Treasures and Landmines: a look at the year so far using Messari’s screeners

Cryptocurrency correlations have risen to their highest levels ever this year.

Source: CoinMetrics

However, not all outcomes have been equal. Amidst all the chaos in crypto markets, there were still treasures to be found.

Treasures

Filters: Reported Market Capitalization > $10,000,000; Real Volume (24H) > $1,000

Smart contract platform, Hedera Hashgraph (HBAR) is the best performing asset YTD, after a brutal 2019 that saw the token lose nearly 90% of its value. The inflation induced selloff was so bad that in December of last year, Hedera Hashgraph asked HBAR investors to delay distribution of their HBAR tokens, in return for more tokens than originally stipulated in the simple agreement for future tokens (SAFT). Since then, Hedera Hashgraph announced that Google would join its governing council, which rocketed HBAR more than 250%.

Also among the top 5 best performing assets is Numeraire (NMR), an ERC-20 token powering a protocol for exchanging valuable information on the internet. While Numeraire has largely flew under the radar, the team has a prominent list of backers including crypto funds, Placeholder, Paradigm, and individuals Naval Ravikant, Olaf Carlson-Wee, Howard Morgan (co-founder of Renaissance Technologies), Joey Krug, and Juan Benet. Placeholder just put out an excellent piece on their Erasure thesis that you can check out to learn more.

Rounding out the top 5 best performing assets YTD, is Kyber (KNC), the Ethereum based decentralized exchange. Kyber has been on a tear the past few months both in anticipation of its next major upgrade called Katalyst, and an uptick in exchange volumes. The year so far has been packed full of announcements including Kyber’s listing on Coinbase and plans for introducing staking and a DAO in Q2. Check out our Open Finance Fundamentals series to learn more about Kyber’s outperformance.

Landmines

Filters: Reported Market Capitalization > $10,000,000; Real Volume (24H) > $1,000

Mimblewimble based privacy coins Grin (GRIN) and Beam (BEAM) are among the worst performing assets in 2020. These tokens generated a lot of excitement when they launched in 2019, but have since suffered from unfavorable inflation schedules, and concerns over Mimblewimble’s privacy model. Some analysts now consider it's privacy model fundamentally flawed.

Cosmos (ATOM) was one of the top performing assets from September 2019 to February 2020, rising as much as 150%. Since then, however, ATOM has reversed dramatically, reaching new all-time lows. Amid multiple departures and infighting at Cosmos contributor Tendermint Inc. the company announced a restructuring, and the Tendermint Core and IBC development teams spun out and formed a new German-based company backed by the Interchain Foundation. The chaos has dampened Cosmos’ price despite development progressing steadily in recent weeks. Cosmos recently completed the first token transfer using the Interblockchain Communication (IBC) protocol setting the stage for the launch of the Game of Zones testnet on May 1, 2020.

DeFi darling, Synthetix (SNX) is also among the worst performing assets on the year. While there seems to be little fundamental drivers of SNX’s underperformance, after its epic 3,000% increase in 2019, it's not shocking to see it selloff the worst amidst the broader crypto market meltdown. After rising to start the year, Synthetic dropped nearly 70% at one point to its 2020 low.

Cryptocurrency markets are as tough to navigate as they've ever been, but there's always good trades to be made. Play around with the screener yourself here, to see what you can find.