Author: Babywhale, Techub News
When everyone thought that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had approved a Bitcoin spot ETF, and that the scene of "all coins rising together" in 2021 would reappear, reality delivered a heavy blow: apart from Bitcoin pointing to $100,000, a large number of "Altcoins" that shone brightly in the previous bull market not only failed to set new highs in this round of the market, but are still hovering at the bottom.
To some extent, this may also indicate that as cryptocurrency investment gradually becomes mainstream in the US, new entrant capital will be concentrated on quality targets, just like the US stock market. And in this round of the market, there are also some tokens that reached their peak in the previous bull market and have become the darlings of profit-seekers again in this round. The author has compiled a list of some tokens that set new highs in this round after reaching stage highs in the 2021 bull market, but the scope of understanding is limited, and it may not cover all tokens that meet this condition.
SOL
In the "Alt L1" hot year of 2021, EVM-compatible L1s such as Fantom, NEAR, and Avalanche absorbed the overflow traffic due to the high Ethereum Gas costs. Among them, Solana did not follow the trend, but rebuilt an ecosystem outside the EVM, and under the support of the then-rising FTX founder SBF and the team's own operations, the price of SOL soared from less than $1 when it was first listed on the exchange to over $200.
However, later as the overall market calmed down from the frenzy, and with the collapse of FTX, one of Solana's biggest supporters, SBF, being jailed, SOL plummeted to around $7, and well-known NFT projects on Solana one after another left the ecosystem, and many investors believed that the Solana story might end here.
To the surprise of these people, in this round of the cycle, Solana regained new vitality by the unexpected rise of MEME, and the emergence of several ecosystem projects such as the staking project Jito, and the price of SOL has risen all the way, breaking the high of nearly $260 set in early November 2021 a week ago.
BNB
As the only true multi-chain public chain among "exchange platform tokens", the BNB issued by Binance has left a deep impression on people, whether in its ability to "withstand the bear market" during the bear market or its rise during the bull market. In the bear market of 2022, BNB fell all the way from around $660 in May 2021 to below $200 at one point. Although the decline was also significant, compared to many tokens that fell more than 90% or even almost to zero, BNB can also be considered a relatively "value-preserving" asset.
Subsequently, with the recovery of the market, and Binance launching Launchpool and Launchpad projects at an almost crazy pace, BNB also marched forward rapidly, and on June 24 this year, it broke through the price high of the previous bull market, reaching a high of over $700. Compared to the dismal exit of the HECO Network under Huobi, BNB still has a lot of potential value to be further explored, both within the exchange and on the BNB Chain.
TRX
The fact that the Tron token TRX set a new high in this cycle can be said to be both unexpected and understandable. The issuance of USDT has already approached 140 billion, and Tron has been the preferred choice for USDT transfers for a long time. Although Tron has now been surpassed by Ethereum in terms of USDT issuance volume, and is clearly inferior to Ethereum in terms of actual application scenarios, it must be admitted that at least in terms of capital circulation, Tron is still the first choice for USDT holders.
According to data from defillama, the TVL on Tron was about $7.555 billion at the time of writing, and this figure had once exceeded $10 billion in March this year. The price of TRX reached a high of $0.18 on April 17, 2021, and three and a half years later, two weeks ago on November 12, TRX set a new high and then rose to over $0.22 in the following days.
TON
The emergence of TON can be traced back to the ICO era, when Telegram raised $1.7 billion through an ICO for its token Grams and planned to launch The Open Network (TON), but an SEC lawsuit put everything on hold. This typical SEC-style lawsuit, where they see everything as a security, was not settled until 2020, and Telegram had to pay the price of not being able to continue TON development.
Afterwards, TON has been running with the support of the community, but has never really made a big splash in the industry. Its token price reached a high of $4.4 at the end of 2021, but has continued to decline along with the overall market.
Fast forward to 2022, in the period from April to July, the TON Foundation, together with multiple institutions, frequently launched ecosystem funds ranging from tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars, sounding the horn of rapid expansion of the TON ecosystem. As a blockchain under the Telegram platform with tens of millions of users, TON did not put too much effort into the user volume issue, and its launch of various games and interactive experiences integrated with Telegram made its transition from 0 to 1 very smooth, and the speed from 1 to 100 is also astonishing.
Driven by market enthusiasm, the price of TON also briefly broke through $8 in June this year, an increase of nearly 100% from its previous "peak".
LEO
To be honest, if I hadn't checked the data website, I wouldn't have known about the existence of this token. LEO is a token issued by the veteran exchange Bitfinex, with functions including fee reduction. As for why this token set a new high, I haven't found any convincing news, the only possibility is that the hacker who once stole 120,000 Bitcoins from Bitfinex being sentenced may have been seen as a positive factor to some extent.
LEO briefly broke through $8 in early February 2022, and a week ago on November 20, LEO set a new high and once rose to nearly $9.
FET
Fetch.ai, as a product born before the last bull market, has stubbornly persisted until today when AI has become a "hot topic". In the early years when the "blockchain+" concept was popular, many related projects were established, and by now the vast majority have become historical dust, but there are also some projects that have persisted to this day and ushered in a real second spring, in addition to Fetch.ai, there are also projects like IoTeX.
In the first half of this year, SingularityNET, Fetch.ai and Ocean Protocol proposed to establish a super artificial intelligence alliance and merge their tokens, and this plan has now been completed. The important influence of AI on the development of human society is beyond doubt, but whether Crypto can really drive this process remains to be observed over time.
In early September 2021, FET reached a stage high of nearly $1.2, and this year the AI craze sparked by OpenAI has pushed FET's price to around $3.5, nearly doubling the high of the previous bull market.
OKB
