Just a few more days and half the year will be over. It has been a successful year for the crypto industry so far. Many coins have risen significantly, and several tokens have even broken records. These were the most successful tokens since the beginning of this year.
Memecoins such as Shiba Inu and Dogecoin have performed best
In a blog article by crypto analyst Colin Wu, research agency Biteye writes about which sectors were the most popular in the first six months. One thing is certain; memecoins are the winner by a huge margin. The coins in this subcategory have risen by an average of 1,834% since January 1. Coins that fall into this category are, for example, Dogecoin (DOGE) and Pepe (PEPE).
Research: What was the most profitable cryptocurrency sector in the first half of 2024?
Memecoins have been the most profitable sector in 2024 so far, with the highest average return rate reaching 2405.1%. It is 8.6x that of the second most profitable sector, RWA, which is all about tokenizing traditional assets.
That is much more than the next largest sector; that was ‘Real World Assets’ (RWA), which is all about tokenizing traditional assets. The cryptocurrencies in that class have risen in price by an average of 213%. Also popular were coins in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), which rose by almost 72%.
But not all coins did relatively well. Those around decentralized finance (DeFi) increased by only 3% on average. The situation was especially dramatic for layer-2 coins, which fell by almost 41%.
‘Traditional meme coins’ most popular?
It is no longer a surprise that memecoins were so popular, they were already so in April. Yet at that time the return was still 1,312%. The sector is now in slightly better shape. If we look at the coins that have risen the fastest on CoinGecko, there are many memecoins among them.
Very popular this year are ‘PoliFy coins’. Due to the American presidential elections, several new memecoins have emerged that owe their names to politicians such as Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Yet many of these tokens have also fallen sharply after it emerged that Trump would consider introducing an official token. After all, the existing tokens are nothing more than a joke.
In particular, memecoins based on a more ‘traditional’ concept such as Bonk (BONK) and Dogwifhat (WIF) are high on CoinGecko’s list. These types of memecoins often started to rise last year, while PoliFy coins have only often been found in the altcoin news since the beginning of this year due to the elections. For example, Bonk has only risen 70% since January 1, while the altcoin has risen in price by a whopping 13,000% since October.