Most cryptocurrencies had a brilliant 2023, posting massive gains during a swing in sentiment following the bear market in 2022. The greed indices returned to the bullish levels of 2021, allowing investors to make annual profits.
Notably, Bitcoin (BTC) outperformed 65 of the top 100 cryptocurrency projects, extending its now diminished dominance. The market leader attracted attention with spot ETF applications from industry giants such as BlackRock and Fidelity.
However, the biggest gains in 2023 came from cryptocurrencies, which fits a more popular narrative. In particular, meme coins, Layer 1 protocols, artificial intelligence and Layer 2 solutions dominated this year's narrative.
In the top 10, a December 28th report from CoinGecko lists BONK, Injective (INJ), CorgiAI, Kaspa (KAS), Render (RNDR), Solana (SOL), Conflux (CFX), WEMIX, Fetch.ai (FET) on. and Stacks (STX).
Best performing cryptocurrencies in 2023. Source: CoinGecko
Bonk (BONK)
According to CoinGecko, Bonk (BONK) is the biggest gainer of the year, up 7,302.9%. The Solana (SOL)-based meme coin returned 2.5x more than second-place Injective.
“Bonk, the top crypto winner, had multiple narratives in 2023. The popularity of meme coins and the revival of the Solana ecosystem played an important role in its success.”
—CoinGecko
At the time of publication, BONK was trading at $0.00001448 and ranked 76th in CoinMarkeCap's index by market cap.
Injective (INJ)
The second biggest gainer of 2023, Injective saw a stunning 2,748% rise from $1.27 to $36.18.
Interestingly, the introduction of pre-launch token futures by decentralized exchange Helix triggered INJ’s upswing. Additionally, earlier this year, Injective launched a $150 million ecosystem fund to support the adoption of interoperable infrastructure and DeFi.
INJ chart for the current year. Source: Finbold
CorgiAI (CORGIAI)
As reported by CoinGecko:
“CorgiAI (CORGIAI) is the third-biggest crypto gainer in 2023, rising 1,959.7% from $0.00014 to $0.00282. CorgiAI gained traction as the premier meme coin on the Cronos blockchain, following the trend of every chain having its own “meme coin.”
Diploma
Essentially, holding one of CoinGecko's top ten winners entering 2023 would have outperformed Bitcoin and Ethereum (ETH) by at least 3.9x.
However, most of the top performers are highly speculative tokens that have only recently been created. These cryptocurrencies rose sharply due to initially low liquidity, reaching a market capitalization of just a few thousand dollars.
Therefore, investing in these projects was an extremely risky venture. Thousands of other tokens with low liquidity have just fallen into obscurity, causing huge losses to speculators. In this context, it is important that investors are aware of the risks and carefully consider any cryptocurrency they wish to invest in.
Disclaimer: The content of this website should not be considered investment advice. Investing is speculative. When you invest, your capital is at risk.