Q1 Performance Recap

By Roberto Talamas and Messari Team

Q1 Performance Recap

2020 was one of the most successful years for the crypto asset industry. Despite the global lockdowns triggered by the coronavirus pandemic, new trends and central bank actions proved to be positive for crypto assets and decentralized technologies. By the end of the year, the bull case for Bitcoin had become apparent to the world with BTC reaching new all-time highs, setting the stage for 2021 to be a historic year for the industry.

Q1 2021 was an extremely successful quarter. All sectors, according to our taxonomy, had exceptional returns. In this piece, we look at the quarterly performance of the overall market and drill down on some of the top-performing assets in each sector.

Top Assets by Market Capitalization

Bitcoin’s positive outlook led to strong performance across all assets. Among the top ten assets categorized by market capitalization, Binance Coin (BNB) was the clear outperformer. Binance Smart Chain has quickly become the most used smart contract platform next to Ethereum, providing yield farmers a low-cost alternative. It has benefitted from Ethereum’s rising transaction fees, which have priced out many retail users. Further aiding BNB’s run was the exchanges accelerating volumes and earnings fueled by white hot crypto markets. Combined, these two developments created the perfect environment for BNB to reach new all-time highs. Across the top assets, Bitcoin and Litecoin were the laggards of the group with a cumulative quarterly performance of 103% and 58% respectively.