This coin is up 21% in the last 30 days. A great race for a great project that people have forgotten. But we didn’t do it. This is one of 3 coins we’re looking at today in our popular series of Top Coins You Can Buy for Under $1.
Today, we focus on a major player in traditional finance, a leader in payments, and an emerging leader in privacy. Let’s take a look at the best picks under $1!
1) Hedera (HBAR)
Hedera Hashgraph becomes THE business channel. And I know that sounds bad and anti-crypto. But it happens and it’s good. This is good because RWAs and cross-border payments are there. And they move the industry forward.
Large enterprises, from traditional banks to large technology companies, trust Hedera and its hashgraph version of a distributed ledger on a blockchain. And they trust Hedera because these big companies are already on the Board of Governors. The Council is the only one that can manage validators on the network. So it’s not a completely public network where anyone can run a validator. We don’t like it. Yet this is to their advantage with their larger market of traditional banks and technologies. When Dell, Google and Aberdeen Bank are there with BitGo and Chainlink, it is a clear validation of blockchain technology to solve real-world problems. And that’s what payments and RWAs need to see.
On the second day of Davos, @episcini CEO @hashgraph had the honor of participating in a fireside chat with @IIF President and CEO @timothydadams to the @Nasdaq and the IIF “Unlocking Innovation in Finance” event. pic.twitter.com/vYG88xCJnF
-Hedera (@hedera) January 20, 2026
As you would expect with these types of clients, Hedera is everywhere at Davos and WEF meetings, such as in this case when she shares the stage with NASDAQ. Add to that improvements like HIP-1249 and running smart contracts on Hedera is faster and more secure than ever for dApp builders.
⚙️ HIP-1249 introduces a fundamental change in how Hedera limits the execution of smart contracts using precise metrics and pricing – enabling dApps to operate at scale with higher throughput while maintaining security and EVM compatibility.
-Hedera (@hedera) January 15, 2026
In this current season, the wind is at Hedera’s back and the momentum is building. Many of the things that XRP and its base say they do, Hedera actually does. Like compliant tokenization and working with BIS and SWIFT. Hedera’s efforts are beginning to bear fruit. And at 11c and a market cap of $4.6 billion, Hedera could easily grow 10x from here. Even at this enormous size, they’re already there.
How to integrate real-world assets on-chain and stay compliant?
🎥 Listen to Katie Evans, CBDO @SwarmMarketsas she explains how Swarm enables compliant RWA tokenization, why Hedera was the right network to achieve it, + what the future holds for Swarm x Hedera. pic.twitter.com/1wlyy8xMfe
-Hedera (@hedera) January 5, 2026
2) Polygon (POL)
Next up, an old favorite we haven’t talked about in a while. Polygon. Yes, Polygon fell like a stone. And yes, the year 2025 was terrible in terms of value for money. But there is more to tell here. Quietly, and recently not so quietly, Polygon is taking steps to become the payment chain for stablecoins in EVM.
Instant settlement. Global reach. Fewer intermediaries.
Backed by over $1.3 billion in on-chain USDT liquidity and over 6 million wallets.
It is USDT0 on Polygon.
— Polygon | POL (@0xPolygon) January 20, 2026
In some regions, including most of Latin America, Polygon makes more stable transactions than Tron or Ethereum. Many fintechs, like DolarApp, that use blockchain rails use Polygon exclusively. Others use Polygon and often Solana to obtain stablecoins or what they call “digital dollars” on their market to trade for weaker pesos back home.
🤝 @0xPolygon joins the list of options to recharge $USDc in DolarApp @Getdolarapp
🔋 Users can now recharge $USDc on the #Polygon network toll-free.
💸 #DolarApp is a digital dollar account for Latin America, allowing users to easily open an account via their mobile phone in… pic.twitter.com/jRpTbkFjzr
— 🟣 𝐏𝐨𝐥𝐲𝐠𝐨𝐧 𝐒𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐞 🟣 (@Polygon_Space1) October 9, 2024
Polygon is using this expertise to expand into areas such as stablecoin-based compliant payroll with Toku. Then we have this important recent acquisition. Polygon calls it Open Money Stack. First, it involves becoming a regulated payment platform in the United States. It’s a big problem.
NEW: Toku chooses Polygon to launch stable, compliant global payroll for employers.
Same systems, same compliance standards, but entirely new on-chain rails for recurring payments.
With this integration, every Toku user in over 100 countries receives a Polygon wallet by… pic.twitter.com/O8KtZUlDRz
— Polygon | POL (@0xPolygon) January 20, 2026
Monitoring of the acquisitions of Coinme and Sequence. Through these, there are compliant and transparent movements between fiat and crypto currencies for “instant money movement for everyone, everywhere”. This is the goal of the Open Money Stack. Polygon achieves this and transforms itself into a payment platform.
BREAKING: Polygon to become a regulated payment platform in the United States
We acquire Coinme and Sequence to move all the money on-chain.
→ Money movements regulated in 48 states
→ Fiat access and exit ramps
→ 50,000 fiat-to-crypto locations in the United States
→ Easy integration with wallet infrastructure
→… pic.twitter.com/lwvLheEc3P— Polygon | POL (@0xPolygon) January 13, 2026
But changes take time to be digested and understood by the market. And this is your opportunity. The $POL token is up 22% in the last 30 days and is therefore showing signs of life. And even with that, $POL is still down 70% over the past 12 months. This gives you an idea of how bad a year 2025 will be for the token.
Yet it has everything we are looking for. A real work in progress. Real users. A leading position in the important payments story. And the market hasn’t caught up yet. But they will. When they do, $POL will appear. This quiet period is a chance to accumulate if you believe in their payment mission.
3) Beldex
Our final pick for today is the Beldex Privacy Channel. Its goal is completely private on-chain interactions. Privacy has been doing very well lately, and it’s one of the few industries that made a few dollars last year.
Its use of ring signatures, which Monero also uses but differently, sends untraceable shipments. And where Beldex really shines is its ecosystem. In it you can have private chats and messages with BChat, a privacy browser and even a decentralized VPN with Belnet.
With anonymized data, no one can know who you are or what you do. It’s the best form of privacy, but also one of the hardest to implement and not be attacked by governments around the world. Verifiable randomness helps here too.
Verifiable randomness enhances fairness, security, and decentralization at the protocol level. pic.twitter.com/NVX3clahLn
– Beldex.bdx (@BeldexCoin) January 19, 2026
The Beldex token $BDX has taken a bit of a breather and is down 10% over the last 30 days. Since privacy is doing well, $BDX has done better than 99.9% of tokens in 2025, where it grew by 9%.
$BDX is available on many exchanges, including our friends at Weex, so go check them out.
