. The KuCoin exchange has become a popular trading platform for institutional blockchain projects such as the Kadena cryptocurrency.
The Ripple cryptocurrency project also performed well in 2021. It identifies itself as a global payments network using the XRP consensus ledger, which the company claims is faster, cheaper, and greener than evidence of work-based consensus mechanisms that process transactions. The Ripple token has been active since 2012 and has the listing XRP. The price of XRP rose from $ 0.43 in January 2021 to $ 0.99 today. In the past seven days, Ripple has appreciated 20% in value.
Representing the Ripple payment network. Photo: Reuters
Ripple Labs is still recovering from the aftermath after two of its top executives were sued by the US Securities and Exchange Commission in 2020. In late December 2020, the SEC commissioned Ripple and two of its executives to sell $ 1.3 billion in “unregistered, ongoing offering of digital asset securities.” It has been reported by the SEC that the alleged sale of XRP tokens by Ripple executives was to raise capital to fund the company’s business. Ripple currently ranks sixth in cryptocurrency market capitalization. In 2022, the token could surpass its all-time high of $ 3.84 reached in August 2021.
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The development arm of the Ripple project, Ripple Labs, advanced in 2021 by creating a Ripple marketplace for financial companies that enables customers to trade cryptocurrencies securely. Ripple avoids being associated with the more anarchic aspects of the cryptosphere such as decentralization and disintermediation of the banking system. Instead, Ripple nestles near several large banks, investment companies, and major financial organizations around the world.
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