Shiba Inu caught the cryptocurrency world's attention when it soared 45,000,000% last year. Today, investors are looking for the next similar opportunity. Of course, it may not be easy -- or even possible -- to find a crypto player that will increase so dramatically in such a short period of time.
Let's shift to something that actually represents a much better opportunity: a cryptocurrency that's just as exciting as Shiba Inu but with the potential to gain and keep investors and users over the long term. That crypto may have what it takes to climb significantly. And that player is Fantom (FTM +1.62%).
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Shiba Inu's problem
Shiba Inu has one big problem, which makes it difficult for the cryptocurrency to keep increasing in value. Shiba Inu doesn't stand out from other cryptocurrencies. It's a token built on the Ethereum blockchain and mainly used for trading, staking, or payment at certain merchants. With thousands of cryptocurrencies out there, standing out from the crowd is pretty important.
And Fantom does. This player is a network of blockchains. New projects take place on individual blockchains in the network and connect to the mainnet. This offers scalability -- and prevents congestion.
There are two major benefits of Fantom. First, it's fast and cheap. It measures its transactions in time to finality -- which is the time it takes the network to confirm completion of a particular operation. On Fantom, this happens in just one second. Speed also results in transaction costs of only a fraction of a cent.
The second benefit of Fantom is one that should please developers and users: It's Ethereum compatible, so you can run Ethereum decentralized applications (dApps) on it. Speaking of dApps, more than 80 of them have already launched on Fantom.
CRYPTO: FTM
Key Data Points
A coin-supply perspective
Now, let's have a look at coin supply. Today, 2.5 billion tokens are in circulation. And Fantom's market value stands at $3.2 billion. That makes it the world's 36th largest cryptocurrency by that measure. And that leaves plenty of room for Fantom to grow.
For example, if Fantom climbed tenfold, its market capitalization would reach $31.7 billion. And that would make it the eighth-largest crypto player. So it's very possible Fantom could be a multibagger from a coin-supply and market-value perspective.
It's important to remember that cryptocurrency is high risk. The area is new, so it's difficult to predict whether the industry truly will take off. And any news can result in extreme short-term price swings. For example, Fantom fell more than 20% in two days this week after a developer announced his departure from the project.
For investors who accept the risk, however, Fantom is a player to consider. Like Shiba Inu, it could attract a crowd -- but even better, it has what it takes to deliver over the long term.
