While knowing where to put your money in the current bear market can be tricky, many consider a few projects the top cryptos to buy now. As the crypto market trends lower, it might seem counterintuitive to start growing your portfolio now. But, these downturns contain some amazing investment opportunities. This article will explore seven promising projects and explain why 2023 could be their best year yet.   

1. Metacade (MCADE) – The top crypto for 2023

Metacade is an exciting new project that aims to revolutionize the world of play-to-earn (P2E) gaming. It’s a community hub where gamers can connect with like-minded enthusiasts, explore the latest P2E titles, and have their say on the future of Web3 gaming. You’ll find everything you need on the platform to get ahead in P2E, like dedicated forums, live chats, reviews, leaderboards, and the hottest GameFi alpha shared by experienced players.

One of Metacade’s most significant ambitions is to attract the brightest minds in GameFi onto the platform to share their knowledge with others. That’s why it’s offering the MCADE token to anyone sharing reviews, tips, or other valuable content with the community. So whether you’re a seasoned pro or a P2E noob, you can earn by helping to make Metacade the ultimate place for learning about and earning more from GameFi. 

However, sharing content is just one of many ways you can earn through Metacade. There are frequent prize draws, tournaments, and opportunities to top up your P2E income by casually testing games using Metacade’s native testing environment. Moreover, Metacade’s job board, expected in 2024, will host dozens of openings posted by titans of the Web3 and gaming industries, giving users a chance to shape their careers while working on their passion.

In late 2023, Metacade will be giving away its first Metagrant, a funding tool that allows the community to choose which games to build. The process is simple: developers can submit their ideas to a pool of competing projects, and the one that pulls in the most votes receives funding from the Metacade treasury. Not only does this foster a sense of community engagement and ownership, but it creates a grassroots fanbase for developers and allows them the opportunity to receive life-changing financing that might’ve been previously unavailable to them.

Metacade’s goal is to become the world’s first player-owned virtual arcade. To achieve this vision, it has plans to become a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) once it’s fully developed. The DAO will allow Metacade users to propose and vote on changes made to the platform, implemented by leaders selected by the community. In addition, to ensure trust and integrity amongst the community, Metacade will require that all transactions made from the treasury need multiple signatures before being processed. 

With the GameFi industry expected to accelerate at a 100% annual growth rate by 2025 (Crypto.com), Metacade looks poised for an excellent 2023. Its community-first philosophy and plans to be a one-stop shop for everything P2E set it apart from the crowd, and thousands of investors agree that Metacade could be a top crypto for 2023. Metacade is still in phase 1 of its presale and has sold $1.25m worth of tokens since its launch! 

Part of this flood of investment is likely down to the fact that MCADE looks likely to outperform many top projects in the same period. With all these factors in mind, Metacade is the top crypto to buy right now. 

>>> You can participate in the Metacade pre-sale here 

2. Binance Coin (BNB) – Growing alongside the world’s biggest crypto exchange

Binance Coin is the native token of the Binance exchange, the world’s largest and most popular crypto exchange. It’s a multi-purpose utility token used to access exclusive features and benefits on Binance, like discounted trading fees, shopping on Binance Marketplace, and token sales through its Launchpad. 

Since its inception in 2017, BNB has consistently remained one of the top-performing cryptocurrencies. From its $0.50 low in November 2017 to its $691.80 top in May 2021, BNB appreciated almost 140,000%! However, in today’s bear market, BNB has a long way to go to reach its pre-2021 bull run price. 

The continued popularity of BNB is primarily due to the continued success and popularity of the Binance exchange. As the number of people using Binance grows, so does the demand for BNB. Moreover, as one of the most well-trusted and established players in the game (recently supported by Binance’s proof of reserves), Binance will likely continue to dominate. For that reason, BNB makes an excellent choice as one of the top cryptos to buy now.  

3. Ethereum (ETH) – Sharding to pave the way for 100,000 TPS

Ethereum is the world’s most popular smart contract platform, enabling the creation of thousands of decentralized apps (dApps), NFT projects, and crypto tokens. Sometimes referred to as “the queen of crypto,” Ethereum has used its first-mover advantage to dominate the smart contract space. And while many competitors have attempted to knock it from the top spot, they have yet to be able to garner the reputation of Ethereum. 

A recent article from Bankless Times offers some impressive stats about Ethereum. For example, around 24.4% of crypto owners hold ETH globally, while its average daily transaction volume is roughly $16 billion! Additionally, Ethereum awareness is at 19.49% globally, and 2.38% of the global population holds Ethereum.

While Ethereum has received criticism for high transaction fees, slow speeds, and wasteful energy consumption, its recent transition to proof-of-stake should solve these issues. One of the most significant upgrades to Ethereum, anticipated in late 2023, will be sharding. Sharding will enable the Ethereum network to scale significantly, boosting transaction speeds from around 15 transactions per second (TPS) to over 100,000 TPS. This move could vastly expand the use cases for Ethereum and could be the catalyst for a new wave of crypto adoption. That makes Ethereum the third choice for the top cryptos to buy now. 

4. Ripple (XRP) – SEC vs. Ripple end date in sight?

Ripple is a payment network and digital currency designed to enable fast and cheap international transactions, particularly for financial institutions. Instead of using the traditional SWIFT banking system, which is slow and costly, banks can use Ripple to realize near-instant payments that cost a fraction of a cent. 

This innovation is certainly revolutionary, but Ripple’s long-standing case with the SEC has overshadowed its progress. In late 2020, the SEC brought a lawsuit against Ripple Labs, the creators of Ripple, alleging that its sale of XRP constituted an unregistered securities offering. Since then, thousands of Ripple investors have joined the fight against the SEC. 

According to lawyer and Ripple supporter John Deaton, the case should reach a settlement in March, April, or May. With multiple mitigating factors for Ripple and a seemingly unconvincing case from the SEC, XRP will likely emerge victorious. Moreover, if the decision falls in Ripple’s favor, it’s expected that XRP will rocket overnight, making Ripple one of the top cryptos to buy for massive growth in 2023. 

5. Chainlink (LINK) – A vital project with almost no competition

Chainlink is a decentralized oracle network that aims to provide secure and reliable data to smart contracts. Oracles are third-party services that allow external data, like events, transactions, and APIs, to be accessed by smart contracts, vastly improving the use cases for blockchain technology. 

For example, Chainlink can enable financial services to access real-time price data, allowing complex financial products to become entirely automated. This access has been the case across multiple DeFi projects that require Chainlink to function, like MakerDAO, Aave, and Synthetix. Alternatively, Chainlink can access data generated by smart sensors and meters for use in smart contracts.

This service is vital for the mass adoption of crypto, yet Chainlink faces very little competition. Its closest competitor is BAND Protocol, a project with less than a tenth of the market cap of Chainlink (CoinGecko). Alongside many big-name partnerships with companies like Google, Amazon Web Services, and SWIFT, Chainlink’s status as the leading provider of decentralized oracles seems unshakeable. That’s why it’s the fifth top crypto to buy now. 

6. Polkadot (DOT) – Could DOT scale to 1 million TPS?

Polkadot is an Ethereum rival that aims to solve the interoperability issue across blockchain-enabled networks. Developers created Polkadot to be scalable, flexible, and able to facilitate communication between separate applications and blockchains, like Bitcoin and Ethereum. First, imagine the polka dot pattern; now, imagine connecting lines between all the dots. If each dot is an individual blockchain, then Polkadot is the one connecting the dots. 

Unlike other layer 1 solutions, Polkadot was built with decentralization, speed, and security in mind. While other blockchains might excel in one area or another, few have been unable to excel at all three, unlike Polkadot. Much of this success is down to Polkadot’s use of parachains, which effectively allow transactions to occur simultaneously rather than consecutively. 

In Q1 of 2023, Polkadot will launch parathreads, which will massively boost its scalability. Not only will block times be cut in half, from 12 seconds to 6 seconds, but transaction speeds should increase by 100 to 1,000 times. This increase in speed will take Polkadot from 1,000 TPS to upwards of 100,000 TPS and potentially even 1 million TPS, making the project a potent contender against Ethereum. These promising figures make DOT one of the top cryptos to buy now.  

7. Filecoin (FIL) – Powering the future of AI?

The last choice as one of the top cryptos for 2023 is Filecoin. Filecoin is a decentralized storage network that allows users to rent out unused hard drive space to earn FIL tokens. Initially, Filecoin was created as a solution to the centralized storage industry, which is fraught with price gouging, fraud, hacks, and censorship. However, Filecoin is effectively the opposite: the market sets prices, and the decentralized nature of its protocol means that unauthorized access and censorship are virtually impossible. 

With the need for data storage only forecast to increase in the coming years, Filecoin is the perfect solution. It costs a fraction to store data using Filecoin compared to providers like Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure and doesn’t require building more data centers. Above all else, Filecoin could soon dominate thanks to the rise of AI. 

AI requires massive amounts of data to function. According to OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, the cost of a single response from ChatGPT is “probably single-digits cents,” or between 10x to 100x the cost of a regular web search. This cost reflects the fact that computing power (and the number of servers) required to generate AI responses is enormous. Therefore, Filecoin could be used by companies like OpenAI to scale their products without facing exorbitant costs. 

With AI growing faster than previously thought, this necessity for cheap mass storage could come sooner rather than later, perhaps even by the end of 2023. As a result, Filecoin is likely to continue its reign over the decentralized storage market and is one of the top cryptos to buy now

Metacade (MCADE) is the top crypto to buy now 

How 2023 will fare for the world of cryptocurrency has yet to be determined. However, with the Federal Reserve expected to wind back interest rate hikes in 2023, it could spell the end of the crypto bear market. When that happens, the seven cryptocurrencies on this list will likely rocket, especially given the multiple catalysts mentioned. However, Metacade stands out as the top crypto for 2023. 

With the potential for explosive growth in the GameFi industry, multiple community-based features gamers are sure to love, and a proven track record of attracting investment, Metacade is set for success in 2023. So if you’re looking to get in on the ground floor with what could be a leader of P2E gaming, then stop looking. Instead, check out Metacade‘s presale and discover what you could be missing out on!

You can buy the coins mentioned in this article at eToro here.

You can participate in the Metacade pre-sale here.