The world's first cryptocurrency––bitcoin––has been around for more than a decade. In 2015, Ethereum entered the blockchain innovation scene as the first smart contract platform. Over the years, both cryptocurrencies have gained widespread recognition and support. The main reasons were its novel premise for true decentralisation and corruption-proof technology—contributing to the rise of individual financial sovereignty unattainable before. Exhilarating adoption is also true for the trading community. The annual trading volume of Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) consistently rise.

It's now not only a list of significant commercial companies (like Twitter, Tesla, Etsy, Microsoft, or Paypal) that adopt cryptocurrencies. Entire countries—for example, El Salvador in 2021—are switching to crypto, declaring bitcoin their legal tender alongside the centralised national currency. Some governments do it sooner, while others will postpone this decision as long as possible. But that's a topic for another occasion.

The entire blockchain industry is built and developed around bitcoin and Ethereum. So, these two cryptocurrency monoliths would never leave the sphere anytime soon. But there are new blockchain projects launched every year that solve issues inaccessible to the big players. Much smaller by market capitalisation, these cryptocurrencies are still in their infancy and have great potential for further growth and market share expansion. Investing in them and trading them can prove decisive while steering the often confusing Foreign Exchange waters.

Lately, the international Forex broker OctaFX has upgraded its trading pool by adding 25 new promising cryptocurrencies. Let's take a look at a few of them.

Cardano (ADA)
A direct Ethereum competitor among smart-contract platforms. Its founder participated in developing the Ethereum network and, since 2015, founded Cardano as a separate entity. Since 2019, its cryptocurrency ADA has put on an incredible expansion. Its ecosystem is considered one of the most decentralised—having an exceptionally high and rare level of self-initiative among its global community. Most of them do not simply hold Cardano's native cryptocurrency but have found pools with liquidity and the ecosystem, in turn, grows stronger every week.

Solana (SOL)
Another 'Ethereum killer', as some like to claim in the crypto community. In fact, it doesn't so much kill it as challenge some of ETH's dominant market share. Like Cardano, Solana solves scalability and transaction fees problems that have caused much pain for Ethereum users. Last year has provided Solana with one of the biggest success stories of growth and community building.

Binance Coin (BTB)
This is the native token of the largest centralised crypto exchange on the market—Binance. They have also launched their own blockchain to compete with Ethereum's financial and computing ecosystem with an upwards trend. Binance is one huge success story with just one undeveloped aspect—decentralisation. But beyond that, the company has done a great job of providing an exquisite and reliable user experience. Transaction costs compared to Ethereum and most other competitors are virtually nonexistent.

Matic (MATIC/POLYGON)
Matic is a so-called 'second-layer solution' for Ethereum. That means it's set out to solve a specific problem: Ethereum's severe scalability restrictions 'on-chain'. There have been others, but Matic did a great job back in 2019–2020, bringing together powerful partnerships, building collaborations, and assembling a loyal and committed community ahead of time, resulting in rapid growth in adoption and market capitalisation in the first quarter of 2021.

Zcash (ZEC)
With an uncertain future for classical fiat currencies and monetary policies worldwide becoming more obscure and unpredictable, privacy coins are in constantly high demand. It was one of the most powerful promises of bitcoin itself, back in 2009—financial privacy in a digital age. Since then, much has changed. Bitcoin proved to be less private and untraceable than some expected it to be. After 2014, coins like Monero, Dash, and Zcash entered the playground. Zcash has great bitcoin-based technology and a magnificent team that stands for what it believes in.

Decentraland (MANA)
Decentraland is an Ethereum-based platform that builds a 'virtual reality'. Here you can buy digital land, engage in it, manoeuvre it with other users, and benefit from all processes. Thus, MANA could be one of the key players in the much-talked-about 'metaverse rush', which could prove lucrative in the long run.