Many cryptocurrencies lost their luster during the past two years as rising interest rates drove investors toward more conservative investments. But the U.S. Federal Reserve cut its benchmark rate for the first time in four years in September, and it's widely expected to reduce those rates again in the near future.
That shift could make cryptocurrencies more appealing again. If you want to profit from that trend, you should consider buying these three phenomenal coins: Bitcoin (BTC 0.94%), Ethereum (ETH 0.05%), and XRP (XRP 1.25%).
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1. Bitcoin
Bitcoin, with a market cap of $1.3 trillion, is the world's most valuable cryptocurrency and 10th most valuable asset. It has a supply cap of 21 million coins, and 19.8 million of those have already been mined. Bitcoin still is mined with the energy-intensive proof of work (PoW) consensus mechanism, which requires powerful application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) miners. Scheduled "halvings" -- which occur every four years -- repeatedly reduce the rewards for mining in half.
CRYPTO: BTC
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Those qualities make Bitcoin more similar to a precious metal than other cryptocurrencies which are validated (but not mined) with the more power-efficient proof of stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. That's why Bitcoin is still the only cryptocurrency the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) officially recognizes as a commodity instead of a security. That classification supported the approvals of the first Bitcoin spot price exchange-traded funds (ETFs) this January. It's even been adopted as a recognized currency in El Salvador and Central African Republic.
Those tailwinds arguably make Bitcoin the safest cryptocurrency to invest in. It's already risen almost 150% to nearly $68,000 during the past 12 months, but it's still trading well below the market's most bullish expectations. Social Capital's Chamath Palihapitiya expects it to hit $500,000 in 2025, Fidelity's Jurrien Timmer forecasts a price of $1 million by 2028-2030, and Ark Invest's Cathie Wood says it could reach $3.8 million by 2030. We should take those optimistic estimates with a grain of salt, but Bitcoin could still have plenty of room to run as investors warm up to cryptocurrencies again.
2. Ethereum
Ethereum is the world's second most valuable cryptocurrency, with a market cap of $316 billion. About 120 million Ethereum tokens are currently in circulation, and it doesn't have a hard supply cap like Bitcoin. When the Ethereum blockchain transitioned from the PoW mechanism to the PoS mechanism during The Merge in 2022, that turned it from an inflationary token into a deflationary one.
But in 2024, Ethereum turned into an inflationary token again as its supply gradually increased. To keep its supply under control, Ethereum holders often burn (take out of circulation) their tokens by sending them to "burn portals."
CRYPTO: ETH
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Ethereum's transition to the PoS mechanism also enabled its investors to stake (lock up) their tokens for fixed periods to earn interest-like rewards. It also added support for smart contracts for the development of decentralized apps (dApps), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and other crypto assets. As a result, Ethereum became the bedrock for a new ecosystem of decentralized applications -- and that growth stabilized its price.
The SEC doesn't officially classify Ethereum as a commodity or security, but it cleared the first spot price Ethereum ETFs for approval in July. The crypto's price has risen nearly 70% to about $2,600 during the past 12 months, but it could soar even higher as the crypto winter ends and its developer ecosystem blooms. In an investor presentation last year, Cathie Wood asserted that Ethereum's market cap could reach $20 trillion -- which would equal a market price of more than $166,000 per token -- by 2032.
3. XRP
XRP is the native cryptocurrency of the Ripple payment network. It minted its entire supply of 100 billion tokens before its launch in 2013, and it locked up more than half of those tokens in escrow accounts across its blockchain. It periodically releases those tokens to stabilize its liquidity and supply. Ripple originally hoped that its financial clients -- which were using its blockchain as a cheaper and faster alternative to the traditional SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) protocol for money transfers -- would adopt XRP as an alternative to fiat currencies.
CRYPTO: XRP
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But that never happened, and the SEC eventually sued Ripple in 2020 and claimed its XRP token offerings were illegal sales of unregistered securities. That lawsuit finally ended earlier this year with a lighter-than-expected settlement. Grayscale subsequently relaunched its XRP Trust (which it had previously shut in 2021) as a closed-end fund (CEF) for accredited investors. That move might pave the way for futures-driven or spot price ETFs for XRP in the near future. To attract more developers of dApps and other crypto assets, Ripple plans to integrate Ethereum-compatible smart contracts into a new sidechain that's tethered to the XRP Ledger.
XRP's price has only risen about 10% over the past 12 months. It still trades at about $0.55, and it has a market cap of just $31 billion. But during the next 12 months, XRP's price could soar as investors pivot back toward the riskier altcoins again.
