Today's economic woes have pushed investors toward the safest of assets, and that's resulted in massive declines for cryptocurrencies. Industry market value has dropped to about $1 trillion from $3 trillion late last year.
At the same time, many crypto players remain just as promising as they were a year ago. That means now may be a good time to get in on some of these exciting long-term stories.
Which players are worth considering? There are plenty of options among the thousands of cryptocurrencies out there. But let's consider two players that have lost more than 70% this year -- and may be ready to pop.
1. Solana
Solana (SOL 3.22%) is a cryptocurrency and a blockchain and is known for its transaction speed. At the moment, Solana processes more than 4,200 transactions per second. But Solana's architecture allows it to potentially process 65,000 transactions per second.
The cryptocurrency already has become popular in the world of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Over the past 30 days, Solana was the second-biggest blockchain by NFT sales volume, according to CryptoSlam.
Solana has big plans to grow in the area of payments and lead development of mobile crypto. Earlier this year, it launched Solana Pay. This is a payment framework built on Solana. It allows a business and its customers to avoid intermediaries, and that means fees are a fraction of a cent. A month after the Solana Pay launch, about 600 merchants already came onboard.
Of course, Solana Pay is still far from overtaking well-known payment systems like Visa or Paypal. But this could be its first step into a big business down the road.
As for mobile, Solana says it will begin selling its own Saga mobile phone next year. The phone's functionality will be linked to the Solana blockchain, and that will make it easy to do things like manage digital assets right there on the phone.
Solana has already made a building framework available to developers. This means they're already creating experiences designed specifically for use on the Saga.
Will Saga become as popular as Apple's iPhone? This may seem impossible right now, but the Saga may not have to equal the iPhone in popularity to become a successful product. It's surely a point to watch.
Solana has dropped 82% so far this year. Its ventures into payment and mobile are new -- and represent risk. But if Solana makes some progress in these areas and manages its main challenge of network stability, this crypto clearly could pop.
2. Cardano
Cardano (ADA 2.46%) has slipped 70% this year. These declines aren't a reflection of the news from this cryptocurrency and blockchain, as Cardano reached an important milestone recently and is heading for others.
The cryptocurrency completed the Vasil hard fork last month. This update is meant to improve scalability and strengthen Cardano as a platform for decentralized applications (dApps). This is positive because it should encourage more and more developers to build on Cardano, and that's likely to draw more users, too.
But there's even more ahead. Recently, Cardano's hydra scaling solution completed a demo on decentralized exchange SundaeSwap. Cardano hasn't yet set a launch date for hydra, and it may be quite a while before it happens. But the solution clearly is something that could transform the cryptocurrency.
Hydra allows some transactions to take place off chain, increasing transaction speed and reducing congestion on the main network. Each hydra "head" demonstrated the ability to process as many as 1,000 transactions per second in the earliest simulations.
There's a reason Cardano takes a while before launching updates. The blockchain uses a peer-review system for every change before it's applied, and that slows things down. But it also may prevent technical glitches down the road. So, yes, Cardano users and investors must be patient right now -- but this patience could pay off big time.
Another catalyst may be the launch of the Lace wallet. Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson says Lace was designed with the idea of bringing 1 billion users to the platform. The wallet is meant to serve as "one platform for your Web3 life," according to Cardano.
Like Solana, Cardano has slipped along with most other assets viewed as risky. It has fallen so much that it could pop on any good news.
What does this mean for investors? Should you buy these cryptocurrencies? Solana and Cardano make great buys right now for investors with a tolerance for risk -- and a long-term outlook. Both of these players may have what it takes to play a significant role in the cryptocurrency world over time.
