The Best Cryptocurrency to Buy With $100 Right Now | The Motley Fool

Crypto investors have two basic choices right now: invest in high-priced cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin ( BTC 2.48%) and Ethereum ( ETH 2.73%), or drop all the way down to the bargain-priced cryptos trading for less than $2. But don't sleep on the midrange of the crypto market, where you can find a surprising number of attractive investment options. One of the best right now is Solana ( SOL 1.54%), which is trading at a 60% discount from its all-time high earlier this year. Solana should be a $300 cryptocurrency, but it's trading for about $125 right now. Explosive upside potential The first thing you need to know about Solana is that it has explosive upside potential. After launching in early 2020, Solana has turned in four years of absolutely blistering returns. The big year was 2021, when Solana skyrocketed by 11,171%. In 2023, Solana soared by 919%. CRYPTO: SOL Key Data Points Solana also is highly volatile. You can't count on it to churn out consistent returns year after year. In 2022, for example, Solana lost 94% of its value. This year, despite the pro-crypto euphoria that dominated the investment narrative, Solana is down 35%. It's now badly underperforming the market bellwether Bitcoin, which is down 6% in 2025. The next Ethereum? There's a good reason Solana has displayed such explosive upside potential in the past. Almost immediately after launching, it was tagged as a potential Ethereum killer. Both Solana and Ethereum are Layer 1 blockchain networks with smart contract functionality. That makes them key building blocks for everything that gets built in the blockchain and crypto business. There's one big difference, though: Solana is blazingly fast. Its blockchain puts the transaction processing speeds of Ethereum to shame. Solana recently demonstrated the ability to process 1 million transactions per second. By way of comparison, the core Ethereum blockchain was only able to process 15 to 30 transactions per second until a recent tech upgrade in early December. Image source: Getty Images. So you can understand why high-profile crypto investors, including Cathie Wood of Ark Invest, have talked up the disruptive potential of Solana. That potential is particularly impressive within the area of decentralized finance (DeFi), where speed is everything. Not surprisingly, crypto traders are increasingly migrating to Solana from Ethereum for the higher speeds and lower costs. According to a recent research report from 21Shares, Solana is much further along at this point of its development than Ethereum was during its early years. During the most recent 12-month period, the Solana blockchain ecosystem generated nearly $3 billion in revenue. While much of that revenue is a result of increased crypto trading activity, it is also coming from a surprising number of diversified sources, including artificial intelligence (AI). The new Solana ETFs What makes Solana particularly attractive right now is the recent launch of new spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that do nothing except invest in Solana. They give investors exposure to the spot price of Solana, without all the risk...

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