Altcoins, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency

The Great Roller Coaster Crypto-Ride of 2020

Time flies – It might even be flying faster in the Cryptoverse. It may have appeared – with the turbulent, volatile markets putting on a show for us daily, monthly, and yearly. And what a roller coaster ride they put in 2020!

From Bitcoin (BTC) achieving new all-time highs, climbing towards USD 30,000 at the end of the year, to Ethereum (ETH) eventually starting its Phase 0 of Ethereum 2.0, and its price rebounding to some USD 740 by the year’s last day – nobody could deny that it was a year full of significant events for the Cryptoverse. 

These were just numerous news about the top 2 coins, with many more about them and other projects – both good and bad – being announced throughout the year (check out our previous quarterly coin races, for example).

Let’s take a look at the performance of the top 50 coins by market capitalization over the last month and the last quarter of 2020, as well as over the entire year.

December

Compared to 2019, 2020 was a lot greener, and we’ll see no better description of that than December. It saw quite a few coins’ prices drop; it brought significant increases to the market.

Top 10 Coins

Source: coincodex.com, 07:30 UTC

All but two coins saw a rise in their prices – and a double-digit one at that. With more than a 77% rise, at the very top stands a comparatively new entrant to the top 10 list, one that made its appearance just last year – Polkadot (DOT). DOT is followed by litecoin (LTC) with a nearly 70% rise, while bitcoin takes the third spot, having gone up 60.7% in December. Speaking of LTC, its developers revealed in October that a testnet with new privacy features, called Litecoin MimbleWimble (MW), was launched.

The slightly distant fourth place is taken by ethereum, which itself has had an eventful year ETH 2.0-wise as said, with an increase to its price of 33.5%. Meanwhile, the remaining coins went up between 10% and 27%.

On the other hand, two coins dropped over the last month of 2020: Chainlink (LINK) fell more than 14%, and XRP dropped a whopping 63.3%. 

As reported, the American Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit against the company, followed by several platforms suspending trading in XRP.

Top 10 Winners

Source: coincodex.com, 07:30 UTC

Looking at the top 50 by market capitalization, we find DOT on the 5th spot and LTC on the 6th in this category’s green list. It is preceded by theta token (THETA)’s 216.5% increase and Zilliqa (ZIL)’s 201.4%. The 3rd and 4th place is occupied by coins 131.7% and 82.6%, these being celsius network (CEL) and decred (DCR), respectively. The least appreciated among the most-appreciating coins in December is Polkadot-related Kusama (KSM), which went up almost 42.3%.

Top 10 Losers

Source: coincodex.com, 07:30 UTC

But for all its greenery, December wasn’t without its drops either. The troubled XRP takes first place among the most significant decreases in the top 50 categories. It’s now followed by stellar (XLM)’s 34%, as well as the graph (GRT)’s 33.8%. filecoin (FIL) was, like Polkadot, a much-awaited project, but unlike Polkadot, it dropped in December by nearly 22.2%. The remaining coins on this list fell between 17.6% (NEO) and 12.4% (IOTA).

Fourth-quarter

Unsurprisingly perhaps, the last quarter of 2020 was dominated by the projects we’ve seen taking top spots in the year’s final month.

Top 10 Coins

Source: coincodex.com, 07:30 UTC

At the very top among the quarterly winners stand LTC with a rise of 180.3% and BTC, which went up 170.3%. Two other coins appreciated more than 100%, and you probably can guess which ones these are: ETH’s price increased by nearly 108%, while DOT’s went up 101.9%.

As for the remaining coins, Cardano (ADA) increased 78.25%, bitcoin cash (BCH) 52.33%, and Binance coin (BNB) 32.73%.

The only one that dropped over the past three months is XRP, by 4.45%.

Top 10 Winners

Source: coincodex.com, 07:30 UTC

Yet, when it comes to the top 50 coins, among the greenest of them, CEL takes the crown as it went up 461.9%. ZIL is placed second with 373%, and DCR third with 251.6%. All the other coins on this list appreciated more than 100%.

Top 10 Losers

Source: coincodex.com, 07:30 UTC

The last quarter seems to have been kinder on the red coins as well – for many of those who dropped the most; the decreases are relatively low. Five of the ten fell between 8.8% (tezos (XTZ)) and 4.7% (Huobi token (HT)).

Still, some weren’t as fortunate. Crypto.com chain token (CRO) dropped the most, 61.7%, followed by FIL’s nearly 38% fall and GRT’s 33.75% one. NEO and UMA are the remaining two whose prices saw double-digit decreases over the three months, 25.4% and 12.5%, respectively.

2020 Performers – and not so

The year is also ruled by many of the winners named above, yet we find some relative surprises at the very top.

Top 10 Coins

Source: coincodex.com, 07:30 UTC

Among the top 10 coins, and throughout the entire 2020, LINK took the crown as the absolute winner, having gone up a whopping 536.3%. ETH follows it, with its rise of 470.5%, placing it in second place. ADA is not far, seeing its price increase 444.8%. That’s where we reach bitcoin, boasting its high increase of 303.65%.

LTC appreciated 211.4%, while BNB and DOT appreciated over 100% both, or 175.1% and 144.73%, respectively, to be precise. The only two whose prices increased less than 100% are BCH (69.9%) and XRP (19.6%). On the positive side, there are no red coins on this list.

Top 10 Winners

Source: coincodex.com, 07:30 UTC

Despite that, things take quite a turn when looking at the top 10 winners among the top 50 coins by market capitalization. It is Kusama now that takes the throne, seeing its price go up a whopping 5,841.65%. And it’s not the only coins with a four-digit rise either. CEL appreciated nearly 3,730%, THETA nearly 2,109, ZIL almost 1,780%, and one of decentralized finance (DeFi)’s most popular projects yearn.finance (YFI) went up 1,349%.

Though the remaining five coins appreciated less than 1,000%, all stand on the 500% level: between NEM (XEM)’s 591.5% and WAVES’ 506.6%, including synthetix (SNX)’s 567.4%.

Top 10 Losers

Source: coincodex.com, 07:30 UTC

Yet, we get another turn, a twist in this story, if you will, when observing the red coins in 2020 – and found only four. Revain (REV)’s price decreased the most throughout 2020, falling 71.9%. FIL takes the distant second place with a nearly 38% drop. The smallest decrease in price was recorded by uniswap (UNI), having dropped 7.37%.

Leave a Comment

Leave a Reply