The time flies and it might even be flying faster in the Cryptoverse – or so it would appear – with the turbulent, volatile markets putting on a show for us daily, monthly, and yearly. And what a show they put in 2020!
From bitcoin (BTC) reaching new all-time highs, climbing towards USD 30,000 at the end of the year, to ethereum (ETH) finally launching its Phase 0 of Ethereum 2.0, and its price jumping to some USD 740 by the year’s last day – nobody could deny that it was a year full of big events for the Cryptoverse. And these were just a couple of news about the top 2 coins, with many more about them and other projects – both good and bad – being reported on throughout the year (check out our previous quarterly coin races, for example).
Let’s take a look at the performance by 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 obviously a lot greener, and we’ll see no better representation of that than the month of December. Though, granted, it saw quite a few coins’ prices drop, it also brought significant increases to the market as well.
Top 10 Coins
All but two coins saw a rise in their prices – and a double-digit one at that. At the very top, with more than a 77% rise, stands a relatively 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 somewhat 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 a number of platforms suspending trading in XRP.
Top 10 Winners
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, as well as zilliqa (ZIL)’s 201.4%. The 3rd and 4th place are occupied by coins 131.7% and 82.6%, these being celsius network (CEL) and decred (DCR), respectively. The least to have appreciated among the most-appreciating coins in December is Polkadot-related kusama (KSM), which went up almost 42.3%.
Top 10 Losers
But for all its greenery, December wasn’t without its drops either. The troubled XRP takes the first place among the biggest decreases in the top 50 category as well. 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 last month.
Top 10 Coins
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 course of the past three months is XRP, by 4.45%.
Top 10 Winners
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
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 dropped 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-month period, 25.4% and 12.5%, respectively.
Results of 2020
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
Among the top 10 coins, and over the course of the entire 2020, it’s LINK that 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 the second place. ADA is not far, seeing its price increase 444.8%. That’s where we reach bitcoin, boasting its own 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
However, 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%.
And 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
And we get yet another turn, a twist in this story if you will, when observing the red coins in 2020 – and finding only four. Revain (REV)’s price decreased the most over the course of 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%.
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