Altcoins are showing an overall downward trend in recent times due to the massive anticipation around Bitcoin halving. However, the overall ride since the last year has been roller coaster for some coins while for others it has been more of the same.
Altcoins, short for Alternative Coins is a term used in the cryptocurrency world for coin projects other than Bitcoin itself. They include Ethereum, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, XRP, Dash, Monero and the rest of the pack. Other than these popular coins, there are thousands of other altcoins in the world but ofcourse, the combined worth of these projects is currently dwarfed by Bitcoin itself with the premier cryptocurrency having a whopping 60% of the market share as of now.
Due to the massive crypto boom of late 2017 and early 2018, most of the new coin projects were launched with no end goal in mind but to jump on the bandwagon. So, even when most of the new projects bit the dust eventually, some of them survived and became success stories but no major top 5 coin has come into existence during the last two years. The top 5 coins themselves change positions frequently but no next big thing has been witnessed during this time.
Let us take a look at the consistent top 5 altcoins and their behaviour during the last two years:
Source: coinmarketcap.com
Ethereum has largely cemented its position as the second most valuable cryptocurrency during the last two years. Only XRP has come close to challenging this position once or twice but it couldn’t sustain it. Ethereum has had a real roller coaster ride during the last two years. At the start of 2018, the cryptocurrency had reached its all-time high of $1400. However, the cryptocurrency immediately fell in the ensuing months. At the end of the year, the cryptocurrency had fell to below $100 which is an astonishing price reduction. It means that the cryptocurrency dropped to around 6% of the all-time high value at one point, thus wiping out 94% of its value from that position.
However, it recovered slightly afterwards. 2019 saw it fluctuating anywhere between $90 and $330 which is much more volatility than Bitcoin itself. The first five months of 2020 saw the price being limited between $140 and $300 which is relatively stable. However with the shift to Proof-of-Stake mining by the Ethereum core developers, there is considerable anticipation around the cryptocurrency.
Source: coinmarketcap.com
Bitcoin Cash (BCH), the main hard fork of Bitcoin came into existence in September 2017. It has consistently occupied the 4th and 5th positions in the coin charts. However, that is only one side of the story as the cryptocurrency also fluctuated a lot in between. Starting with a price index of $2000+, the cryptocurrency rose to its all-time high of $3000 in January 2018. However, the price index is largely downward from that point and time with occasional small pumps in April and May 2018.
However, after these sizeable pumps, the cryptocurrency dropped further, reaching as low as $82 in December 2018. This means that the cryptocurrency witnessed a low of 2.73% of the all-time high value, thus wiping off 97.27% of its value from that position. However, the price has eventually stabilized between $200 and $400 ever since for more than a year. This is also considerably less volatile.
Source: coinmarketcap.com
Ripple’s native cryptocurrency XRP is often criticized for having a more centralized operations approach and no incentives being in place to promote decentralization. However, the cryptocurrency has occupied the 3rd or fourth place in the cryptocurrency charts below Bitcoin and Ethereum for some time. Just like other altcoins, the cryptocurrency reached an all-time high of $3.2 at the start of 2018. However, the price index dropped sharply in the ensuing months reaching a low of $0.14 at one point. However with XRP it was different as the low was witnessed much later on in March 2020 rather than in 2019 as in the case with Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum. This shows that the XRP graph is sloping downwards more than the top 2 coins in the long-term.
Source: coinmarketcap.com
The only stablecoin in this list, the USD Tether has largely been stable, other than a few times of uncertainty when it fell more than 7% against the USD which was pretty alarming for a stablecoin anyway. However, the coin’s market cap has largely been increased over the course of time due to more and more USDT being created at the Tether treasury. The market cap is expected to grow even further in the future as stablecoins provide an easy solution for borderless payments in USD.
Source: coinmarketcap.com
Litecoin was created as the Silver to Bitcoin’s gold and it has largely, but shakily remained within the top five cryptocurrencies in the world if we set aside Tether because it is a stablecoin. However, this consistent chart position is also misleading as the cryptocurrency also endured some of the most volatile times in crypto history.
From an all-time high of $298 in early 2018, the cryptocurrency dropped to around $22 in early 2019. This represents a price being reduced to around 7% of the all-time high value. However, the price eventually picked up and is now fluctuating between $35 and $130 ever since. The cryptocurrency is certainly more volatile than other coins on this list.
Source: coinmarketcap.com
Chainlink’s cryptocurrency project gained a lot during the last two years. From being below the top 50 cryptocurrencies at one time during 2018, it has come a long way. Its lowest value was around $0.2 and now it has surpassed $4 showing an increase of around 2000%. This is a remarkable achievement especially considering the protracted bear market of 2018 and 2019.
Source: coinmarketcap.com
Despite suffering an early drop at the start of the network, Tezos has gained some ground in 2019 and early 2020. The cryptocurrency project is now between $2 and $3 at this point. The currency has shown strong results at the end of 2019 and has increased investor confidence.
Source: coinmarketcap.com
Binance launched its native coin for its exchange back in 2017 and it has shown a positive performance overall during the last three years. Starting at around $8 it went all the way up to $24 in April, 2019 before coming down to around $16 in May 2020. The coin has been one of the most consistent and relatively stable cryptocurrencies around and provides real-life value by reducing transaction costs on the Binance platform. However, the coin is also heavily centralized and not enough transparency is there regarding its workings.
Source: coinmarketcap.com
Eos performed well in bits and pieces across the two year time period. So much so that it can be called the king of pumps and dumps. Between April, 2018 and July later that year, the coin’s worth increased from $4.5 to a whopping $21 at one point. This opened doors to considerable speculation that the coin would soon be a permanent figure in the top five coins in the world but it failed to build on that success and came back to $5 by the end of July. The same uptick was never witnessed again and the coin continuously dropped over time. Nowadays it is being traded in a narrow range between $1.96 and $3.1 which shows a drop of more than 50% from the start of 2018. EOS is one of many cryptocurrency projects that couldn’t deliver on the hype for now.
Source: coinmarketcap.com
Tron started 2018 strongly and posted its highest price index of over $0.22 in January. However, just like many other crypto projects that couldn’t sustain their successes, Tron has followed the same path and immediately shed over 85% of its value and went below $0.03. Eventually, the coin shed more and more value as time passed with some pump and dump-esque upticks in between. For the last few months, it has recorded its lowest ever value of around $0.009 in March 2020 which means that it shed 96% of its value between the all-time high and the all-time low values. Despite recovering a little to $0.014 and still hovering there, it is still an overall a sharp downward trend for the altcoin which seemed like the real deal almost two years ago.
Source: coinmarketcap.com
The Internet of Things (IoT) based coin that was also conceived during the great 2017-2018 crypto boom also lost a lot in value overall during the course of last two years. Just like EOS, things started great for the coin in early 2018 with a price of around $4.13 and a market cap of around $12 billion, its highest figures ever. However, the drop has been long and laboured in case of IOTA. The coin posted an all-time lowest figure of just $0.11 around March 13, 2020. This presents a reduction of more than 97.4% from its all-time high position. Currently, it is being traded between $0.15 and $0.2, thus retaining most of the losses with no significant upticks in more than a year.
Source: coinmarketcap.com
Once a staple top ten altcoin that everyone especially the Asian traders loved to trade in. It was also one of the older crypto projects that started way back altcoins were the new cool. However, due to a myriad of external factors, the much traded coin eventually lost most of its footing during the crypto winter between 2018 and 2020. The coin posted a value of $2.09 USD on Jan 04, 2018. However, the price immediately tanked due to a large hack on several Japanese and South Korean exchanges that saw a lot of XEM coins being reported stolen. The price dipped to $0.22 in no time and has been going mostly down ever since. The Asian markets’ interest has cooled down and now it is being traded in a narrow range between $0.035 and $0.04.
Most of the altcoins have had a roller coaster ride during the last two years. However, judging many of them just on the last two years will be unwise because early 2018 when all of these coins mooned and later in the same year they tanked. By that metric, Bitcoin also tanked from $20,000 to $2,900 during this timeframe before recovering to the current $9,000 figure. The altcoins are however, much more volatile than Bitcoin during this timeframe.
Featured Image Source: pixabay.com
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