Bitcoin hit a new all-time high this year, buoyed by the approval of a US spot ETF and Donald Trump's election - but some assets have performed even better.
Bitcoin hit a new all-time high this year, mainly due to the approval of a US spot ETF and the subsequent election of Donald Trump as president - although other assets have outperformed.
Decrypt used data from CoinGecko and Nasdaq to analyze and determine the best performing cryptocurrencies. Eligible assets must have had a starting market cap of at least $500 million between January 1 and December 17.
Other digital asset-related investments, including some major corporate investments, have also performed well. Here is a look at the best performing assets this year.
PEPE - The Meme Coin Winner of the Year
PEPE is one of the newer meme tokens that has risen to prominence, launching last year. The token is based on Pepe the Frog, an internet cartoon character that was later designated as a hate symbol by the Anti-Defamation League because of its adoption by far-right groups.
Pepe hit a new all-time high in December. The Ethereum-based token had a market cap of $590.8 million at the start of the year, which grew to $9.4 billion by December 17, an increase of 1,492%.
Pepe has made headlines - in typical meme fashion - for its absurd growth in value and making some traders rich. But unlike many of the strange assets in the meme token space, Pepe has continued to rise and is now the 28th largest cryptocurrency by market cap.
Sui (SUI) - The Altcoin King
The little-known Sui (SUI) has recently emerged: the blockchain, launched in May 2023 and developed by former Meta (formerly Facebook) engineers, now has an active DeFi community leveraging its fast network.
The native token of the fast blockchain Sui, SUI, has seen a massive surge this year. In January, SUI had a market cap of $925 million. After a 1,193% increase, by December its market cap was close to $12 billion. SUI is now the 18th largest cryptocurrency by market cap.
MicroStrategy (MSTR) - The Winning Bitcoin Stock
Michael Saylor's software company has gone all-in on Bit this year - the company's stock shows it was under $70 per share at the start of the year.
By December, the stock price had nearly quintupled to $386, a 464% increase, outperforming all other Nasdaq stocks, including Nvidia.
MicroStrategy was once an obscure software company. Since 2020, the company has started buying Bit and rebranded itself as the "Bit Treasury Company". This year, the Tysons, Virginia-based company accelerated its Bit purchases, promising investors the best Bit investment opportunity.
Investors - including hedge funds seeking volatile returns - have piled into the stock.
Dogecoin (DOGE)
The original meme coin. Dogecoin (DOGE) was initially created as a joke to mock the proliferation of Altcoins, and is now the 7th largest cryptocurrency by market cap.
This year, its market cap grew by 342% to $45.9 billion. The rise of Bit has undoubtedly played a role.
This is largely thanks to Tesla CEO Elon Musk: the world's richest man frequently tweeted about Dogecoin in 2020-2021, and has mentioned Dogecoin again in speculation about its use on his social platform X (formerly Twitter).
XRP - The Comeback Kid
XRP has had a strong performance this year. The token supports transactions on the Ripple network, which provides blockchain-based cross-border payment solutions for institutions.
The token's market cap has soared, now the 4th largest cryptocurrency, growing from $34 billion to $131.2 billion, an increase of 286%. It briefly surpassed Tether this month to become the 3rd largest cryptocurrency by market cap, having been the 6th largest on January 1.
The token has made headlines due to its regulatory disputes. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Ripple for $1.3 billion in 2020, alleging the company raised funds by selling unregistered securities to investors.
But last year, Ripple won partial victories in its legal battle with regulators, with a judge ruling that the programmatic sales of XRP to retail investors on crypto exchanges did not constitute securities sales.
While the judge ruled that $728 million worth of tokens used for institutional sales constituted unregistered securities sales, this ruling is still seen as a win by Ripple and the broader crypto industry.
BlackRock's iShares Bit Trust (IBIT)
Given the title of this piece, we can consider this an honorable mention. It has been an incredible year for Bit, and the world's largest asset manager has contributed by launching an ETF that has opened up the largest, oldest cryptocurrency to everyone.
The iShares Bit Trust is a traditional investment vehicle that allows investors to buy and sell stocks that track the price of Bit. These stocks trade on the Nasdaq.
When it began trading in January, IBIT broke records for trading volume and inflows: by December, it had over $50 billion in assets under management, reaching that milestone in just 228 days, faster than any other ETF in history.
Several other top asset managers have launched Bit ETFs, but BlackRock's product has been the most successful.
