Overview

2021 is an excellent year so far for the crypto industry. With more than 11,000 different cryptocurrencies, the industry’s market size has grown to $1.6 billion in 2021 and is expected to reach $2.2 billion by 2026, at a CAGR of 7.1%. 

In many ways, the first half of 2021 has been a “breakthrough.”There’s tremendous focus and attention being paid to [the crypto industry].

Dave Abner, head of global development at Gemini | Time

While mainstream interest circled around digital currencies, the developments in the other areas of the crypto landscape as Web3, synthetics, NFTs, infrastructure, and regulations, have further strengthened the industry and contributed to its continued growth and expansion.

Cryptocurrency projects have had a phenomenal three quarters of 2021, with several breaking all prior highs. While Bitcoin may still be the center of attention, hundreds of other excellent crypto initiatives are sprouting up worldwide.

We have gathered a list of 26 crypto projects that are worth watching right now. Selected in no particular order, here are some brands you should keep an eye on.

Name Picks

NOW Token (NOW)

ChangeNOW introduced NOW Token as a hybrid-network utility token. Being an ERC-20 and a Binance Chain BEP-2 standard token NOW is more versatile than most exchange issued-tokens. ChangeNOW is a web platform created for simple exchanges of more than 200 cryptocurrencies. The project operates on the ChangeNow platform ChangeNow.io.

Filecoin (FIL)

Filecoin is an open-source, public cryptocurrency and digital payment system that launched in October 2020 with its $200 million ICO. The project aims to provide a decentralized file storage platform with mining incentives. Filecoin was founded by the American computer scientist Juan Benet, CEO of Protocol Labs and creator of the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS).  Filecoin has secured both the Filecoin.com and the Filecoin.io domain names. Interesting to note is they have a different presentation on each domain – the .com has their whitepaper and a link to buy Filecoin, suggesting it is targeting investors, whereas the .io has a more design-oriented website with more options like build, store, and mine.

Tezos (XTZ)

Tezos is a cryptocurrency, open-source platform and one of the few projects that launched on its blockchain. The project’s primary goal is to overcome the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchain flaws. Tezos have worked on a $121M partnership project with Logical Pictures, a well-known production company in the European Film and series industry, that has decided to tokenize their future portfolio of films and series produced. Tezos has chosen an exact brand match domain name for its online presence at Tezos.com.

Highlights

Nine out of twenty-six companies on the list operate on an exact brand match .com domain name.

Almost half of the companies have chosen the .org extension rather than .io, a common choice of tech companies as it represents a popular reference to the term input/output (IO).

The extension .org is a generic top-level domain and one of the original domains established in 1985. It stands for “organization” and is primarily used for nonprofit websites such as charities, open-source projects, educational platforms, etc. The popularity of this extension among crypto projects can be linkedin to the fact that Bitcoin operates on bitcoin.org. The domain name bitcoin.com is owned privately and has quite a fascinating story. It was also briefly listed for sale for $100 million in April 2021.

Only one company out of 25 uses a dash in its domain name.

While we make every effort to ensure the data on our site is accurate, complete, and up-to-date, we cannot guarantee its reliability. Our data is provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as legal, financial, or other advice. We strongly recommend that you independently verify any information before relying on it.

How does your brand name match your company vision? What new horizons can a better name open? Get in touch if you feel your brand deserves a better name, we are always happy to help.