The always-speculative cryptocurrency market is currently enjoying a resurgence of interest, as banking instability raises questions about our broader financial systems. Concerns about the safety of traditional methods of transacting have raised overall demand for non-traditional alternatives. Thus, now may be the time to look at some top speculative cryptos.

Speculative investing is again in vogue, with market capitalization of the overall crypto market rising quickly. As many investors know, speculative moves can produce quick returns, enticing investors looking for near-term trades in this environment.

Let’s be honest, Bitcoin (BTC-USD) remains highly speculative at this point. It routinely produces day-to-day 10% gains. So, investors seeking real risk wouldn’t do poorly by simply trying to guess its day-to-day movement to capture quick gains. Those with an even greater risk appetite should consider the cryptos below.

Zilliqa (ZIL-USD)

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Zilliqa (CCC:ZIL-USD) is one of many smaller cryptocurrencies that doesn’t receive a lot of attention. However, its speculative, high-risk nature is evident based on the sharp price swings it produces in short periods of time.

The main draw of Zilliqa is that it is solving the scalability problem in crypto, a major pain point for crypto in general. Scalability simply means the ability to handle large amounts of data over a short period of time. Clearly, any network, blockchain-based or not, will benefit from high throughput.

Zilliqa seeks to enhance scalability through sharding. Sharding is simply the distribution – or partitioning – of a database across multiple computers to better handle a given workload. In theory, the greater the number of computers handling a given quantity of data, the faster that data can transact.

Gauging the future success of any crypto project is nearly impossible. Zilliqa aims to rival payments giants Visa (NYSE:V) and Mastercard (NYSE:MA). If this project can make significant progress toward those aspirations, it’ll drastically increase in price. For now, ZIL simply produces volatile swings that risk-loving traders can take advantage of.

The Graph (GRT-USD)

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In many ways, The Graph (CCC:GRT-USD) is a prime speculative crypto for the current market. The project marries AI and crypto to query blockchain networks. The goal of doing so is to index that data, making as many blockchains as possible searchable. In other words, The Graph is attempting to create a massive indexed repository of blockchain data that is searchable. It’s analogous to what Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) did for internet search.

So, if you’ve ever imagined silently or aloud ‘what is the Google of blockchain?’, The Graph is one possible answer. The Graph allows anyone to publish blockchains through APIs (Application Program Interfaces) that it calls subgraphs.

Anyone can also query these subgraphs using GraphQL to retrieve data from those blockchains. Ultimately, The Graph is another project attempting to bring together massive amounts of blockchain data for the purpose of decentralization. Its utility is clear, but it also remains difficult to see why it should multiply in price immediately. That said, The Graph has already tripled in price in 2023. This is a token that’s garnering attention now, so that may be enough to drive prices higher in a short period of time.

Baby Shiba Inu (BABYSHIBAINU-USD)

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Baby Shiba Inu (CCC:BABYSHIBAINU-USD) is, for better or worse, one of many highly-speculative cryptos based on other also speculative cryptos. Baby Shiba Inu is a play on Shiba Inu (CCC:SHIB-USD) which exploded two years ago, producing massive gains for investors (or, more aptly, speculators). Shiba Inu was created as a competitor to Dogecoin (CCC:DOGE-USD), the original shiba inu dog breed crypto.

Frankly speaking, all of these projects are jokes. Dogecoin’s founders are on record stating as much about their creation. But their utility, or lack thereof, isn’t really important. These projects rely on some sort of strange zeitgeist that circulates across the crypto space periodically.

Because these meme tokens have so many zeros after the decimal in their price, they can produce exponential gains. That is what happened with Shiba Inu in 2021. As a result, SHIB created overnight millionaires. Baby Shiba Inu currently has 8 zeros following the decimal point in its price. It can therefore produce massive gains on little else than the strange forces present in the cryptocurrency market.

On the date of publication, Alex Sirois did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines.