The Best Cryptocurrency to Buy With $500 Right Now

It's mid-December, and crypto is in one of those moods again.

Prices that looked unstoppable a few weeks ago have been sliding, headlines are loud, and the digital asset market has returned to its favorite pastime: shaking out anyone who confused a good run with a guaranteed future.

If you're investing only $500, that may be more of an advantage than a problem. You don't need to "own the whole market." Just set up one modest position where the story is improving even while the price is misbehaving. That's why I'd put Polkadot (CRYPTO: DOT) on your shortlist.

In my view, it's the best cryptocurrency to buy today. Here's why.

Price plunge vs. Polkadot 2.0 -- a weird pairing

I can tell you two facts about Polkadot that seem to contradict each other:

• Polkadot's price is plunging. The flagship cryptocurrency of the Web3 Foundation is down 78% over the past year, including a 54% drop in three months.
• The Polkadot system is getting faster and more secure, earning the Polkadot 2.0 moniker as recently as November 2025. Polkadot is also implementing a hard supply cap with regularly scheduled supply side halvings. In other words, the system is ready to go whenever the web3 revolution goes mainstream.

Short story even shorter, Polkadot seems poised for value-boosting success, but the coin price is falling anyway.

When the cap actually kicks in

Here's the part many crypto pitches skip: why would any of this make the Polkadot token more valuable?

Polkadot's upcoming supply cap (Referendum 1710, passed with 81% support and scheduled to take effect on March 14, 2026) means no more inflation diluting your stake after the cap kicks in. It's a lot like the hard 21 million cap Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) that crypto bulls often cite as a long-term value driver.

Meanwhile, Polkadot tokens are required for people who want to participate in the project's governance, secure the network through staking, and pay fees for using the blockchain. If usage grows while new supply shrinks, the math tilts in favor of early holders. That could be you, if you take action in 2025.

Image source: The Web3 Foundation.

Short-term pain, long-term thesis

None of that guarantees a price rebound -- crypto is still crypto, and a $500 position can go to $50 as easily as $5,000. But when I'm looking for an asymmetric risk-reward balance in a beaten-down market, I want a token where the fundamentals are improving. That's very true for Polkadot, and the tokenomics are tightening. Polkadot checks both boxes right now.

I think the web3 sea change is necessary. The social media focus of the current internet experience is getting old, and tighter content ownership feels required in this era of artificial intelligence (AI) bots scraping the web for fresh training material. If my reasoning is on the right track, the Polkadot tokens you purchase now should gain significant value in the long run.

Anders Bylund has positions in Bitcoin and Polkadot. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.