by Niccolo Conte at Visual Capitalist
The Returns of Top Cryptocurrencies in 2021
2021 saw the crypto markets boom and mature, with different sectors flourishing and largely outperforming the market leader, bitcoin.
While bitcoin only managed to return 59.8% last year, the crypto sector’s total market cap grew by 187.5%, with many of the top coins offering four and even five-digit percentage returns.
2021 Crypto Market Roundup
Last year wasn’t just a breakout year for crypto in terms of returns, but also the growing infrastructure’s maturity and resulting decorrelation of individual crypto industries and coins.
Crypto’s infrastructure has developed significantly, and there are now many more onramps for people to buy altcoins that don’t require purchasing and using bitcoin in the process. As a result, many cryptocurrency prices were more dictated by the value and functionality of their protocol and applications rather than their correlation to bitcoin.
| Cryptocurrency | Category | 2021 Returns |
|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin | Cryptocurrency | 59.8% |
| Ethereum | Smart Contract Platform | 399.2% |
| Binance Coin | Exchange Token | 1,268.9% |
| Solana | Smart Contract Platform | 11,177.8% |
| Cardano | Smart Contract Platform | 621.3% |
| XRP | Cryptocurrency | 277.8% |
| Terra | Smart Contract Platform | 12,967.3% |
| Avalanche | Smart Contract Platform | 3,334.8% |
| Polkadot | Smart Contract Platform | 187.9% |
| Dogecoin | Meme Coin | 3,546.0% |
Sources: TradingView, Binance, Uniswap, FTX, Bittrex
Bitcoin wasn’t the only cryptocurrency that didn’t manage to reach triple-digit returns in 2021. Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash also provided meagre double-digit percentage returns, as payment-focused cryptocurrencies were largely ignored for projects with smart contract capabilities.
Other older projects like Stellar Lumens (109%) and XRP (278%) provided triple-digit returns, with Cardano (621%) being the best performer of the old guard despite not managing to ship its smart contract functionality last year.