While most crypto assets suffered throughout 2019, Bitcoin, and a handful of other altcoins – almost entirely comprised of exchange-related tokens – offered crypto investors the best ROI in 2019.
Binance Coin, Huobi Token, and OKB Top Crypto’s Best Return in 2019
The crypto industry is a fast-moving, ever-changing industry that is driven by wild speculation and hype.
What crypto tokens dominate the market is also always changing, depending on the global regulatory climate, the introduction of shiny, new coins with promise, and other factors.
Related Reading | These Five Altcoins Crushed Bitcoin’s 2019 Returns
Back in 2017, it was ICOs that were being bought up by feverish investors looking to become wealthy, but the new hot crypto token of 2019 was none other than the exchange token – cryptocurrency assets native to specific crypto exchanges or trading platforms, designed to offer holders a number of additional incentives and utility.
According to one crypto analyst, these types of exchange-related crypto assets dominated the top 5 projects in the crypto market top 40 by market cap, which brought investors the most returns last year.
The 5 top 40 projects with the best ROI in 2019:
1. $LINK: 502%
2. $OKB: 285%
3. $XTZ: 169%
4. $HT: 155%
5. $BNB: 135%A few interesting side notes:
– 3 out of 5 of these are directly tied to exchanges.
– $BTC would be placed 6th on this list.What’s your money on for 2020?
— Lenny (@TraderLenny) January 2, 2020
Of the five projects in the top 40, which includes runaway success altcoins Chainlink and Tezos, three of them are cryptocurrency exchange tokens: Binance Coin, HuobiToken, and OKEx’s token, OKB.
Binance Coin, Huobi Token, and OKB offered investors a return on investment in 2019 of 135%, 155%, and 285% respectively. While these couldn’t match up with the year’s biggest success story – Chainlink – even these exchange tokens bested Bitcoin itself for gains in 2019.
According to the list, Bitcoin would actually rank number six, behind Binance Coin, among the list of best performing ROI assets from the last year.
Exchange tokens offer holders a variety of incentives, making them more attractive than other crypto assets that don’t yet provide much utility, if at all. It’s this usefulness and utility that has caused the value of these assets to steadily increase throughout the year. These incentives include things like trading fee discounts, they can be used for voting, or can be exchanged for IEO tokens launched on the exchange itself.
IEO tokens have all but replaced ICO tokens, as the new initial exchange offering crowdsourcing typically provides additional investors protections beyond what a regular ICO would provide.
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Support from an exchange often ensures that any projects being listed are legitimate and offer real-world value, and are just fly-by-night schemes hoping to secure funding only to later exit scam.
These IEO tokens along with some relatively new altcoins are said to be among the top performers in the next bull market, whenever that may occur. The crypto market has been in a bear market for two full years now, and could be forming a foundation in which the bull run can begin from.