Starting to Trade Crypto Online in 2024?

Unless you’ve been living in a hole for the last ten years, you’ve probably heard about cryptocurrency: a kind of digital money that exists on an electronic ledger called a blockchain. Even if you missed out on the story of crypto’s early years, you must have heard about the sudden insolvencies in the industry that eliminated big names like FTX, Three Arrows, and Terra in the latter part of 2022. Following these events, authorities have been struggling to establish a safe foundation upon which the sector can operate, and, in the process, some high-profile lawsuits have been filed.

Putting all the drama aside, the reason to expect this sector to live on into the future is that it really has the potential to improve our lives. For many people, the change has already happened, either because they find themselves able to transfer money across borders to relatives with greater efficiency, or because they have started to trade crypto online. For others, the interest lies in what crypto developers believe can be accomplished in the future. If we return to one of the basic draw points of crypto, almost all of us can appreciate its potential usefulness. Cryptocurrencies allow you to manage your money and send it, peer-to-peer, across continents without any need to use a bank. This is something that, theoretically, anybody in the world could do, irrespective of their nation of origin, class status, or loan eligibility.

Driven by this vision of a democratized financial future, crypto remains alive and kicking today despite its recent turbulent history. In this article, we’ll tell you a bit about three crypto tokens with exciting growth potential, and also say a word or two on the score of taking steps to trade crypto online.

Ripple

Ripple Labs’ XRP token caught a ride on the wave of the crypto recovery last year, clocking up 12-month gains, as of March 5th, 2024, as high as 70%. In terms of recent challenges, Ripple has been hindered by a legal battle with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on the issue of how XRP should be regulated. A court has even decided that Ripple Labs broke securities laws by selling XRP to institutions. Still, things may turn out well in the end for them and, if they do, this is likely to give Ripple a big push ahead. After all, Ripple do have something special to offer: a specialty in facilitating cross-border money transfers.

Ether

Ether is the native token of the Ethereum blockchain, which is famous for hosting decentralized apps (dApps) and smart contracts (“smart” because they execute themselves when relevant conditions are met). Ethereum certainly seem to have their eye on the future, having undergone the conversion, back in September 2022, from a Proof-of-Work validation mechanism to one that works by Proof-of-Stake, which consumes less energy. They’re due to make another upgrade in March 2024, and they’re also hoping for official approval of spot ether ETFs, which could draw more attention to the Ethereum ecosystem. “Given the relative difference in ether and bitcoin’s market cap”, explains David Wells of Enclave Markets, “investors likely see additional upside growth potential in ETH relative to Bitcoin”.

Solana

Just mentioning the word “Solana” gives Ethereum an attack of the jitters. Solana’s blockchain can handle more transactions per second than Ethereum, and it does it at a lower cost too. Solana is also an alternative option for those interested in dApps and smart contracts. Solana lost big in the crypto downturn following the FTX collapse, especially because of their intimate connections with that exchange. But SOL got back on its feet and gained a massive 300% last year. Many analysts continue to believe in the growth potential of Solana due to the power of its technology.

Starting to Trade Crypto

Before anything else, spend some time reading about crypto in general, and then about specific tokens and their use cases. Open an account with an online trading brokerage, but make sure it’s officially regulated and well-respected in the business. Before agreeing to sign up, you should find out what instruments (crypto or other) the broker platform will allow you to trade, since you may be interested in ones they don’t offer. Once you make a deposit in your trading account, trading on the online platform is fairly straightforward. You choose the token you want to open a deal on, as well as the deal size you want to opt for, and press “Deal”. After this, monitor your token’s prices until it’s time to close your deal, which is also done with the touch of a button.