With prices going up in the wake of this year's explosive Bitcoin (BTC -1.71%) rally, it's getting harder and harder to find solid, high-potential cryptos priced under $1. However, it's not an impossible task. Of the top 50 cryptos by market cap, 14 trade for less than a buck.
Of these, my top three are Cardano (ADA -0.79%), Stacks (STX -7.31%), and Fantom (FTM 2.81%). Each of these cryptos is turning in an eye-popping performance in 2023 and has a solid, long-term plan for future development. Let's take a closer look at these budget-friendly cryptos.
Cardano
My top pick is Cardano, which trades at just $0.43. Despite this low price, Cardano has a market cap of $14.8 billion and is the seventh-largest crypto. Quietly, ever so quietly, Cardano has kept pace with Bitcoin this year. For the year, Cardano is up 78%. And over the past 30 days, Cardano is up 30%.
So what's driving this performance? In my view, it's all about Cardano's growing presence in the world of decentralized finance (DeFi). At the beginning of the year, DeFi was a priority for Cardano, and it seems these efforts are starting to pay off. Cardano recently hit a 10-month high in a key DeFi metric known as total value locked (TVL), and all the pieces are starting to come together. Keep your eye on the new decentralized exchanges launching on Cardano, as well as the blockchain's new algorithmic stablecoin, Djed, which launched earlier this year.
Stacks
Second on my list is Stacks, a Bitcoin Layer 2 protocol for smart contracts. That's a mouthful, but it really just means that Stacks enables developers to build applications on top of the Bitcoin blockchain in a way that simply wasn't possible before. The goal of Stacks is to give Bitcoin the same kind of functionality and programmability that you find with Layer 1 blockchains that support smart contracts, such as Ethereum (ETH -1.57%).
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Stacks is a highly leveraged bet on the future of Bitcoin. In theory, the better Bitcoin does, the better Stacks does. So it's perhaps no wonder that Stacks is soaring this year. Year to date, Stacks is up 304%, compared to 83% for Bitcoin. Stacks is also benefiting from all the hype and buzz around new Bitcoin non-fungible token (NFTs). With Stacks, users are able to mint Bitcoin NFTs using Stacks smart contracts.
Fantom
Finally, there's Fantom, which has had a completely unexpected resurgence this year. Fantom, once viewed as a potential Ethereum killer, fell on hard times in 2022, and it seemed it might not pull through. But one of the original founders of Fantom, Andre Cronje, returned to the blockchain at the very end of last year to much fanfare. The name might not be instantly recognizable, but Cronje is a legend in the crypto industry, and has even been compared to Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous figure who created Bitcoin.
In 2023, Fantom is becoming a player once again. Fantom is up 165% year to date and now ranks within the top 50 cryptos by market cap. The blockchain has a new roadmap focused around decentralized applications that developers can rally behind. The TVL metric for Fantom has been rising in 2023, and the blockchain has been making some key moves to become more attractive to developers and community members.
What's the best crypto under $1?
Of these three cryptos, my favorite by far is Cardano, which has been around since 2017 and has proven its worth as an Ethereum rival for more than six years. Cardano's staying power makes sense, given that its founder, Charles Hoskinson, is also one of the co-founders of Ethereum.
What's different now in 2023 is that Cardano is finally starting to show what's possible when you develop a world-class blockchain. Cardano is showing early signs of success in the DeFi niche. I really don't see how there is a better bargain in the entire crypto market. For less than $1, you can get access to a high-quality crypto project with some intriguing future growth prospects.
