Ghost (CRYPTO: FTM) it’s under the radar right now, but probably not for long. Crypto had an incredible boom last year. The coin sold for $ 0.02 a year ago. Now the currency is priced at $ 3.
Fantom is hopping because it is a Layer 1 protocol with superfast speeds, such as Solarium (CRYPTO: SOL). In 2021, those two coins soared in value 14,000% and 11,000%, respectively. Fantom is much smaller with a market capitalization of $ 7 billion versus $ 43 billion for Solana. I think part of that discrepancy is because Solana, unlike Fantom, can be bought and sold in Coinbase (NASDAQ: CURRENCY), the largest crypto exchange. (You can buy the currency on another exchange, Gemini).
I hope the smaller coin will overtake Solana once again in 2022. Here’s why you might want to own the Fantom coin.
Image source: Getty Images
1. It could be the fastest blockchain out there
Last year, the cryptocurrency markets went crazy for Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) competitors. Ethereum is the main platform in the crypto universe. But interest in cryptocurrencies is skyrocketing and the Ethereum network creaks under the pressure. “Gas fees” (the cost of validating a transaction on the Ethereum blockchain) reached $ 300 at one point. By comparison, a transaction at Fantom or Solana costs a fraction of a penny.
Why are the fees so cheap? Speed. Solana averages 50,000 transactions per second, compared to 14 per second on Ethereum. Fantom is not as fast as Solana, but it is still way ahead of Ethereum; In a test conducted in 2018, its blockchain processed 25,000 transactions per second. But Fantom has a pretty solid claim to be the fastest blockchain if you look at the time to the end. This is possibly the most important statistic, since that is the moment when a transaction has been fully validated on the chain. Fantom’s completion time is roughly one second, compared to 13 seconds on Solana and over a minute on Ethereum.
Fantom is also shaking up the total number of transactions on the blockchain. A year ago, Fantom averaged 4,000 transactions a day. Now the network averages 750,000 a day. That is an amazing growth rate. Fantom already ranks fifth in the number of transactions, and has surpassed much larger coins such as avalanche (CRYPTO: AVAX).
Image source: CoinMarketCap.
2. It is compatible with Solana Y Ethereum
One of the challenges in the blockchain universe is compatibility. It can be difficult to move a virtual wallet from one blockchain to another. So in the blockchain universe, like Silicon Valley, many of these blockchain networks are friend foe. Everyone competes and wants to win. But they must also play well and work together.
Fantom, like most of Ethereum’s competitors, supports the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). This makes it easier for experienced Ethereum engineers to develop decentralized applications (dApps) for the Fantom blockchain. And it makes it easy for dApps on the Ethereum blockchain to migrate to the Fantom blockchain to save money.
Solana is kind of a maverick in the sense that she is not compatible with Ethereum. That puts your blockchain outside of the Ethereum universe. But the fascinating thing is that Fantom is also in the Solana ecosystem. That flexibility is a strength. Regardless of who comes out on top, Ethereum or Solana, Fantom should be fine because it supports both systems.
3. Major players are backing the coin
If you’ve made any investments in crypto, you’ve probably heard of Sam Bankman-Fried. He is number 58 on the Forbes 400 list with a net worth of $ 26 billion, making him the richest crypto mogul on the list.
Bankman-Fried Made Big Money Starting Crypto Trading Exchange FTX (CRYPTO: FTT). But he’s also a notable (and early) investor in Solana. Bankman-Fried once got into a Twitter Fight over the price of the coin. He and a Twitter user named CoinMamba debated the value of the Solana coin at $ 2, $ 2.05, and $ 2.38. Finally, on January 9, Bankman-Fried tweeted: “I’ll buy as much SOL you have, right now, for $ 3. Sell me all you want.” The tweet became famous when the coin soared to $ 149 at the end of the year.
Bankman-Fried is also one of Fantom’s main backers. His firm, Alameda Research, bought $ 35 million in Fantom coins in February. This happened at the same time that Fantom began integrating its blockchain with the Solana network.
While Bankman-Fried might be Fantom’s richest backer, probably the most important is Andre Cronje. He is the founder of Yearn for finances (CRYPTO: YFI) and he is one of the architects of the decentralized finance (DeFi) revolution. Cronje is a technical advisor to Fantom and helped develop its blockchain. You have already created a non-fungible token (NFT) market on Fantom which is a direct competitor to OpenSea, the largest NFT market. Cronje is also working on a secret project that will launch on the Fantom blockchain later this year.
Given its support from major industry players, its incredible speed and stratospheric growth rates, and its low valuation against other major currencies, Fantom’s crypto is likely to surge further in 2022. While it probably won’t repeat itself. 14,000% growth from last year, the upside potential here is still very high. I own this coin and am buying more.
This article represents the opinion of the author, who may disagree with the “official” recommendation position for a premium Motley Fool consulting service. We are variegated! Questioning an investment thesis, even one of our own, helps all of us think critically about investing and make decisions that help us be smarter, happier, and wealthier.