Author Mary Liu
2020 is coming to an end, and this year is destined to be a year that people all over the world will not forget. The new crown epidemic broke out at the beginning of the year and quickly raged around the world. Countries have joined the tide of fighting the epidemic. The first domino fell, and a series of chain effects emerged one after another: the blockade, the economic shutdown, the disruption of the global supply chain, the impact of the traditional capital market…
If 2020 has disappointed or even despaired countless people, then a man named Satoshi Nakamoto opened a door of hope for people to break through the old paradigm-Bitcoin more than a decade ago. The lucky ones who entered this door still felt the warmth in the wailing capital market this year.
“Bi Tweet” takes you to review the crypto market in 2020. (Note: The data in the article is as of December 21, 2020)
Top ten cryptocurrencies by market capitalization
1. Bitcoin (BTC)
As the cryptocurrency with the highest market value, Bitcoin will increase by more than 220% in 2020. From more than 7,000 US dollars at the beginning of the year, all the way to the end of July, and finally stabilized at 10,000 US dollars. In the second half of the year, Bitcoin began to exert its strength. At the end of 2020, it gave investors the largest Surprise, which exceeded $20,000 and ushered in a record high. And the rally was fierce, reaching $25,000.
2020 BTC price chart, source of picture: BiTweet
In early February, the price of Bitcoin returned to the $10,000 mark. Around March, affected by the deterioration of the new crown virus, crude oil and U.S. stocks plunged. Global investors have reached a very pessimistic level of economic and market expectations, and the crypto market has also been affected. On March 12-13, Bitcoin experienced a cliff-like decline, falling below the $7,000, $6,000, and $5,000 barriers one after another. Market confidence collapsed. The claim that Bitcoin is a “safe-haven asset” was once again questioned.
After the sharp drop, with the introduction of loose monetary policies in various countries and people’s optimism about the halving, Bitcoin gradually returned to blood. On May 8, the price of Bitcoin exceeded $10,000, a new high since February 24, 2020. However, on May 10th, the price of Bitcoin fell sharply again, once falling to $8,200.
On May 12th, Beijing time, Bitcoin ushered in the third halving. The 630,000th block was mined, and the block reward was halved from 12.5 to 6.25. However, the market did not usher in the skyrocketing as expected. In the following month, the price of Bitcoin was tepid, and it was unable to exceed $10,000.
Image source: skew
On July 26, Bitcoin briefly stretched to more than $10,000. On August 11, MicroStrategy (Nasdaq: MSTR), the world’s largest business consulting services company, announced that it had purchased 21,454 bitcoins for $250 million and used bitcoin as its main reserve asset. In the following time, the price of Bitcoin officially settled above $10,000.
In the fourth quarter, Bitcoin performed well. Payment giant PayPal (Chinese name: PayPal) announced the launch of encrypted transaction services on October 21, US time. On November 4, Bitcoin broke through $14,000 and hit a maximum of $14,040.01, setting a new high since January 2018. On November 12 and November 17, the price exceeded 16,000 and 17,000 USD respectively.
The positive news of buying by large institutions and the continued weakness of the U.S. dollar made the crypto market soar. On November 24, the price of Bitcoin broke the $19,000 mark for the first time since 2017.
On December 16, the price of Bitcoin rose sharply, breaking through $20,000 in one fell swoop, and continuing to hit new highs. As of press time, Bitcoin is floating above $24,000.
This year has been a fruitful year for Bitcoin investors. The “really fragrant” scene of Wall Street giants, and more and more traditional financial institutions have entered the market. In addition to simple “profit-seeking” factors, Bitcoin will help the world. The impact of centralized and borderless payments is bound to become more and more profound.
2. Ethereum (ETH)
Ethereum, which ranks second in market value, has risen nearly 400% since 2020, surpassing Bitcoin. At the time of writing, the ETH price is around $650, still below its 2018 all-time high of $1,500.
2020 ETH price chart, source of picture: BiTweet
Ethereum VS Bitcoin’s growth rate comparison in 2020, image source: CoinCodex
Affected by the liquidity mining and DeFi boom, Ethereum began to concentrate its efforts after late July. On July 26, Ethereum broke through US$300 after rising for 7 consecutive days; less than a month later it broke through US$400 strongly, and even reached US$500 at one time, setting a new high since 2018; Ethereum then ushered in more than two months The price of China has corrected and fluctuated slightly between US$350 and US$400.
On November 5th, the Ethereum 2.0 development team announced that Ethereum 2.0 Phase 0 will be launched on December 1, which represents an important step in the upgrade of Ethereum. The good news stimulated market confidence, and the price of Ethereum once again exceeded $400.
On November 20th, the balance of the Ethereum 2.0 deposit contract address reached 22.89% of the minimum requirement to start the Ethereum 2.0 genesis block. Grayscale Ethereum Trust has become the first publicly quoted ETH investment product in the United States and the second digital currency investment product reported to the SEC after Bitcoin Trust. This paves the way for institutions or retail investors to invest in Ethereum in the form of “reasonable compliance”. The Ethereum market surged and the price rose to a key resistance level of $500, reaching its highest point in two and a half years. Four days later, as the progress bar of the Ethereum 2.0 deposit contract address balance approached 80%, Ethereum exceeded $600.
At the beginning of December, Ethereum continued to consolidate at US$550-600. It was stimulated by the official launch of the beacon chain to test for a short period of US$600 and then quickly fell back. On December 16, as Bitcoin broke through its historical high, the price of Ethereum soared above $600.
As the top two cryptocurrencies with the highest market capitalization, in 2020, the price trends of Bitcoin and Ethereum are very similar, a stable and mature, and a strong ecosystem. I hope to see more widespread adoption by both parties in the future.
3. Ripple (XRP)
XRP price chart in 2020, image source: BiTweet
Ripple (XRP), the third largest in market value, has risen more than 190% this year. The performance of XRP in the first eleven months was flat, with the price fluctuating around 0.3 USD, and most of the time it was below 0.3 USD, and the trading activity was much lower than other currencies. On November 21, Ripple ushered in a straight rise, with a one-day surge of 40%, and then reached an annual high of $0.66 on November 24, and the trading volume also increased significantly.
One of the reasons for this surge may be attributed to its partner Flare Network’s Spark token airdrop plan. Under this plan, XRP holders are entitled to receive Spark tokens at a 1:1 ratio. Therefore, 45 billion of the 100 billion USD of Spark tokens will be airdropped to XRP holders.
As the airdrop benefits were exhausted and the enthusiasm faded, the price of XRP began to fall day after day since early December. On December 16, XRP also rose from US$0.45 to more than US$0.5 due to the pie breaking through a new high. The current price is about US$0.57.
Fourth, Tether (USDT)
USDT price chart in 2020, image source: BiTweet
USDT was launched in 2015 and issued by Tether, with 1 USDT anchored at 1 U.S. dollar. It is the largest stablecoin calculated by market value and transaction volume. The current USDT market value has exceeded 20 billion US dollars, which is more than five times the 4.2 billion US dollars in early 2020. USDT was initially launched through the Omni protocol of Bitcoin and has now been issued on multiple projects such as Ethereum, EOS, TRON, Algorand, Liquid Network, etc.
Tether’s transparency has been questioned in the cryptocurrency community, which also opened the door for alternative stablecoins (such as USDC, Paxos Standard Token, True USD, and Dai) to enter the market. Despite the controversy, so far, these competitors have not been able to pose a real challenge to Tether. Especially this year, the uncertainty of the global financial market and the strong demand in the world’s emerging markets and derivatives markets have led to the fact that USDT is still the largest stable currency so far in terms of market value and trading volume.
5. Litecoin (LTC)
Litecoin price chart in 2020, image source: BiTweet
The current price of Litecoin is around $117, and the increase in 2020 is about 178%. Its highest price in history was US$373.02 in December 2017.
The market value of LTC is currently close to US$7.6 billion, surpassing BCH (US$6.480 billion) and LINK (US$5.289 billion) to rank fifth.
Litecoin is a peer-to-peer digital cryptocurrency created by Li Qiwei based on Bitcoin in 2011, with a total supply of 84 million pieces. LTC and Bitcoin have many common attributes, but can achieve faster transactions. Amber people compare Bitcoin to gold and Litecoin to silver. The only halving in history occurred in 2019, when the LTC reward was reduced from 25 LTC per block to 12.5 LTC per block.
Litecoin appeared to supplement the market at the end of this year. Grayscale’s large-scale buying and increasing of its holdings once made the LTC premium rate of its holdings more than 3,000%; in addition, LTC is also one of the cryptocurrencies currently supported by PayPal, which makes it easier for retail investors to invest, and increases in LTC It is also a driving force.
6. Bitcoin Cash (BCH)
2020 BCH price chart, image source: BiTweet
The year-to-date increase of BCH is 61.86%, the current price is around US$340, and the market value is around US$6.4 billion. The historically highest price of BCH was US$4,358.92 on December 20, 2017.
Due to the Bitcoin community’s controversy over the scalability of the Bitcoin network, a certain camp in the community created BCH through the hard fork of the Bitcoin blockchain in August 2017.
Since then, BCH will conduct a hard fork every six months. The fork that took place in November 18 became a waterfall of the market. This year’s fork did not have a major impact on the BCH currency price, and the year-end rise may be driven by the overall market conditions.
7. Chainlink (LINK)
2020 LINK price chart, source of picture: BiTweet
LINK entered the top ten list of cryptocurrencies for the first time this year, and it is also the currency with the highest annual growth rate among the top ten cryptocurrencies. LINK has risen nearly 600% year-to-date and has a market value of nearly $5.2 billion.
Chainlink is the first batch of decentralized oracle projects. It is a distributed Oracle network designed to provide solutions to the “Oracle problem” faced by smart contract-based blockchain platforms (such as Ethereum). When the predetermined conditions are met, the smart contract can execute code in a decentralized and trustless manner. The project underwent an ICO in 2017, raising US$32 million, and its mainnet was launched in June 2019. LINK token runs on Ethereum through the ERC-677 standard.
The surge of Chainlink this year is inseparable from the boom of DeFi. Decentralized oracles have many use cases in smart contracts to capture loan interest rates, token prices, random numbers, exchange rates, etc. Through cooperation with many DeFi projects, LINK skyrocketed to a record high of $8 in July this year, and soared to $18.6 on August 18, becoming a “dark horse” in cryptocurrency in 2020.
As the DeFi fever faded, the price of LINK fell back to the US$10-12 range after September, and the current price is around US$13.
8. Cardano (ADA)
2020 ADA price chart, image source: BiTweet
ADA has risen nearly 385% year-to-date, and its current market value exceeds $5.1 billion.
Based on the proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, Cardano aims to create a platform with advanced features and scalability for smart contracts and decentralized applications. ADA is the native token of the Cardano blockchain, and the maximum supply is set at 45 billion. IOHK, Cardano Foundation and Emurgo are the main organizations in its ecosystem.
The upward momentum this year may come from the major progress of the project. In early June, Cardano released the Shelley roadmap, prompting a nearly 50% increase in ADA prices. In early July, the team announced the deployment of the new mainnet code Shelley at all nodes, and ADA became the eighth largest cryptocurrency by market value, replacing the previous BNB. The development team IOHK also announced Shelley’s next phase of Goguen in November, and this round of news also led to a further rise in ADA. As of December 21, the ADA token price was around $0.16.
9. Binance Coin (BNB)
2020 BNB price chart, source of picture: BiTweet
Binance Coin (BNB) has gained approximately 157% year-to-date, and its current market value is approximately US$5.1 billion.
BNB is the platform currency of Binance Exchange and the “leading” among platform currencies. Its market value is more than four times that of OKB, the second largest platform currency.
BNB’s efforts this year are mainly concentrated after September. The main network of Binance Smart Chain, Binance Mining Pool, Binance Mining and other good news frequently come out. Binance Smart Chain has launched multiple DeFi projects, its first project ” “Hamburg” skyrocketed by 300 times overnight. Coupled with the impact of the bull market in the entire crypto market at the end of the year, the BNB price trend showed an overall upward trend. The current price is $35.35, which is very close to its 2019 all-time high of $39.45.
10. Polkadot (DOT)
2020 DOT price chart, image source: CoinCodex
Polkadot (DOT) has a year-to-date increase of about 45% and a market value of about $4.7 billion.
Polkadot is a blockchain platform. Through the parachain and unique cross-chain mechanism, Polkadot can connect different types of blockchains (whether licensed or unlicensed) to achieve interoperability and scalability. Polkadot has developed ecologically. Hundreds of projects have been created, the more famous ones are ChainX, Polkaswap, Acala, etc.
On September 1st, DOT reached the highest price in history-6.86 US dollars, and Polkadot’s market value also surpassed Chainlink to become the fifth largest cryptocurrency. Subsequently, the popularity of the DOT market weakened, and the price dropped sharply to around $4. In November, Polkadot announced that it would officially launch the Parachain slot auction in the next few months, driving its price to rebound to about $5.
Cryptocurrencies that outperform Bitcoin in 2020
Among the top 50 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, 14 cryptocurrencies outperformed Bitcoin, and two of the popular DeFi tokens this year are on the list, namely YFI and SNX. YFI ranked third with a 1624% increase.
Other tokens according to the size of the increase are: KSM, CEL, THETA, ZIL, XEM, WAVES, LINK, OMG, ETH, ADA, XLM, XMR. Among them, the top ten LINK, ETH, and ADA by market capitalization have been analyzed in the previous article and will not be repeated later.
The top 50 cryptocurrencies whose market capitalization has risen more than Bitcoin, source: CoinCodex
1. DeFi tokens that outperform Bitcoin in the top 50 market capitalization
1. YFI: 1,668.62%
YFI (yearn.finance), the governance token of the Defi revenue aggregator yearn.finance, this protocol allows users to automatically optimize the revenue obtained in various DeFi protocols. YFI is known as the “King of Coins” in 2020. The price of YFI surpassed Bitcoin for more than a month after it went online, and once exceeded $43,000. Its founder Andre Cronje (AC) also became famous in the first battle. AC created 30,000 YFI tokens with the aim of transferring control of the project from developers to the user community. Users can obtain a certain amount of YFI by depositing tokens in the designated income pool of Year. The YFI issuance is halved every certain period. At the end of July, all 30,000 YFIs are issued.
2. SNX: 527.00%
SNX (Synthetix Network), formerly a stablecoin project Havven. After the name change, SNX tokens are mainly used as mortgage tokens to support various synthetic assets, including legal tender, precious metals or other cryptocurrencies. Users do not need to actually own these assets, only need to track the price of the assets, and these synthetic assets are traded on Synthetix.Exchange.
2. Other tokens
1. KSM: 4339.44%
Kusama is an experimental blockchain platform from Polkadot. Built using the Substrate framework, this framework allows users to deploy specialized blockchains where users can test their projects before adding them to Polkadot, known as Polkadot’s “canary”.
2. CEL: 1896.03%
CEL is the token of the decentralized lending network Celsius Network. Celsius Network enables users to earn cryptocurrency interest and borrow money quickly without any fees.
3. THETA: 953.73%
The predecessor of THETA is SLIVER.tv. It is a VR e-sports entertainment live broadcast platform established in 2015. After financing in June 2017, it launched the decentralized video transmission network THETA project. Currency to reward various network participants. The Theta tokens are used to provide power, and the network operates similarly to YouTube and Twitch.
4. ZIL: 950.24%
ZIL is the ecological token of the Zilliqa public chain project. Zilliqa is a high-throughput public blockchain platform designed to expand and incorporate sharding technology, which allows users to directly develop smart contracts and dApps on its platform. The Zilliqa project uses a novel consensus protocol that increases the transaction rate as the network expands. As more mining nodes join the network, the number of transactions processed per second is also greater.
5. XEM: 800.64%
XEM is the platform token of NEM, written in Java, and provides an adaptive API interface that can be used with any programming language. NEM is designed for enterprises to provide a simplified method to maintain a secure transaction ledger. Known as the first “smart asset blockchain”.
6. WAVES: 615.89%
WAVES is a blockchain platform, launched in 2016 by Russian physicist Sasha Ivanov. The purpose of the platform is to facilitate the trading of various digital assets and real-world commodities. Using Waves tokens, anyone can create their own custom tokens and trade on the Waves platform.
7. OMG: 412.28%
OMG is the network token of OMG Network (formerly OmiseGO). OMG Network is the second-tier expansion plan of Ethereum, which aims to make financial inclusion and interoperability possible. In early December, Genesis Block Ventures (GBV) announced the acquisition of OMG.
8. XLM: 284.34%
XLM is the native token of the Stellar blockchain. XLM can be used for peer-to-peer transactions. It is also used as a defense mechanism against spam and invalid transactions in the Stellar blockchain. XLM is also designed to be used as a transition currency to promote different Cross-border transfers between currencies.
9. XMR: 224.79%
XMR (Monero Coin) is a privacy coin that focuses on privacy, decentralization and scalability. The project is completely open source, based on the POW mechanism, and maintained by volunteers. Monero’s strong privacy technologies, such as ring signatures and stealth addresses, can conceal the parties and specific amounts in any given Monero transaction.
Image source: BiTweet, CoinCodex
