While the cryptocurrency space is in the midst of a bear market, the ongoing pullback provides investors an opportunity to buy the dip. At the time of writing, the global cryptocurrency market is valued at US$1.7 trillion by market cap, significantly below its record valuation of US$3 trillion in November 2021.
Over the years, digital assets such as Bitcoin have always staged a rebound even after losing around 90% in market value. Currently, there are over 17,000 cryptocurrencies in circulation making it extremely difficult to identify long-term winners.
Keeping these factors in mind, letâs see why cryptocurrency investors need to add Solana (CRYPTO: SOL), Uniswap (CRYPTO: UNI), and Terra (CRYPTO: LUNA) to their portfolios right now.
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Solana
Also known as the Ethereum killer, Solana is currently the ninth-largest cryptocurrency in the world, valued at US$28.3 billion, by market cap. In addition to its low cost and high transaction speed, Solana is well poised to gain traction in the decentralized finance space.
Data from coinbase.com states the Solana blockchain can execute 50,000 transactions each second which is far higher than Ethereum, which can handle 15 transactions per second. The transactions, also known as smart contracts, are programs that are completed automatically once certain conditions are met. Investors are bullish on the increasing utility of Solanaâs blockchain as the network has already onboarded 500 decentralized applications on its platform.
Last month, Solana Labs, which is the developer of the blockchain, launched Solana Pay, a payments system that allows merchants to accept cryptocurrency payments from customers. We can see Solana aims to replace legacy payment facilitators that are expensive and slow.
Uniswap
Uniswap, launched in 2019, is the worldâs largest decentralized exchange. Valued at a market cap of US$6.3 billion, the UNI token surged over 300% in the last year. It has grown at an exponential rate given Uniswap is viewed as a core building block that facilitates peer-to-peer cryptocurrency transactions.
In the absence of decentralized exchanges such as Uniswap, investors would be dependent on platforms like Coinbase, Robinhood, or Wealthsimple that have a limited number of tokens available to trade.
The UNI is a governance token that enables owners of the asset to participate in network-related decisions. Further, the price of the UNI token is tied to the value investors can see with the decentralized exchange.
Uniswap allows investors and traders to swap over 30,000 different crypto assets. The users can then leverage gains from multiple obscure investments and also earn passive income based on liquidity pools available on Uniswap.
Terra
The final cryptocurrency on my list is Terra, which is the native token of the TerraUSD stablecoin project. There are inherent differences between Terra and TerraUSD. While TerraUSD is pegged to the price of the U.S. dollar, other stablecoins in the Terra ecosystem are pegged to other fiat currencies.
While the TerraUSD is relatively stable, investors can earn around 19.5% in annualized interests via a lending protocol launched by Terra. An attractive yield will increase demand for TerraUSD which will result in the burning of LUNA tokens from the community pool.
The total value locked on the Terra platform is US$23 billion, an increase of 84% in just the past month.
