It's been a difficult year for risk assets like cryptos and high growth tech shares, impacted by geopolitical uncertainty and fast rising inflation figures.
Yet despite a tough slog, especially during the first 6 weeks of 2022, nine of the top 100 cryptos by market cap are showing gains of more than 10% so far this year.
And no, Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) and Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) don't make the cut.
The Bitcoin price is down 9% year to date, and the Ethereum price is down 14%.
So, what are the 3 best cryptos to have bought on 1 January and held through to today, and maybe longer?
We're glad you asked.
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The third best crypto to own in 2022 to date
The third best performing crypto of the calendar year is UNUS SED LEO (CRYPTO: LEO).
Up 0.5% over the past 24 hours to US$5.86, LEO is up an impressive 53% since 1 January. At the current price, it has a market cap of US$5.6 billion, making it the 29th biggest token in virtual existence.
LEO was launched in May 2019. According to CoinMarketCap, it serves as "a utility token that's used across the iFinex ecosystem… The cryptocurrency allows Bitfinex users to save money on trading fees. The extent of the discount depends on how much LEO that the customer has in their account."
LEO hit an all-time high of US$8.04 on 8 February. The token is down 27% from those highs.
2022's second best altcoin
Moving on to number two we have Zilliqa (CYPTO: ZIL).
Zilliqa is up 3% since this time yesterday to just over 13 cents. That puts 2022's second best performing crypto up 76% for the calendar year. At the current price, Zilliqa has a market cap of US$1.7 billion, putting it at number 69 on the list of top cryptos.
So, what does Zilliqa do?
According to CoinMarketCap:
Zilliqa is a public, permissionless blockchain that is designed to offer high throughput with the ability to complete thousands of transactions per second. It seeks to solve the issue of blockchain scalability and speed by employing sharding as a second-layer scaling solution.
Zilliqa reached a record high of 26 cents on 6 May last year. The token is down 51% since that high watermark.
Which brings us to…
The best crypto to own in 2022 has doubled in value
The best crypto to have held in your virtual wallet this year is Waves (CRTPTO: WAVES).
Waves has gained 5% since this time yesterday and is currently trading for US$30.31. With that price gain factored in, Waves has doubled in value since 1 January, up just over 100%.
At today's price, Waves has a market cap of US$3.3 billion, making it the 44th biggest crypto out there.
Waves was launched in 2016. And like the other top cryptos above, it's also one with high real-world functionality.
According to CoinMarketCap, "Waves is a multi-purpose blockchain platform which supports various use cases including decentralized applications (DApps) and smart contracts."
Waves hit an all time high of US$62.26 just last week on 31 March.
In a sign of the wild volatility that still goes hand in hand with cryptos, Waves is down 53% since then.
