2024 has been a wild year for the cryptocurrency market, with several industry-defining moments marking a new era for digital assets.
The most prominent of all the events, without any doubt, has been the approval of the Spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) after a decade-long battle. The green light from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) made Bitcoin a legitimate asset class that has attracted the attention and capital of institutional investors on a large scale.
In less than a year of Spot BTC ETFs getting a greenlight in January, these investment vehicles have recorded a whopping $35.66 billion in total net inflow. This has sent the total net assets in Bitcoin ETFs to 106.68 billion, according to data from SoSo Value.
BlackRock‘s (BLK -1.6%) IBIT is currently dominating this Bitcoin ETF race, recording $37.31 bln in net inflows and $52.15 bln in net assets. IBIT is followed by Grayscale’s GBTC with $19.54 bln in net assets, then Fidelity’s FBTC at $19.14 bln, Ark’s ARKB at $4.44 bln, and Bitwise’s BITB at $3.82 bln.
By providing traditional investors with direct exposure to Bitcoin without having to buy the cryptocurrency itself, these products have contributed to digital gold’s legitimacy in the eyes of traditional finance (TradFi) investors, as well as its market liquidity and value.
Then, in April, we had the fourth Bitcoin halving that reduced the block reward from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC, in a scheduled decrease in the rate of new Bitcoin supply against a backdrop of rising demand.
Several months later, in November, Donald Trump won the US Presidential election, sweeping a major win across the Senate, Congress, and the White House. This victory was a big moment for the industry as Trump, on his campaign trail, came in strong support for cryptocurrencies, pledging to make the US the “crypto capital of the planet” and bringing regulatory clarity to the sector.
These monumental events together influenced market sentiments and helped BTC’s price surpass the $100,000 milestone. On Dec. 17, BTC/USD hit an all-time high (ATH) of $108,135, driven by increased institutional adoption and favorable regulatory developments, such as SEC Chairman Gary Gensler announcing his upcoming exit from the agency.
Meanwhile, the total cryptocurrency market went on to jump past the new high of $3.9 trillion the same day, up from $1.7 billion at the beginning of this year, as per CoinGecko.
But despite BTC hitting the coveted six-figure target, the trillion-dollar asset wasn’t the best performer of this year. With its 57.13% gains, Bitcoin isn’t a bad performer either but rather sits somewhere in the middle in terms of price performance.
We’ll now take a look at the best and worst performers of 2024 among the top assets by market capitalization.
Best Performers of 2024
Now, before we get to the best altcoin based on their price performance, there are two honorable mentions: XRP with its 235% gains and Hedera Hashgraph’s (HBAR) 225%.
XRP, the 4th largest crypto asset with a market cap of $118 bln, particularly stands out for pulling its gains in a really short period of time. The price of XRP primarily traded around $0.5 throughout this year, only for it to hit nearly $3, representing an increase of 500% in less than a month, while its 2021 uptrend was only 248.68%. Currently trading around $2, these gains came as traders turned to dino coins, which are older cryptos, and regulatory clarity the coin has received in recent years.
Click here to learn all about investing in Ripple (XRP).
HBAR, meanwhile, is the 20th largest crypto, and its exemplary gains come after a 126.13% positive performance last year, which follows a -87.85 % decline during the bear market. Besides the ETF speculations, which are circulating for both XRP and HBAR, Hederal Hashgraph has recorded 70.8 billion in total transactions, partnered with NVIDIA and Intel to use their technology, and has the first physically-backed ETP on Euronext Amsterdam.
Click here to learn all about investing in Hedera Hashgraph (HBAR).
Sui (SUI)
The best crypto performer of this year is a completely new asset. With gains of 428%, the $11.9 billion market cap SUI leads among the top 20 coins, according to Messari.
Launched late in April 2023, SUI’s price ended last year lower than where it started but then went on to reach a new high this year. But this journey isn’t without its ups and downs. SUI price started in 2024 under $1 and then went on to climb past $2 in the next three months, only to drop under $0.5 in early August amidst the market-wide correction.
This over 78% decline in such a short period marked the bottom for SUI price, and in the next two months, it was back above $2.3. Following a 32% drop over two weeks, the price went on to hit a new peak at $4.91 in mid-Dec. As of writing, SUI is trading at $4.08, down 17% from its highs.
SUI is an innovative layer-1 blockchain platform that offers a robust, secure, and scalable development environment. The blockchain, which utilizes the Move programming language, launched its incentivized testnet in August 2022 and its mainnet in the following year.
This project is from Mysten Labs, which is led by several former senior executives for Novi, the now-defunct digital wallet program from Meta (previously Facebook). For SUI, the firm raised $300 million from the likes of a16z, Binance Labs, Circle, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and NCSoft.
Last month, the Sui Foundation partnered with $1.7 trillion asset manager Franklin Templeton to grow its ecosystem and has joined forces with the likes of Babylon Labs to integrate Bitcoin liquidity into its ecosystem as well. It is further offering building programs, collaborating with top gaming studios, integrating with major wallets, and introducing new applications to attract attention and help its ecosystem grow.
According to DeFi Lama, the total value locked (TVL) on the blockchain is also fast rising, currently past $1.6 bln, up from a mere $212 million at the beginning of the year.
Having said that, SUI is currently facing an unlock of 64.19 million tokens on the very first day of the new year, which has the potential to negatively impact its prices. This release represents about 2.2% of SUI’s 2.9 billion circulating supply, while the total supply is 10 billion.
Click here to learn all about investing in Sui (SUI).
Dogecoin (DOGE)
Meme coins have been the most popular and profitable narratives of this sector, and this can be seen in the gains of DOGE. The OG meme coin, Dogecoin, first made its entry into the market more than a decade ago as a joke but has since grown into a phenomenon that has captured the interest of retail and institutions alike.
While DOGE’s price started its journey around $0.0001, today, this $47.47 billion market cap meme coin holds the place of the 7th largest cryptocurrency. In 2024, this coin has rallied as much as 257%, making it one of the best-performing big coins. The price started at around $0.09 and followed a trend much like the rest of the market, as the price jumped to $0.228 in March, dropping as low as $0.08 in August. On Dec. 9, DOGE’s price climbed to $0.483, but this is not a new peak for the world’s largest memecoin.
At its current price of $0.322, DOGE is still down 56% from its ATH of $0.7316, which it reached in May 2021, and has yet to make a new one this cycle.
While DOGE’s price is up substantially this year, last year wasn’t a good one for this meme coin, which only recorded 27.59% gains in 2023. This modest increment came after a 59.49% decline during the bear market of 2022. As for the last bull run, DOGE posted a whopping 2,892.6% gains in 2021.
Interestingly, the uptrend is experienced by DOGE despite having an ever-increasing supply, which is currently at 147 billion tokens. A prominent reason for this is Dogecoin’s OG status and the fact that the coin has survived all the cycles, making it an ever-green investment opportunity that new and old traders and investors turn to.
Additionally, this year, meme coins have been one of the leading narratives, recording the second-highest average price gains at 2,185%, as per the latest CoinGecko report. Initially, meme coin narratives outperformed any other narrative and continued to do so, but they have recently experienced a pullback as interest in meme coins slowed down. The same trend can be seen in DOGE prices.
Besides the meme coin narrative, the post-election surge, which led to the appointment of the self-proclaimed “Dogefather” Elon Musk as the head of the ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ (DOGE), helped the prices. Recently, DeFi Technologies’ subsidiary Valour also introduced the Dogecoin ETP on Sweden’s Spotlight Stock Market.
Click here to learn all about investing in Dogecoin (DOGE).
Worst Performer of 2024
Now, we’ll take a look at the worst performers among the top cryptocurrencies. But first, a couple of honorable mentions: Ethereum (ETH) and Cardano (ADA) with 50% and 46% gains, respectively.
While it may seem like ETH will be the worst-performing crypto in general, given that this cryptocurrency failed to make a new ATH despite getting approval for a Spot ETF, it is actually not. However, it is not doing that well either, with ETHBTC still near multi-year lows of $0.0363.
The 2nd-largest cryptocurrency with a market cap of $409 bln is currently trading at $3,400, down over 30% from the 4,880 peak it hit in Nov. 2021, a year in which ETH recorded 403% gains. This uptrend came despite having almost 28% of ETH supply locked via staking and $68.125 bln in TVL due to facing stiff competition from Solana and Ethereum-based L2s capturing the network traffic thanks to their low fees and fast speed.
As for ADA, it did lead the retail interest last year, recording 645.72% returns in 2021, but that’s not the case this year. Even the 2022 bear market was brutal for ADA prices, which fell more than 82% and recovered with just 137.84% gains in 2023. Now, in 2024, ADA has captured barely any interest, with its price currently at $0.862, a level last seen in May 2022 and still 72% off of its $3.09 ATH as both the token and blockchain struggle to gain traction.
Avalanche (AVAX)
With a loss of 4.76%, AVAX is the worst performer among the top 20 coins by market cap, completely changing the picture for a coin that was one of the biggest gainers of the 2021 bull market, recording a positive price performance of 2,885.8%. But that was the time when AVAX was still hot and new, having launched in Sept. 2020, capturing the masses’ interest and attention.
At the time, new and old projects alike wanted to try out this blockchain with its own subnetworks that operate using their own sets of rules. It actually uses a multi-chain system, with each of the three chains having its own specific design and function to cater to unique dApp needs. For this, the project had a $42 million ICO in July 2020, followed by a $230 million token sale in July 2021.
Three years ago, AVAX went on to climb as high as $145 and then experienced a bear market where its prices dropped a massive 90.48%. The price recovered some as it jumped 255.15%, but this year has been a pretty brutal one for AVAX while competitors are enjoying growing adoption.
Trading at just above $36, the $14.8 billion coin is still 75% away from its peak as it struggles to see even a fraction of the demand it did last cycle. This is evident from $1.346 billion in TVL, which has barely increased from $890 mln in 2024 and nowhere near the ATH of $11.3 bln from early Dec. 2021.
To generate interest from developers, the Avalanche Foundation recently announced a $40 million grant program to support developers building layer-1 blockchains on the Avalanche network. The amount came in retroactive rewards as part of the Avalanche9000 upgrade’s launch on testnet, which aims to drive purpose-built protocols and reduce costs.
This month, the Layer 1 blockchain secured $250 million through a locked token sale. Notable participants included Dragonfly, Galaxy Digital, and ParaFi Capital, along with SkyBridge, Hivemind, Morgan Creek Digital, SCB Limited, Big Brain Holdings, and others. These strategic resources are to help “foster institutional participation and long-term growth, ensuring they can lead the next wave of blockchain adoption.”
Most recently, the blockchain saw an increase in gaming activity, with Solo Leveling, an anime series with over 14 billion views, officially going live on the platform.
Now, for the coming year, Ava Labs predict launching blockchains becoming as easy as websites, stablecoins continuing to grow, wallets serving multiple purposes, AI and blockchain to converge, increased demand for tokenized assets, Web3 gaming to hit 50 million monthly active users (MAUs), and traders rotating back to utility coins.
Click here to learn all about investing in Avalanche (AVAX).
Chainlink (LINK)
The 15th largest cryptocurrency by market cap of $12.9 bln has only managed to rise as much as 41.66% of gains as it trades at $20.3. This has been a disappointing year for Chainlink after pulling in more decent gains of 165.59% the year prior, which came after a 73.14% decline during the bear market.
However, the 2021 bull market wasn’t that good for LINK either, as its price only surged 64.37% to hit an ATH of $52.70, and prices are still down 61% from that. This lack of price performance could be in part due to just over 63% of the token’s supply circulating in the market.
The Chainlink mainnet was actually launched in 2019 to address the Oracle problem. Oracles connect blockchains with real-world data through external APIs and data feeds. LINK, meanwhile, is used to pay for the operation of Oracle services and to incentivize the accurate performance of these services.
This year, the project launched a cross-chain bridging app called Transporter, which is powered by CCIP and allows users to bridge supported assets across several networks. Most recently, Chainlink introduced two new privacy-preserving capabilities that enable financial institutions to maintain data integrity and confidentiality while supporting regulatory compliance. The Blockchain Privacy Manager and CCIP Private Transactions complement its existing privacy-preserving capabilities, including DECO, a ZK-oracle tech for verifying web data while preserving privacy.
In November, the Chainlink platform reported enabling over $17 trillion in value as it works with Swift, Euroclear, and major banking and capital markets institutions.
Despite all this adoption, LINK price continues to suffer because of the selling pressure from node operators. Also, all the Oracle usage doesn’t really translate well to a similar demand for LINK tokens. Not to mention, this cycle has been all about AI and meme coins, which means coins like LINK that belong to old narratives don’t really get any traction.
Click here to learn all about investing in Chainlink (LINK).
Conclusion
As we saw in this year’s best and worst performers and how they have been doing in past years, what may be leading this time may not be the next time around. However, narratives and coins that have managed to gather attention and show strong performance so far in a cycle tend to continue to do so throughout until they top out.
Given that the total crypto market cap is not far from the 2021 bull market peak of $3 trillion, prices are expected to rise higher.
So, by 2025, one of the primary expectations among market participants is for Bitcoin to surpass $100K and surge much higher, driven by strong institutional demand. If the speculation surrounding Bitcoin’s adoption as a strategic reserve asset gains traction among nation-states, we could see substantial capital flowing into the world’s largest cryptocurrency.
While Ethereum has been a disappointment, it is expected that ETH will finally regain interest, especially if institutions get the approval to stake their coins.
Besides AI and meme coins to see renewed traction next year, the regulatory clarity as the result of the most pro-crypto administration ever is projected to lead to greater innovation, more development, enhanced adoption, and much higher prices.
