Bitcoin, Stablecoins, and DeFi: The Best-Performing Crypto Assets of 2020
Editor's Note: This article comes fromCointelegraph Chinese (ID: CointelegraphChina)Cointelegraph Chinese (ID: CointelegraphChina)
Bitcoin (BTCBitcoin (
bitcoin
) has performed extremely well in 2020, but how have other top crypto assets fared? Let’s take a look at how some of the largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization are doing.
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First, Bitcoin has rallied significantly since January 1, with its price surging from $7,195 to $28,422.
In 12 months, the price of Bitcoin has increased by 290%, outperforming all major stock indexes and most stocks except Tesla (TSLA).
These three macro factors combined to drive Bitcoin’s upward momentum in October. Ultimately, bitcoin’s gains were accelerated by massive spikes in trading volume and inflows across major institutional platforms, including the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) and Grayscale.
Ethereum
Ethereum (ETHsecondary title
Ethereum
Ethereum (
Ethereum started 2020 at $128 on major exchanges, peaking at $748 on Dec. 30.
Throughout November, the main driving force for the rise of Ethereum was the release of ETH2.0. After deposits crossed the threshold of 400,000 Ethereum, ETH2.0 was launched.
ETH2.0 is a major network upgrade for Ethereum because it will exponentially expand the blockchain over time. Without ETH2.0, Ethereum can process less than 20 transactions per second. With Eth2ETH2.0, this number could increase to thousands of transactions per second.
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old school altcoinsMost of the old-school altcoins (from 2017 or earlier) including XRP, Cadano (ADA) and Stellar (XLM) have underperformed Bitcoin on a year-to-date basis.Among the altcoins, XRP initially performed particularly well in November as Bitcoin broke out to new all-time highs.At the beginning of 2020, the price of XRP was $0.1923, and the highest surge was $0.9210,. But when
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smart contract protocol
Polkadot, Chainlink, EOS, and Tezos have also all posted gains since the start of the year. All four smart-contract-related cryptocurrencies posted sharp gains as Bitcoin rallied to $20,000.
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Bitcoin weekly chart comparing to Chainlink, Polkadot, EOS and Tezos Source: TradingView.com
For example, Chainlink has benefited from the explosive growth of the decentralized finance (DeFi) space. Chainlink is a blockchain network centered on oracles, and the goal of oracles is to provide data for DeFi protocols.
As a result, Chainlink and many other DeFi-related tokens also rallied as the total value locked in DeFi reached $16 billion.
Despite various drivers, Polkadot, EOS, Tezos, and Chainlink have lagged Bitcoin in year-to-date gains. The main reason for the flattening of price volatility is the rapid rise of Bitcoin after breaking through $20,000, which caused altcoins to pull back.
Tether's market capitalization just surpassed $20 billion!
