Most newbies often opt to buy Bitcoin whenever they want to invest in cryptocurrencies. When, they could buy Cardano, Ethereum, Litecoin, and so many alternatives to make money off them. Truly, we understand the craze and rush of Bitcoin, because it has one of the largest market capitalizations. Nevertheless, there are other great coins you can explore in your cryptocurrency journey. Note that the best crypto portfolio is a diverse one, including a balanced percentage of different types of cryptocurrencies. So, even though you're going to invest in Bitcoin, you should also buy Cardano and other Bitcoin alternatives in your portfolio. Below are our top five Bitcoin alternatives you should consider investing in:

Ethereum
Ethereum with the native cryptocurrency coin Ether (ETH) is decentralized and an open-sourced Blockchain. Although Ethereum was launched in 2015, over the years, it has grown to be one of the most used cryptocurrencies in the world. Ethereum is like Bitcoin in so many ways, such that it's often referred to as second to Bitcoin. As of December 2021, Ethereum has a market capitalization of $477,921,220,517.33, that's a whole lot of numbers. With such a market capitalization you can tell that Ethereum is such a valuable cryptocurrency to purchase. Its value is because it can solve problems that other cryptocurrencies can't solve or are not very efficient at it. For example, the Ethereum platform comes with its programming language which allows developers to build and run distributed apps. And the best part is that these apps built on Ethereum are powerful and have a wide range of applications.

Litecoin
Next on our list is Litecoin, a cryptocurrency that's not given as much credit as Bitcoin. Did you know that Litecoin produces a new block every two to three minutes; this speed is about four times faster than Bitcoin. This is one of the determining factors that make the demand for Litecoin substantially high such that it has a market capitalization of $10,619,949,459. It shouldn't be such a shock! After all, Litecoin was forked from Bitcoin's source code in 2011, so it comes with certain features that make it looks like Bitcoin, yet capable of doing certain things better than Bitcoin. For example, like Bitcoin, Litecoin also uses proof-of-work (PoW), however, it requires a large amount of memory rather than CPU or GPU. Additionally, for hashing functions, Litecoin makes use of Scrypt.

Cardano
You can also buy Cardano as it's becoming one of the fastest-growing Blockchain assets in the entire crypto space. Despite Cardano being launched in 2017, its native cryptocurrency coin ADA is one of the top ten cryptocurrencies by market capitalization ($45,105,831,150.48). After the launch of Cardano, its price skyrocketed from $0.15 to $2 in a matter of months. Although the price has retraced quite a bit since then, yet, you can still tell that it has potential and it's wise to buy Cardano. One unique feature of Cardano is that its Blockchain is composed of CSL and CCL which can operate independently or interoperate together seamlessly, thus allowing transactions to be carried out even when the network is computing smart contracts or updating.

Polkadot
If you do not want to buy Cardano, Polkadot is another great alternative to Bitcoin. What makes Polkadot special is its potential to upend the blockchain. To some, Polkadot is considered an Ethereum killer because of some interesting utility it provides. Although the release of Ethereum 2.0 may lead to a pullback. Currently, Polkadot attempts to solve interoperability problems, and it can make this possible by allowing trustless communication between blockchains. Another advantage of investing in Polkadot is that it has implemented sharding. This implementation will help crypto users solve the problem of getting stuck trying to verify a cryptocurrency transaction.

Bitcoin Cash
Similarly, if you don't want to buy Cardano, Bitcoin Cash is another great alternative to Bitcoin. Bitcoin Cash is a digital coin hard forked from Bitcoin, in 2017. The main reason for the fork is what makes Bitcoin Cash such a great alternative to consider if you do not want to buy Bitcoin. Bitcoin Cash forked from Bitcoin because the Bitcoin community could not reach an agreement to increase the network capacity to allow more transactions. The block size of Bitcoin is about 1MB to 8MB, which is quite limiting. Whereas, Bitcoin Cash has the propensity to complete more transactions at a time because of its larger block size. Bitcoin Cash supports a block size of up to 32MB.

Why do people choose other cryptocurrencies?

Bitcoin is well-known as the first cryptocurrency. Although this has contributed to its enormous success, first has its drawbacks. Since the inception of Bitcoin in 2009, developers have created a plethora of more advanced and useful cryptos.

While Bitcoin was originally intended to be a digital currency, newer cryptos can provide much faster payments at a fraction of the cost. Solana (SOL) is one such example, and there are numerous other cryptos that are faster than Bitcoin.

Bitcoin pioneered blockchain technology, but more recent coins have advanced it significantly. Ethereum (ETH) has launched its own programmable blockchain, which developers can use to build decentralized applications. There are also cryptocurrencies that can use and bridge multiple blockchains, such as Polkadot (DOT).

At the moment, Bitcoin's primary function is as a digital store of value. Other cryptocurrency projects have much loftier ambitions.

It's easier to expand

It's also simple to add other cryptos to your portfolio. Most major cryptocurrency platforms support ten or more cryptocurrencies. Some of the top cryptocurrency exchanges have more than 50, providing you with a plethora of options.
If you're planning to invest in Bitcoin, you'll most likely be able to buy a variety of other cryptocurrencies at the same time. Consider allocating some of your crypto funds to altcoins rather than putting all of your eggs in one basket.

In the end, whether you're investing in Bitcoin or not, the most important thing will always be to have your strategy of investment.