Want an affordable cryptocurrency with the potential for massive long-term growth? Look no further than Avalanche (AVAX 1.83%) and Algorand (ALGO 12.76%). These assets trade for relatively low valuations while serving important needs in the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
1. Avalanche
With a market cap of $21 billion, Avalanche is much cheaper than leading rivals like Bitcoin and Ethereum, worth $361 billion and $772 billion, respectively. Its smaller size gives it more room to grow, especially considering its impressive technical capabilities and deflationary design.
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Like Ethereum, Avalanche is optimized to host decentralized applications (dApps), self-executing computer programs stored on the blockchain. DApps boost a network's potential use cases to include decentralized exchanges and digital art markets, among other things. But this expanded functionality can increase transaction volume -- leading to slower confirmation times and higher fees.
Capable of handling 4,500 transactions per second, Avalanche is suited to high volumes, especially compared to the largest dApp platform, Ethereum, which can only manage 15 per second. Avalanche is also interoperable with Ethereum, which means Ethereum dApps can be easily adapted to Avalanche, potentially boosting its development activity.
Avalanche also "burns" all transaction fees on its network, which means the tokens are sent to an inaccessible wallet and removed from circulation. So far, it has destroyed almost 1.5 million units of AVAX worth $116 million. Over the long term, this deflationary design could boost investor returns by increasing the token's scarcity relative to demand.
2. Algorand
Launched in 2019, Algorand is a blockchain designed to be a more secure platform for non-fungible tokens (NFTs), digital proofs of ownership stored on the blockchain. The asset's unique design and rock-bottom valuation could make it an excellent bet for investors.
Analysts at ReportLinker expect the global NFT market to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 35% to $147 billion by 2026 amid growing demand for digital art. NFTs are valued for their scarcity. Every token is unique and can't be duplicated unless the platform hosting it undergoes a hard fork, which can occur when a blockchain's developers disagree on its development roadmap and decide to split the network.
To solve this problem, Algorand uses a forkless design. According to its developers, the protocol is immune from forks because of its decentralization. Despite using a proof-of-stake (PoW) system where miners update the blockchain using coins they own, Algorand chooses its miners randomly. This means entities with a large number of coins don't have outsized control over the network.
With a market cap of just $4.8 billion, Algorand is a small fry in the cryptocurrency market, allowing investors to get in on the ground floor of its potential growth story.
Betting on the next big thing
While cryptocurrency may be at the beginning stages of reaching its potential, there is no denying that some of the industry's leading assets are already massive. Avalanche and Algorand give investors a relatively cheap way to bet on blockchain technology's long-term success.
