As Bitcoin crashed from $69k to $33k, many proclaimed a new bear market. This may or may not be true, but even in bear markets there are outperforming assets that keep rallying. We’ve collected several intriguing altcoins that could outperform the rest in the coming months thanks to their ambitious roadmaps and strong teams.
MetisDAO (METIS)
MetisDAO is a Layer 2 Ethereum scaling solution – part of the same constellation as the more famous Arbitrum and Optimism. However, unlike the latter two, Metis has its own token, which rallied from $5 in August 2021 to almost $300 in January 2022 – then corrected to $120 together with the market.
Layer 2 solutions aim to solve Ethereum’s key problems: high fees, low speed, and limited scalability. On sidechains like Metis and Arbitrum, users still transact with ETH and ERC-20 assets, and the system is still decentralized and secure – but the whole process is far faster and cheaper. Layers 2 are particularly attractive for dApps and users that have to execute resource-intensive tasks, such as NFT minting, DAO votes, etc.
Metis’ rise to stardom began in November after it launched its Andromeda mainnet. However, the mainnet is just the beginning: the roadmap for the first half of 2022 includes a decentralized storage feature, a Ranger verification system, and an NFT bridge.
Layer 2 solutions will remain a hot narrative in crypto at least as long as Ethereum’s much-anticipated Eth 2.0 upgrade isn’t complete – and that is unlikely to happen in 2022. As more and more users discover that they can transfer ETH or ERC-20 for less than $1 rather than $30, they will flock to Metis and its peers.
The move to the Layer 2 infrastructure will continue regardless of the market conditions, meaning that 2022 can turn out to be very exciting for MetisDAO.
CoinsPaid (CPD)
CoinsPaid is one of the industry’s largest crypto payment providers, serving over 800 merchants with over 6 million end-users. Next time you use USDT, BTC, or DOGE to buy a product or service online, know that the CoinsPaid gateway could very well be processing the payment: in fact, by the end of 2021, the company was handling almost 7% of all on-chain Bitcoin transactions. The total volume processed by CoinsPaid in 2021 exceeded $6 billion.
CoinsPaid launched a token and a suite of DeFi tools to bridge the gap between online businesses and DeFi so that merchants’ accumulated crypto revenue can be used more efficiently. While the rest of the crypto community makes money with DeFi, traditional entrepreneurs feel a lack of opportunities to use tools like liquidity mining or staking – and miss out on a lot of gains.
The first utility feature introduced by CoinsPaid was CPD staking: merchants that keep CPD in their balance and use it to pay the processing fees get discounts of up to 40%. The company also has two active yield farming programs on Ethereum and BSC. The next steps are a user-friendly DeFi dashboard for merchants and a cross-chain asset management tool.
What’s interesting about CoinsPaid’s DeFi project is that its success doesn’t depend much on the BTC price: rather, what matters is the global crypto payment volume.
The number of merchants that begin to accept cryptocurrency keeps growing every year: for example, CoinsPaid itself tripled its client portfolio in 2021. The number of transactions processed by the company increased by 175% relative to 2020, and the total volume by an astonishing 354%. A significant percentage of the merchants working with CoinsPaid be willing to stake CPD to get discounts, regardless of the market conditions. This means the token can keep getting stronger even during bearish times.
KuCoin (KCS)
KuCoin is now no.5 on CoinMarketCap’s list of the largest exchanges by volume, ahead of such giants as Huobi and Bitfinex. There are three reasons why KuCoin’s market share keeps increasing:
1) Tightening regulations. As Binance blocked futures trading for users in the EU and some other regions in 2021, a lot of traders switched to KuCoin as a more democratic platform.
2) Low-cap gems. KuCoin lists promising altcoins long before they appear on Binance or FTX. Some of these ‘gems’ can go on to make 10x or even 100x – though they can also drop by 50% in a day. ‘Gem hunting’ on KuCoin has become a favorite pastime for many traders.
3) Spotlight. This is KuCoin’s native launchpad, with a couple of new IDOs every month. The entry barrier to participate in token offerings on Spotlight is lower than on many other launchpads, and it’s easy to sell the tokens on the exchange afterward.
The success of Spotlight is perhaps the major reason why the price of KCS has gone up so fast and remained strong in the middle of the correction. Most of the IDOs are open only to those who hold at least 100 KCS, and even that will give you only a few dollars worth of tokens. Thus, users tend to accumulate KCS on every dip.
Even if a bear market begins, there will still be trading and IDOs – and people will be more eager than ever to find ‘gems’ to prop up their shrinking portfolios. And more exchanges introduce restrictions on users from various regions, KuCoin’s user base will probably keep rising.
Markets move in cycles, and a major correction is to be expected after the impressive bull run we witnessed in 2021. A bear market will eventually come, too; but those who can identify the most promising tokens early on will survive and thrive even under the most difficult conditions.
