As cryptocurrencies have proliferated in recent years, a diverse industry of companies has developed in the crypto space. These companies may be involved in cryptocurrency mining, digital currency exchange and payments, or in developing blockchain technology and linking it with existing industries and businesses. Some of the best-known crypto stocks include Coinbase Global Inc. (COIN), the cryptocurrency exchange and provider of financial products, and Bitcoin mining company Hut 8 Mining Corp. (HUT). Traditional companies with some operations in the crypto space may also be included in this list.

The cryptocurrency space is relatively new, but a useful benchmark is a crypto exchange-traded fund such as the Amplify Transformational Data Sharing ETF (BLOK). Crypto stocks as represented by BLOK have slightly underperformed the broader market in the last year. BLOK has provided a 1-year trailing total return of -20.3%, just behind the return of -17.2% for the Russell 1000. These market performance numbers above and all statistics in the tables below are as of Sept. 30, 2022.

Here are the top three crypto stocks with the best value, the fastest growth, and the best performance, respectively.

These are the crypto stocks with the lowest 12-month trailing (TTM) price-to-sales (P/S) ratio. For companies in early stages of development or industries suffering from major shocks, this can be substituted as a rough measure of a business’s value. A business with higher sales eventually could produce more profit when it either achieves or returns to profitability. The P/S ratio shows how much you’re paying for the stock for each dollar of sales generated.

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• Greenidge Generation Holdings Inc.: Greenidge Generation Holdings operates cryptocurrency datacenter and power generation businesses as well as cryptocurrency mining facilities. Greenidge released on Sept. 12 an operational update for the month of August 2022. The company produced roughly 301 bitcoin, bringing its year-to-date (YTD) total to 1,771.
• CleanSpark Inc.: CleanSpark is a bitcoin mining and energy technology company. The company mines for bitcoin and develops renewable energy projects. On Sept. 9, CleanSpark announced it would acquire for $33 million a turnkey Bitcoin mining facility in Sandersville, Georgia, from Mawson Infrastructure Group Inc. The transaction is expected to improve CleanSpark’s mining process by boosting its hashrate. CleanSpark is also buying from Mawson 6,468 of the latest generation of crypto mining machines, called ASICs, for about $9.5 million.
• Block Inc.: Block offers managed payment services, financial services products, hardware, and software. Its Cash App platform enables users to deposit and withdraw bitcoin and make peer-to-peer payments. Cash app does not support any other cryptocurrency.

These are the crypto stocks with the highest year-over-year (YOY) sales growth for the most recent quarter. Rising sales can help investors pick out growing startups that have not yet reached profitability. In addition, earnings per share can be significantly influenced by accounting factors that may not reflect the overall strength of the business. However, sales growth can also be potentially misleading about the strength of a business, because growing sales on money-losing businesses can be harmful if the company has no plan to reach profitability.

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• Iris Energy Ltd.: Iris Energy is an Australia-based bitcoin mining company. It builds, owns, and operates proprietary bitcoin mining data centers that are powered by renewable energy.
• CleanSpark Inc.: See company description above.
• Core Scientific Inc.: Core Scientific is a blockchain data center provider and cryptocurrency mining company. It operates data centers in Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, North Dakota, and Texas. The company issued an update and correction to its Aug. 11 Q2 2022 earnings report on Aug. 22. Net losses widened dramatically to $810.5 million from a net loss of $3.4 million in the prior year quarter, caused primarily by a $790.8 million impairment of goodwill and other intangibles as well as impairment of digital assets. Revenue more than doubled year-over-year (YOY), driven by increases in digital asset mining revenue and hosting revenue.

These are the crypto stocks that had the smallest declines in total return over the past 12 months out of the companies we looked at.

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• Marathon Digital Holdings Inc.: Marathon Digital Holdings is a digital asset technology company engaged in the mining of cryptocurrencies. Its primary focus is on the blockchain ecosystem and generating digital assets. On Aug. 8, Marathon reported Q2 2022 earnings results. It’s net loss widened dramatically to $191.6 million YOY as revenue declined. Results were impacted by factors including the decline in the price of bitcoin, and maintenance and weather issues.
• Coinbase Global Inc.: Coinbase Global is a financial technology company. It offers a marketplace for transacting crypto assets to retail and institutional users. It also provides financial infrastructure products, market data, and analytics services.
• HIVE Blockchain Technologies Ltd.: HIVE Blockchain Technologies is a Canada-based cryptocurrency mining company focused on linking the blockchain sector to traditional capital markets. It mines digital currencies such as bitcoin and ethereum at its data centers in Canada, Sweden, and Iceland. For Aug. 2022, HIVE reported a record monthly production of 290.4 bitcoin. It also produced more than 3,000 ethereum (ETH).