2 Cryptocurrencies to Avoid, and 1 to Buy Hand Over Fist | The Motley Fool (2024)

The conventional wisdom is that most cryptocurrencies will tend to rise higher in a crypto bull market rally until they reach new all-time highs. While that might be the case for Bitcoin (BTC -1.60%), it's not necessarily true for other cryptocurrencies.

If you want to maximize the performance of your crypto portfolio, you'll need to know which cryptos to avoid and which ones to buy hand over fist. With that in mind, here are my top suggestions.

Cardano

While Cardano (ADA -4.93%) is still a top 10 crypto on the basis of its whopping $15.5 billion market cap, it continues to lose ground to other cryptocurrencies. At the end of May, for example, meme coin Shiba Inu briefly surpassed Cardano in terms of market cap. If there's any crypto that has an annoying habit of trading flat for months at a time, it's Cardano. Investors keep waiting for a huge Cardano breakout rally past the $1 mark, but nothing ever seems to materialize.

Unfortunately, the situation has not improved in 2024. Cardano is now down 27% for the year, and I'm struggling to find a potential near-term catalyst that might send this crypto higher. And trust me, I've tried. At first, I thought it might be decentralized finance (DeFi) and Cardano's embrace of smart contracts. And then I thought it might be artificial intelligence (AI), and Cardano's potential ability to attract high-profile AI crypto tokens to its blockchain.

But in both cases, I've been proven wrong, and now I won't touch Cardano with a 10-foot pole. Sorry, Cardano. It's not you, it's me.

Litecoin

Litecoin (LTC -3.23%) is another cryptocurrency that I'm actively avoiding these days. And that's really a shame, because Litecoin has a long track record that goes back almost as far as Bitcoin's. In fact, Litecoin was created with nearly the same source code as Bitcoin, and was designed by a former Google engineer to be a lighter, faster version of Bitcoin (hence the term "lite" in its name).

Unfortunately, it seems like every potential Litecoin catalyst in recent memory has been underwhelming. For example, Litecoin, just like Bitcoin, has a much-anticipated halving every four years. The halving cycles of these two cryptos are off by one year, and Litecoin actually had its halving last year.

And what have investors gotten since then? Nada. On the date of its third halving in August 2023, Litecoin was trading for $93. Today, nearly one year later, Litecoin is trading for just $80. It has actually lost value! I'm tired of waiting for Litecoin to show significant gains.

Bitcoin

And that leads us to Bitcoin. I can't think of a better long-term crypto investment that you can buy and hold forever. Over its lifetime, Bitcoin has been one of the best-performing assets in the world, and it hasn't even been close. During the period from the start of 2011 to March 2021, for example, Bitcoin delivered annualized returns of 230% per year. By way of comparison, tech stocks delivered annualized returns of 20% during that same time period. While Bitcoin had an admittedly disastrous year in 2022, it returned with a vengeance in 2023, shooting up by 150%. And it's now up 65% in 2024.

What makes Bitcoin truly fascinating from an investment perspective is that it also comes with some downside risk protection. Due to the historical lack of correlation between Bitcoin and other asset classes, it may be able to provide unique diversification benefits. In short, Bitcoin can zig when other assets zag. And that means you still might be able to squeeze positive returns out of your Bitcoin investment even when stocks are falling.

Add in the fact that the new spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have been performing spectacularly, and it's easy to see why I'm so bullish on Bitcoin. While past performance is no guarantee of future performance, and while Bitcoin is significantly more volatile than more traditional assets, it is proving to be a fantastic store of value over the long term.

While Bitcoin might not hit the $1 million price level that some ultra-bulls have suggested, the steady flow of ETF money is almost certain to send Bitcoin higher over the coming years. If there's one cryptocurrency that I'm buying hand over fist in 2024, it's Bitcoin.