Most cryptocurrencies have had a bright 2023, accumulating massive gains during a sentiment pivot from 2022’s bear market. Greed indexes returned to 2021’s bullish levels, allowing investors to realize yearly profits.
Notably, Bitcoin (BTC) outperformed 65 of the top 100 cryptocurrency projects, increasing its now lowered dominance. The leader gained attention with spot ETF applications from industry giants like BlackRock and Fidelity.
However, the biggest gains in 2023 were from cryptocurrencies, appealing to 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 CoinGecko’s report from December 28 lists BONK, Injective (INJ), CorgiAI, Kaspa (KAS), Render (RNDR), Solana (SOL), Conflux (CFX), WEMIX, Fetch.ai (FET), and Stacks (STX).
Bonk (BONK)
Bonk (BONK) is the biggest gainer of the year, increasing by 7,302.9%, according to CoinGecko. The meme coin built on Solana (SOL) made 2.5 times more returns than Injective in the second place.
“Bonk, the top crypto gainer, had multiple narratives throughout 2023. The popularity of meme coins and the revival of the Solana ecosystem played a significant role to its success.”
— CoinGecko
At the time of publication, BONK was trading at $0.00001448 in the 76th position by market value from CoinMarkeCap’s index.
Injective (INJ)
Ranked as the number two biggest gainer of 2023, Injective witnessed a staggering hike of 2,748%, soaring from $1.27 to $36.18.
Interestingly, introducing pre-launch token futures by its decentralized exchange, Helix, sparked INJ’s surge. Moreover, Injective set up an ecosystem fund valued at $150 million at the start of the year to boost the uptake of interoperable infrastructure and DeFi.
CorgiAI (CORGIAI)
As reported by CoinGecko:
“CorgiAI (CORGIAI) is the third largest crypto gainer of 2023, increasing by 1,959.7% from $0.00014 to $0.00282. CorgiAI gained traction as the main meme coin on the Cronos blockchain, following the trend where each chain is expected to have its own ‘meme coin’.”
Conclusion
Essentially, holding any of CoinGecko’s top 10 biggest gainers at the beginning of 2023 would have outperformed Bitcoin and Ethereum (ETH) by at least 3.9 times.
However, most of the top performers are highly speculative tokens, recently created. These cryptocurrencies surged due to initially low liquidity, moving from just a few thousand dollars in market capitalization.
Therefore, investing in these projects was an extremely high-risk operation. Thousands of other low-liquidity tokens have just faded to oblivion, bringing huge losses for speculators. In this context, it is essential that investors are aware of the risks and do their due diligence on each desired cryptocurrency.
Disclaimer: The content on this site should not be considered investment advice. Investing is speculative. When investing, your capital is at risk.
