Bitcoin It hit all-time highs this year, mainly due to the approval of spot ETFs in the US and later after the election of Donald Trump – although other assets outperformed.

Decryption conducted the analysis Using data from CoinGecko and Nasdaq to identify high-performing coins. To qualify, assets need an initial market cap of at least $500 million, during the period from January 1 to December 17.

Other investments related to digital assets, including those of large companies, also performed well. Here's a look at the best-performing assets this year.

Pepe, this year's winning coin

One of the newest tokens sitting near the top of the market, baby (PEPE), which was launched last year. The symbol is based on Pepe the Frog, an online cartoon that was later labeled a hate symbol by the Anti-Defamation League after far-right groups bizarrely adopted it.

Pepe reached a new all-time high in December. the EthereumThe token-based currency started the year with a market capitalization of $590.8 million, but reached $9.4 billion by December 17 — an increase of 1,492%.

Pepe has made headlines for his exemplary style Fucking high In terms of value and how rich a few traders are. But unlike many assets in the weird token space, Pepe has continued to climb, and is now the 28th largest coin by market cap.

SUI, the king of altcoins

It was not long ago that this was unknown but (SUI) came onto the scene: the blockchain launched in May 2023, was developed by former engineers at Meta (formerly Facebook) and now has a bustling DeFi community using its fast network.

Rapid blockchain's native SUI token Sui has boomed this year. In January, its market value reached $925 million. The 1,193% rise means that by December, it had reached nearly $12 billion. SUI is now the 18th largest cryptocurrency by market cap.

MicroStrategy (MSTR) – Winning Bitcoin Stock

Michael Saylor's software company has been bullish on Bitcoin this year, and the company's stock shows it was trading at less than $70 a share at the start of the year.

By December, the price had increased nearly fivefold, to $386. That's a 464% increase and better than anything else on the Nasdaq, including Nvidia.

MicroStrategy was previously a quiet software company. It then started buying Bitcoin in 2020 and renamed itself “Bitcoin Treasury Company.” This year, the Tysons, Virginia-based entity accelerated purchases of the orange coin, promising speculators the best deal for exposure to Bitcoin.

Investors — including hedge funds looking to capture volatile returns — piled into stocks.

Dogecoin

OG coin meme. Dogecoin (DOGE) was created as a joke to make fun of the ridiculous amount of altcoins being minted into existence, and is now the seventh largest cryptocurrency by market cap.

Its market value jumped by 342% this year and now stands at $45.9 billion. The rise of Bitcoin has certainly helped.

This is mainly thanks to Tesla CEO Elon Musk: the world's richest man frequently posted about the asset in 2020-2021, and did so again this year amid speculation that the currency would be used on his X platform (formerly Twitter).

XRP, baby return

XRP It's been a strong year. The token facilitates transactions on the Ripple network, which provides organizations with a blockchain solution for cross-border payments.

The token's market capitalization has risen so dramatically that it is now the fourth largest cryptocurrency, increasing by 286% from $34 billion to $131.2 billion. It was briefly the third largest coin this month, surpassing Tether; On January 1 of this year, it was the sixth.

The currency has made headlines due to its dealings with the authorities. The Securities and Exchange Commission sued Ripple for $1.3 billion in 2020, alleging that the company sold unregistered securities to investors to raise money.

But last year, the company scored a partial victory against the regulator when a judge ruled that automated sales of XRP on cryptocurrency exchanges to retail investors did not qualify as securities.

The ruling was interpreted as a win for Ripple — and the cryptocurrency industry as a whole — despite the judge's ruling that the $728 million worth of institutional sales tokens constituted unregistered securities sales.

BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT)

Let's call this an honorable mention, given the title of this article. It's been a great year for Bitcoin, and the world's largest asset manager has played a role by making the largest and oldest cryptocurrency available to everyone via ETFs.

iShares Bitcoin Trust is a traditional investment vehicle that allows investors to buy and sell stocks that track the price of Bitcoin. The stock is traded on the NASDAQ stock exchange.

When it started trading in January, IBIT broke record after record in terms of trading volume and inflows: by December, it had achieved More than $50 billion In assets under management, the milestone was achieved in just 228 days – faster than any other ETF in history.

Several other major asset managers also have trading Bitcoin ETFs, but BlackRock's product has been the most successful.

Modified by Sebastian Sinclair