By
Cloudbet

If you’re looking to buy cryptocurrencies, one of the immediate challenges that you are going to face is the massive range of choice. There are at least 5,000 different crypto coins in the world right now if you simply take the ones that are transacted on major exchanges. In reality, there could be at least twice that number in circulation right now, and by the time you’ve finished reading this article, there could easily be a few more. Cryptocurrencies are decentralised assets, so they can be set up and traded with little publicity.

So when you are deciding to buy a cryptocurrency, the first and most important question is “Which one?”. That is a question which, as we will see, doesn’t have just one answer. It could have a specific answer for you, and if someone else asked the same question they could end up with a different answer. There are different crypto coins which have different benefits and will appeal to different people. And by now, you might be beginning to understand why this is a tough question to answer. However, here are a few possible answers…

Bitcoin

It’s almost impossible to talk about cryptocurrency without talking about Bitcoin. It was the first cryptocurrency. It has the largest market capitalisation, meaning that on a valuation basis there is more Bitcoin in the world than any other coin. In fact, the amount of Bitcoin in the world is worth more than all other cryptos combined. It is also the most widely used and accepted. If your aim is to own some cryptocurrency, you should begin with Bitcoin, simply because that broadens your horizons in terms of where you can take your investment and what you can do with it. Does any of this mean it is the best crypto? No, but it is probably the one you should buy first.

ETH

While Bitcoin is the big fish in the crypto pond, there are many people who argue that it will be outstripped in terms of use by Ether before too long. Ethereum as a blockchain has a lot going for it - it’s a lot cleaner to mine than Bitcoin, and the ETH blockchain is also used widely for smart contracts. You can also “stake” Ether, using it to enable the validation of other ETH tokens, and in so doing you will gain more Ether. When betting at Cloudbet, you can use both Ethereum itself and staked Ethereum, and its faster transaction speeds mean many people prefer it to Bitcoin for the purposes of betting among other uses.

Litecoin

Litecoin is a crypto with some Bitcoin-like characteristics, having been founded in a fork of the Bitcoin blockchain. In writing its source code, its creators made it a great deal faster than Bitcoin, which makes it a popular altcoin. The original altcoin, in a sense. The aim of Litecoin’s handlers is for it to become a global currency traded peer-to-peer, and it has some potential in that regard. It has exceptionally high liquidity - if you want to buy or sell it, you should always be able to find someone to make up the other end of that transaction - but at the same time, if you want to hold it, its large market capitalisation does make it a much more stable option than smaller coins.

Anything else that fits your purposes

As we’ve said, there are different reasons to want to invest in cryptocurrencies, and that means that there are different answers to the question of which is the best one for you to buy. The three above are the most stable, sensible choices with use cases of their own, but in truth the more you get involved in crypto, the more you’re going to want to explore the benefits of other coins including Doge, Solana and Tether. The best advice of all is to start with Bitcoin and see where the journey takes you from there.

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