Recent weeks haven’t been particularly kind to cryptocurrency prices. Coins and tokens that saw huge price swings months ago are slowly sinking, some already back to where they were in October. This is undoubtedly nerve-wracking to some investors, but tough times don’t last forever. There are certainly cryptos to buy in this moment in anticipation of a turnaround.

Selloffs have been plaguing the market, led by none other than Bitcoin (CCC:BTC-USD). Profit taking by Bitcoin holders has prefaced a loss of nearly $20,000 off of the coin’s price over the last three months. The downward momentum is, as usual, pushing down the rest of the market. As the crypto with nearly half of the industry’s total market share, this influence is inescapable for altcoins.

The downturn is by no means any indication the Bitcoin is becoming less desirable, not at all. In fact, trading volume continues to trend upward, with new holders looking to get in while the price is low and existing holders expanding their portfolio at a discount. Obviously, the broader market expects the value of cryptos to break out once again. So, what are the cryptos to buy to best benefit from what is perceived to be an inevitable turnaround? Consider these options:

• Flux (CCC:FLUX-USD)
• Polygon (CCC:MATIC-USD)
• Decentraland (CCC:MANA-USD)
• Shiba Inu (CCC:SHIB-USD)
• Ethereum (CCC:ETH-USD)
• Terra (CCC:LUNA-USD)
• XRP (CCC:XRP-USD)

Cryptos to Buy: Flux (FLUX-USD)

Flux is one of the smallest projects listed here, but it won’t be for long. The crypto is a savvy play on Web 3.0 development, and it is one of the coins that is primed for a breakout over the course of the year not only due to speculative hype, but to a product offering that strengthens its fundamental value. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that it’s rapidly growing a fan base over social media that wants to see investors far and wide exposed to the network.

The Flux network seeks to offer users an alternative to the web service suites offered by tech giants like Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG, NASDAQ:GOOGL). The blockchain network offers decentralized web services, which operate using the dedicated FluxOS operating system. Using FluxOS, any individual, organization or company can launch their own applications, host servers and maintain oracles.

The network also promises to offer the highest-performing speeds to its users, regardless of location or time of day. It does this using FluxNodes — user-operated nodes which connect other users with services. Nodes are tapped by the protocol based on geographic proximity; with FluxNodes in operation all over the globe, this ensures the promised high speeds.

There are several other perks to using Flux as well, including a native wallet called Zelcore and the ability to mine for FLUX on other blockchains via parallel mining. It shows great promise as a Web 3.0 crypto, taking many of the services offered by Amazon Web Services and moving them to the blockchain. As Web 3.0 continues to build steam through 2022, expect to see more of Flux.

Polygon (MATIC-USD)

Scalability issues aren’t going anywhere. Investors shouldn’t forget that, just because crypto prices are down, blockchain users don’t stop using blockchain networks. Transactions are to be processed, cryptos are to be mined, DApps are to be developed and wallets are to be used. And as such, there remains a constant need for making things more efficient. Polygon is still one of the top plays for this need, making MATIC one of the best cryptos to buy during this corrective phase.

As far as layer-2 scaling networks go, Polygon is considered the cream of the crop. It has a track record of constantly building on its product offerings and not only allowing users faster transactions, but also the choice of different scaling solutions.

As of right now, the network offers six different solutions for scaling from the Ethereum network. The most recent of these, Polygon Zero, has been especially making waves around the crypto industry. Back in December, the network hosted the zk Summit, a global event focusing on zero knowledge proofing technology. The zk tech allows users to preserve the privacy of their transactions, while also allowing nodes to use less computing energy in validating data. It’s rapidly becoming one of the most popular scaling methods, and the summit is where Polygon announced its acquisition of zk scaling outfit Mir Protocol. The company then rebranded Mir into its own dedicated Polygon team.

While Polygon continues to press onward, investors can expect it to continue adding new technologies to its portfolio. And with the need for scaling unlikely to wane over the next couple of years, Polygon is an intuitive play.

Cryptos to Buy: Decentraland (MANA-USD)

Crypto prices are struggling, but interest is not ebbing from the metaverse. The topic of the metaverse remains white hot, thanks in large part to tech giants’ continued push toward a social media world more deeply entrenched in virtual reality (VR). So, the current state of the market could make right now a prime time to buy into Decentraland’s MANA token.

MANA is by far the largest metaverse-centric cryptocurrency; it boasts a market capitalization of $5.2 billion and Decentraland sees a monthly user base which exceeds 300,000. It’s also much older than many metaverses, both centralized and decentralized. Launched in 2017, it predates the Horizon Worlds metaverse space of Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:FB).

Decentraland’s strength comes from the sheer number of experiences it offers to users. Of course, it has games, shopping areas and spaces to hang out and socialize with new people. Yet, it takes things a step further by securing new partnerships and metaverse firsts.

In October, Decentraland became a topic of discussion after its Metaverse Festival, the first-ever metaverse music festival experience. Headlined by electronic dance music producer Deadmau5, the festival showed the viability of taking real-world experiences and digitizing them for the masses. Before that, it was already becoming a household name, thanks in large part to auction house Sotheby’s opening a gallery space on the platform. And it is not slowing down on new partnerships; right now, the platform is hosting an immersive experience with the storied Australian Open tennis tournament.

Shiba Inu (SHIB-USD)

Shiba Inu continues to draw the inspiration of some investors, and the ire of others. But regardless of how you feel about the pupcoin, it’s undeniable that developers have been working hard to add notable new features to the SHIB ecosystem. These planned rollouts are what make SHIB one of the best cryptos to buy in the midst of the bear market.

SHIB has gotten along just fine throughout the past year on sentiment alone. Indeed, anybody who’s heard of Shiba Inu has likely done so through one of the many thousands of Shiba Inu bulls on Twitter who pump the token. It’s this sentiment that has allowed it to become one of the most successful pupcoins in the world, even briefly overtaking Dogecoin (CCC:DOGE-USD) in market cap.

However, things can’t and won’t stay like this forever. As bulls tire out, the token shows its ability to easily dip back down. In order to get away from this dangerous reliance on speculation, developers are taking matters into their own hands. They are doing so through a couple of projects which stand to greatly benefit the SHIB ecosystem.

The first of these projects is the layer-2 network dubbed Shibarium. Shibarium promises to vastly expand the capabilities of SHIB, migrating the project entirely to its own dedicated blockchain network. The Shibarium launch will be accompanied by a native stablecoin, which will supplement the project’s existing decentralized exchange, ShibaSwap.

Shibarium will also be the headquarters of another major project called the Oshiverse. The Oshiverse is a metaverse which SHIB is developing alongside Australian game studio Playside Studios and former Activision Blizzard (NASDAQ:ATVI) developer William Volk. Given a smooth rollout for these ambitious plans, 2022 could shape up to be a huge one for SHIB.

Cryptos to Buy: Ethereum (ETH-USD)

Ethereum is always a crypto to buy, regardless of market conditions. It’s the most highly used layer-1 blockchain network in the world, and it’s not even close. It hosts thousands of DApps on its platform. And, its massive market cap of $385 billion is surpassed only by Bitcoin.

But, while ETH is a savvy investment almost all of the time, the current moment makes it an even better investment than usual. Of course, there’s the prospect of rebound gains; buying the dip right now is almost assuredly going to translate to gains in the coming months. However, there’s an even better reason to buy ETH sooner rather than later, and it’s coming midway through 2022.

The Ethereum Merge will be the largest upgrade the network has ever seen. It’s one of the most hotly anticipated overhauls. The network will change from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake, in addition to implementing sharding. This pair of changes will be huge for Ethereum users, significantly dropping gas fees and vastly upping scalability.

The network has been prepping for the Merge for a while now. The Beacon Chain launched in December 2020; it runs parallel to the Ethereum main network chain and contains all of the incoming updates. After a slew of other updates and prep work through the fall of 2021, developers say June 2022 will be when the chains are finally combined to create the Ethereum 2.0 network. As the largest upgrade ever for the network, there are obviously huge expectations for its success. A bet on the success of this long-prepped upgrade could prove quite lucrative.

Terra (LUNA-USD)

Stablecoins are a technology that are currently being overlooked by the broader crypto investing crowd right now. Of course, their values are pegged at $1 USD. This means their values aren’t suffering at the hands of this market correction. But, as the bearish moment cools off, interest is going to flood back into stablecoins. Their uses in DeFi are plentiful, and they will remain a staple of the investing space. Terra is a crypto that’s heavily linked to stablecoin trading. This means it could be a crypto set to gain after the bear market.

Terra is linked closely to stablecoins in that it fuels one of the largest available stablecoins on the market, TerraUSD (CCC:UST-USD). Where some stablecoins keep reserves to back the coin’s value and keep it pegged to a dollar, UST uses Terra. Terra and UST can be converted back and forth, making the circulating supply of both quite liquid.

When the UST value dips below one dollar, UST holders can convert UST to LUNA. This reduces the UST supply and ups the value back to a dollar. Likewise, when UST values are over $1, LUNA holders can convert their LUNA to UST, adding more UST to the supply and bringing that value back down.

This model makes the LUNA crypto a great option for arbitrage traders, and it is proving quite lucrative for early adopters. In January of last year, the coin was trading for just over 80 cents. As it stands today, LUNA is swapping hands at $84 dollars apiece. And the growth has served to greatly strengthen UST as a stablecoin, pushing its market cap from just over $220 million to nearly $11 billion.

Cryptos to Buy: XRP (XRP-USD)

Ripple’s woes have gone on for an awfully long time. The company is still in the midst of a heated lawsuit with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). But these legal troubles look like just a speed bump for XRP prices. The coin has proven its ability to keep its head above water throughout the last 14 months. Now, as it concentrates its energy on the lawsuit finish line, it can be primed for a boom.

International wire transfers aren’t going anywhere. People send money across international borders every day. Ripple became the massive network it is today because of this fact. Using Ripple and XRP, users can circumvent the massive fees associated with sending money abroad.

Early 2018 saw Ripple’s services catch on massively, and pushed XRP prices to an all-time high north of $3. Yet, its success has also drawn the ire of the U.S. government. A 2020 lawsuit by the SEC targeting Ripple has dragged these values back down to Earth, but XRP isn’t dead.

Although the XRP coin was able to gain through 2021, one is left to wonder how much more it would have gained had it not been fighting this legal battle. However with Ripple looking like it’s boxing the SEC into a corner, the suit might finally see an end in 2022, allowing XRP more room to grow.