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Growth around non-fungible tokens and decentralized finance helped prices for some altcoins soar during the third quarter, and investors are looking for the next breakout as the fourth quarter begins.

The global cryptocurrency market is again approaching the $2 trillion mark, as prices for Cardano's ada, solana and other altcoins have taken off, with cardano ada now the third most-traded crypto.

Now in the months ahead, investors will sharpen their focus on the benefits and shortfalls emerging from recent speed and efficiency upgrades on the blockchain networks of key altcoins, Ed Moya, senior currency analyst at Oanda, told Insider.

"Everyone has been focused on which altcoins are going to address that scalability concern that you have with ethereum and bitcoin," he said.

"People have to understand which businesses are going to be the leaders in NFTs or smart contracts," and other operations, he said. "I think that's where the market is and education takes some time. The industry is ripe for consolidation."

Here are six altcoins (in alphabetical order) experts tell Insider they'll be watching during the fourth quarter and beyond:

1) Avalanche (AVAX) Market Capitalization: $14.5 billionYear-to-date performance: Up 1954% at $65.94

The blockchain developed by Ava Labs is a smart contracts platform for decentralized applications and its AVAX token began trading on Coinbase Pro this past week.

Avalanche "is way faster than ethereum and it wants to be even faster, which is great because I think that's very important when it comes to finance and DeFi projects and applications," Tally Greenberg, head of business development at Allnodes, told Insider.

"It's a promising technology that basically does more for less," she said, adding that it uses a proof-of-stake system that's more energy-efficient than a proof-of-work one based on mining, she said.

Steve Ehrlich, founder and CEO of cryptocurrency-asset broker Voyager Digital, told Insider he sees Avalanche as a viable alternative to ethereum. "As soon as they start adding some projects and art on their NFT network, you'll start to see a lot more consumers buying and selling NFTs," on Avalanche, he said.

Ehrlich said Avalanche, as well as solana and cardano, are cheaper alternatives to ethereum, which has high fees for conducting transactions.

2) Boost Coin Fully diluted market capitalization: $53 million Year-to-date performance: Up 293% to $0.0505

Launched in August, Boost Coin fuels the Boost ecosystem that's centered on decentralized finance tools. Boost Swap, a decentralized exchange, is the first tool, with the company behind it saying it's similar to crypto exchanges Uniswap, SushiSwap, and PancakeSwap.

Decentralized exchanges, or DEXs, offer a peer-to-peer platform where parties use smart contracts to execute their trades and don't rely on intermediaries such as clearing houses.

"There's a lot of value in the exchanges market," Dr. Don Basile, CEO of Monsoon Blockchain, told Insider, highlighted in part by this year's trading debut of Coinbase, now a $48 billion centralized crypto exchange.

Boost's approach to connect buyers and sellers without a centralized entity is a "potentially disruptive idea," he said.

Boost can be acquired by exchanging ethereum for it using Uniswap or Boost Swap. But Basile said it's too early to say whether its price is undervalued or overvalued as the coin is just a few weeks old.

Meanwhile, Basile is also the founder of Bitcoin Latinum, which is expected to begin trading around the week of October 21. The energy-efficient cryptocurrency is aimed at delivering faster transaction speeds and lower costs to high-growth markets such as media and gaming.

3) Cardano adaMarket Capitalization: $69.3 billionYear-to-date performance: Up 1092% at $2.16

Cardano's profile and that of its ada token, have boomed in recent months. The network last month ran its alonzo upgrade that brought smart contract capability to its network, a move that could bolster its competitiveness with ethereum.

"A lot of our customers hold a lot of cardano on our platform so we see quite an increase of people being interested," in the network, Ehrlich said.

And after recently being introduced to "some pretty cool" art built on Cardano, he thinks the network will make some headway soon in the NFT space.

Moya sees a lot of investors mixed on Cardano ada after its price climbed to $3. But he added, "There are still a lot of institutional players that are eyeing it as interesting altcoin to hold."

4) Crypto.com Coin CRO Market Capitalization: $4.2 billion Year-to-date performance: Up 183% at $0.16531

Crypto.com is a cryptocurrency exchange and consumer financial services company whose Coin serves as the token for Crypto.com's Chain, a decentralized open-source blockchain launched in March.

CRO is used for staking, payments, and settlements, said Greenberg, who thinks CRO is undervalued.

"It's in use on a daily basis," in part through Crypto.com's prepaid Visa card and Crypto.com, she said, adding that its Chain network has a sustainability goal of becoming carbon negative by next year.

5) DogecoinMarket Capitalization: $27.3 billionYear-to-date performance: Up 4307% at $0.2064

Oanda's Moya put the hugely popular meme coin on his watch list to see if it eventually crashes, which he thinks would actually be a positive sign.

"There are too many coins that don't have the financing, that don't have the infrastructure in place to be a legitimate investment," he said. "It's hard to go from a meme coin to a legitimate coin."

Tesla boss Elon Musk in August backed billionaire investor Mark Cuban's claim that dogecoin is the strongest cryptocurrency as a medium of exchange. Cuban's NBA team, the Dallas Mavericks, accepts dogecoin as a payment vehicle.

6) Polygon (previously MATIC)Market Capitalization: $7.6 billionYear-to-date performance: Down 27% at $1.236

Polygon is designed to scale ethereum chains and develop the blockchain's infrastructure. It's caught the eye of Mark Cuban who earlier this year added the platform to his investment portfolio.

Polygon, originally called Matic, created the Matic token that's used on transactions on the network. Matic is also among the roughly 40 altcoins on the watch list for Allnodes' Greenberg. She sees Matic as undervalued as it has low network fees and just enough volatility to benefit trading.

"For those who are looking for a less aggressive investment strategy, there's a staking opportunity. So it's a well-round blockchain and cryptocurrency."

Polygon uses the proof-of-stake system of securing a cryptocurrency's network under which users put forward or "stake" some of their coins to gain the right to verify transactions and, in exchange, earn more coins. Greenberg said users recently could make an annual return of 13.65% on their investments, "which is huge."

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Altcoin outlook: 6 alternative cryptocurrencies to watch in Q4 - Markets Insider

Four emerging altcoins are on a tear after surging 101% or more within one week as Bitcoin (BTC) and the crypto markets ignite.

One of the high-flying coins as of late is meme cryptocurrency and Dogecoin (DOGE) competitor Shiba Inu (SHIB).

The altcoin skyrocketed from a low of $0.000006 to a high of $0.00002, marking gains of over 233% in just seven days.

Even after a big rally, SHIB has yet to reclaim its all-time high of $0.000037.

Another top-performing altcoin this week is Spell Token (SPELL), the governance and utility asset of decentralized finance protocol Abracadabra Money.

The crypto asset soared from a seven-day low of $0.0032 to a new all-time high of $0.0089 at time of writing, according to CoinGecko. The move represents gains of over 178% in just one week.

Next up is Secret (SCRT), the native asset of privacy-focused smart contract platform Secret Network. CoinGeckoshows that SCRT rallied over 125% from a seven-day low of $1.81 to a high of $4.11.

The coin has given up some of its gains since and is trading at $3.48 at time of writing.

The fourth altcoin on the up and up is OMG Network (OMG), a layer-2 scaling solution for Ethereum (ETH). The emerging altcoin rose from a low of $8.95 to a high of $17.88 to mark gains of 101% in just one week.

Although OMG has more than doubled its value in a week, it is still down from its all-time high of $25.62 in January of 2018. OMG is currently trading at $14.81, according to CoinGecko.

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Four Emerging Altcoins Surge 101% or More Within Seven Days As Crypto Markets Ignite - The Daily Hodl

A widely followed pseudonymous cryptocurrency trader that goes by Kaleo on microblogging platform Twitter has compared Bitcoins price chart with that of Terra (LUNA), implying the apex cryptocurrency could soon surge to new highs.

In a tweet, Kaleo compared both charts and told his over 380,000 followers on the platform to remember the big picture and stack more bitcoin, while implying the cryptocurrency was set to surge after seeing a breakout over an extended accumulation period.

Terras native token LUNA has seen its price explode over the last 12 months, going from less than $1 earlier this year to surpass the $40 mark this month before enduring a correction that saw its price drop back to $37 at press time, according to CryptoCompare data.

As Daily Hodl reports, Kaleo did note that he expects a slight correction before the flagship cryptocurrency moves to a new all-time high. Per his words, he sees it drop to $37,000 and run it back turbo from there.

He added the drop itself isnt scary, but what would be is selling slightly above that level to try to capture a few extra percentage points lower, only to miss your target, buy back higher and have less BTC than what you started with before the run.

The widely followed pseudonymous analyst predicted that run would see bitcoin move past the $100,000 mark. Notably, Bobby Lee, an industry veteran who founded crypto exchange BTCC and is the brother of Litecoin creator Charlie Lee, has recently said bitcoins price will easily surpass the $100,000 mark in a rally led by fear of missing out.

DISCLAIMERThe views and opinions expressed by the author, or any people mentioned in this article, are for informational purposes only, and they do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice. Investing in or trading cryptoassets comes with a risk of financial loss.

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Popular Crypto Trader Compares Bitcoins Chart to Altcoin That Surged 12,000% in a Year - CryptoGlobe

The price of Cardano-backed altcoin project Coti (COTI) is surging.

Data from Coingecko shows that COTI rose from a 14-day low of $0.289679 to a high of $0.643572, representing a rally of 75.8% over the past two weeks. The coin, which currently holds a market cap of $526,540,060 is worth $0.606045 at time of writing.

COTI is an enterprise-grade platform that allows organizations to build their own payment solutions and digitize any form of currency using the networked datastructure protocol Trustchain.

The rally comes a month after Coinbase launched support for the coin. In August, the exchange announced that its customers could start trading the crypto asset on its platforms.

In April, the Cardano Foundation said that it partnered with COTI, which will serve as the payment gateway provider for ADA Pay that will enable merchants and organizations to accept and manage payments in ADA.

Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK), the blockchain company behind Cardano, also invested $500,000 in COTI through the early-stage cFund.

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Altcoin Project Backed by Cardano Rallies 92% in Just Two Weeks, Leaving Crypto Market in the Dust - The Daily Hodl

The growth of the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector has been a recurrent headline throughout 2021 and to date, hundreds of billions of dollars in crypto assets are locked on protocols across numerous blockchain networks and earning a yield for their holders.

What started off as a simple Ethereum-based swap interface that allowed ERC-20 tokens to be exchanged in a decentralized manner, called Uniswap, has exploded into a vast ecosystem full of decentralized exchanges, yield farms, lending protocols and staking platforms.

As development continues and older protocols become more established, newer projects have emerged to incorporate more pieces from the traditional financial realm into the DeFi arena as digital technology slowly transforms the global financial system.

Heres a look at some ways for users to get involved with DeFi outside of simply staking in liquidity pools or depositing to a lending protocol.

Cryptocurrency derivatives exchanges have long been a target for regulators, and once defiant exchanges like BitMEX and Binance have found themselves bending to the will of the law and modifying their operating practices as they seek a more legitimate standing.

This has furthered the necessity for crypto traders to have a decentralized option and led to the creation of protocols like dYdX and Hegic, which offer similar services without the target that is a centralized structure for regulators to come after.

DYdX is a non-custodial perpetuals trading platform built on a layer-two protocol that operates on the Ethereum network and offers users access to up to ten times leverage on futures contracts for more than twenty cryptocurrencies.

Hegic is an on-chain options trading protocol that utilizes hedge contracts and liquidity pools to offer options contracts that last up to 90 days and can payout in Ether (ETH), Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) or USD Coin (USDC).

Both of these platforms offer users access to these advanced trading products without the need to divulge their identities, as is required on the centralized counterparts.

One topic that is increasingly popping up more in financial discussions is the concept of how to create a decentralized reserve currency that is free of the control of any government or centralized financial institution.

Olympus aims to address this issue through a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) platform which offers staking and various bond offerings including the ability to bond Ether, MakerDAO (DAI), Liquidity USD (LUSD) and Frax (FRAX).

The bonding process on Olympus is basically a cross between a fixed income product, a futures contract and an option. Bonders are provided with a quote outlining terms for a trade at a future date and include a predetermined amount of the protocols native OHM token that the bonder will receive once the vesting period is complete.

Funds that are raised by bond offerings go into the Olympus treasury as collateral to back the OHM tokens that were minted, helping to provide the underlying value behind the OHM token which allows it to be used as a reserve currency or medium of exchange.

The only other projects that have a treasury that provides the underlying value for each token are stablecoins, but as the name implies their price is fixed whereas the price of OHM can increase, offering a new avenue of yield for users.

Once bonding is complete, users can sell their OHM on the open market or stake them on the Olympus protocol for a current yield of 7,299%.

Related: CFTC renewed: What Bidens new agency picks hold for crypto regulation

Another way crypto holders can put their assets to work while also helping the cryptocurrency ecosystem expand is through participating in the parachain auctions in the Polkadot and Kusama ecosystems through a process known as a crowd loan.

In the auction process, different projects vie for one of the limited parachain slots that connect the project directly to the main Kusma or Polkadot network, facilitating the interconnection of all parachains in the ecosystem.

With crowdloans, users who hold the native KSM and DOT tokens can contribute them towards the pool that a project uses to secure a parachain slot, and they will have their tokens returned after a specified lock-up or bonding period that can last for up to one year.

In exchange for their contribution and inability to earn staking rewards for the period that the tokens are locked up, users receive a specified number of tokens for the new protocol which can then be used in the ecosystem or sold on the market.

This approach offers a less risky yield opportunity for token holders, as all principal contributions are locked in a smart contract and returned after the stipulated lock-up period. And by the nature of the parachain auction process, there have been well-developed projects with larger communities that have secured parachain slots, increasing the chance that their tokens will maintain or increase in value as long development for the protocols stays active.

Aside from the threat of regulation, the DeFi ecosystem is showing few signs of slowing its integration of the best parts of the traditional financial system and developing innovative protocols that level the playing field for retail investors.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.

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Altcoin roundup: Theres more to DeFi than just providing liquidity - Cointelegraph