After major crypto tokens Bitcoin and Ethereum blew up in 2020, 2021 saw the crypto market expand as alternative cryptocurrencies led by $SOL token came to the fore.
The $SOL token price grew 11,281% between January and December 2021.
According to the CoinGecko’s 2021 report, the following top 30 coins delivered 5-digit percentage returns or more during 2021:
- $SOL
- $LUNA
- $SHIB
- $MATIC
- $AXS
- $FTM
The Top 30 coins closed out with a total market cap of $2.0T while the entire market cap hit an all-time high (ATH) at $2.5T in November 2021 before taking a dip at the end of the year.
Bitcoin ($BTC)
Bitcoin ended the year on a positive note at $47,191, representing a 62.6% increase year-on-year.
Bitcoin hit its all-time high in 2021 as well, reaching $69,045 on November 10, 2022 before pulling back.
The report lists some noteworthy moments in the original crypto’s 2021 history :
- Public listed companies added BTC to their treasuries
- El Salvador adopted BTC as a form of currency
- Crypto clampdown by Chinese authorities led to the great mining migration
- Taproot upgrade launched, providing greater privacy and enabling the deployment of smart contracts
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SEE ALSO: The NFT Market Grew 200x to Over $20 Billion in 2021 – OpenSea Made Up 60% MarketShare
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Ethereum ($ETH)
ETH still ended the year on a strong note at $3,715 – a whopping 403% year-on-year increase.
ETH hit its all-time high on two occasions in 2021.
The first time was on May 11, 2021 when it broke the $4,000 mark to close at $4,183. After a pullback, it rallied to a new ATH again on Nov 9, 2021 at $4,815.
For the second most valuable crypto, here were some of the highlights from the report:
- London Hard Fork – Ethereum’s much-hyped network upgrade that consisted of 5 improvement protocols, with EIP-1559 garnering the most attention since it overhauled the entire transaction structure
- Altair – The first upgrade to the Beacon Chain since its launch in December 2020
The CoinGecko report reveals that there is a clear demand for Ethereum / Bitcoin alternatives as users flock to other altchains.
4 altchain tokens saw price growths that surpassed 10,000% over a 1-year period, namely,
Fantom marked the highest YTD increase at 14,279% Other altchains have also seen huge positive price returns (<1,000%), though nowhere near the levels of the top 6.
In 2021, the DeFi market cap increased by 7.5x from $20 billion to $150 billion, while its share of the crypto market has more than doubled from 2.8% to an all-time-high of 6.5%.
Spot Trading
According to the report, despite the downturn in crypto markets at the end of 2021:
- Overall, Q4 spot trading volume across the top-10 centralized and decentralized exchanges increased from $4.38 trillion to $6.1 trillion (+38.57%)
- Other than an increase in November 2021, monthly trading volume in Q4, 2021 essentially remained at the same levels as September 2021
- Monthly trading volume in Q4, 2021 has been the highest since the run up and subsequent dip in Q2, 2021
- Notably, the DEX : CEX ratio has steadily increased from 6% at the start of 2022 to 10%
The crypto industry is expected to extend its momentum in 2022, leaving the door open for many of the trends from 2021 to develop.
Other than altchains, CoinGecko expects NFTs to extend the bumper performance from 2021.
The report urges the crypto community to watch out for GameFi and SocialFi as well in 2022. So far, CoinGecko tracks at least 12, 000 coins across 500 exchanges.
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RECOMMENDED READING: 2022: The Year of GameFi?
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Thank you for your support by helping us create content:
BTC address: 3CW75kjLYu7WpELdaqTv722vbobUswVtxT
ERC20 Address: 0xBc11cFa590C6CC465248D77d399C3106B881cC0E
SOL address: 9cC65AWFHj848kntcoyiT8av3jiRQEqyTTmBR1GvVUb
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