From The Motley Fool Australia Crypto Team

The crypto space is unlike anything we've ever seen. Developments move at a lightning pace and projects rise from obscurity to huge valuations at a pace even Silicon Valley struggles to keep up with! 

Yet, while the media focuses on the most outrageous elements of cryptocurrencies…

(Last month, the media focused on the rise of a formerly obscure coin known as Shiba Inu. One trader reportedly managed to turn US$8,000 into US$5.7 billion during its furious run from August 2020 to October 2021!) 

This Wednesday, we're detailing what we believe is the bigger picture. 

One by one, we'll peel back the curtain on the most exciting opportunities in the crypto space and identify cryptos that have grown by 98X, 109X, even 243X in the past year alone! 

However, unlike the "meme" cryptos the media almost exclusively covers, on Wednesday, every crypto we'll discuss features breakthrough technology, surprising real-world use, and the potential to disrupt sometimes trillion-dollar industries! 

Best of all, Wednesday's presentation discloses for the first time ever what we believe comes next. 

We'll reveal what we're calling "The Next Bitcoin," an opportunity that could rise from obscurity to potentially become crypto's next major storyline in 2022! 

To prepare you for Wednesday's event, we've created a sneak preview of three cryptos that have experienced exciting growth across the past year. Most importantly, they display the breakthrough technology, major industries being disrupted, and real-world use cases happening in the crypto space. 

BUT REMEMBER: These cryptos are just a small preview of what you'll discover on Wednesday. 

So please, don't forget to set a text and calendar reminder so you're ready the moment this event goes live. This will be simply unlike anything The Motley Fool Australia has brought you before. 

And at the conclusion of Wednesday's "The Next Bitcoin" Summit, we're confident you'll understand why the opportunity we're revealing is so time-sensitive. 

Solana (CRYPTO:SOL) 

1-Year Return: 9,645% 

As of 22/Nov/2021.  Data sourced from Coingecko.com.

Bitcoin is far from perfect. The media obsesses about its potential climate impacts, and there are entirely fair reasons for that. Bitcoin simply uses a lot of energy. 

Not only that, but Bitcoin isn't built to process a huge number of transactions. It can handle about 4.6 transactions per second. That might sound like a lot, but the reality is it's a tiny fraction what payment networks like Visa can handle. 

Sounds bad, right? Well, the truth is that while Bitcoin pioneered blockchain technology, the space is always moving forward. And there's an opportunity for platforms that can solve for the limitations of leading cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum in novel ways. 

Enter: Solana. 

Solana is a blockchain created by a former of employee of telecom giant Qualcomm. Why is that notable? Well, Qualcomm has generated hundreds of billions by effectively being the first to solve the "puzzle" on how to make high-speed cellular data work. 

The Qualcomm engineer who created Solana applied similar techniques to Qualcomm's technology to build an entirely new kind of blockchain. 

Solana can process 10,000 times more transactions per second than Bitcoin. It's also significantly cheaper to use than Ethereum right now. This provides an opening for Solana to gain a level of critical mass on its platform. As you can see from its returns, investors have taken note across the past year! 

Uniswap  (CRYPTO:UNI)

1-Year Return: 429%

As of 22/Nov/2021.  Data sourced from Coingecko.com.

If you're buying a stock, odds are it's listed on the ASX. 

Stock exchanges have a history that dates back all the way to 1602 in Amsterdam; they're as old school as it gets. Yet, with crypto, we often see old school industries reinvented in surprising ways. 

Uniswap is an exchange that's fully decentralized. That is to say, when you're trading assets on Uniswap, it's peer-to-peer with the need for an intermediary (the middleman)! 

So, what's so attractive about Uniswap? To start with, it's extremely popular. Billions of dollars' worth of assets are traded on Uniswap every single day. That's important because of a concept known as the "network effect." 

Network effect is an economic concept where the first platform to get massive amounts of users in growth markets has an incredible advantage. That's because the more users are on a platform, the better they make it. Just think about Facebook's runaway success once it became the early leader in modern social networking. 

With decentralized exchanges being a potentially massive growth market that could still be in their first inning of development, you don't want to ignore this space. 

VeChain (CRYPTO:VET) 

1-Year Return: 715% 

As of 22/Nov/2021.  Data sourced from Coingecko.com.

When most people think about crypto and blockchain networks, they think about providing value to users by storing value or transferring money. VeChain is unique because it has one of the easiest to understand use cases among cryptocurrencies. 

This network provides an enterprise-level, robust supply chain solution for users. What that means is companies can track what they manufacture, where it is, and various attributes of the goods (temperature or odometer readings, etc.).

Big clients, mainly in China, have adopted VeChain for this purpose. Supply chains still involve all the usual technologies like RFID chips and QR codes, but integration with VeChain's blockchain allows for quick and seamless verification (and the data is stored forever).

So if your supply chain involves dozens of steps and you need more trust across it, VeChain is a compelling solution. VeChain's blockchain can be viewed as a massive ledger used by massive customers. Since data can't be changed, manipulated, or tampered with, customers have a more "trusted" solution than other technologies

Returns as of 11/22/2021

Motley Fool contributor Aaron Shaw owns shares of Solana. Motley Fool contributor Bernd Schmid owns shares of Solana. The Motley Fool Australia's parent company Motley Fool Holdings Inc. has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool Australia has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. This article contains general investment advice only (under AFSL 400691). Authorised by Bruce Jackson.