This article reviews some tokens that reached new highs in this cycle after hitting milestone highs during the bull market in 2021.
When everyone thought that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had approved the Bitcoin spot ETF, leading to a repeat of the 2021 'all coins rise' scenario, reality dealt a heavy blow: besides Bitcoin aiming for 100,000 dollars, many 'altcoins' that shone brightly in the last bull market not only did not set new highs in this cycle but remained stagnant at the bottom.
To some extent, this may indicate that as cryptocurrency investment gradually becomes mainstream in the United States, new capital entering the market will be concentrated on quality targets, similar to the U.S. stock market. In this cycle, some tokens that reached peaks in the previous bull market have once again become favorites of profit seekers. The author has summarized some tokens that reached new highs in this cycle after hitting milestones in the 2021 bull market, but due to limited knowledge, may not cover all relevant tokens.
SOL
In the hot 'Alt L1' of 2021, EVM-compatible L1s such as Fantom, NEAR, and Avalanche absorbed traffic that overflowed due to high Ethereum gas costs. Among them, Solana did not follow the wave but instead rebuilt an ecosystem outside of EVM. Supported by SBF, the founder of FTX, and the team's operations at that time, SOL's price skyrocketed from less than 1 dollar when it was launched on exchanges to over 200 dollars.
However, as the overall market transitioned from frenzy to calm, coupled with the collapse of FTX and the imprisonment of SBF, one of Solana's biggest supporters, SOL dropped to around 7 dollars, and well-known NFT projects on Solana left one after another, leading many investors to believe that Solana's story might come to an end.
What surprised these people is that during this cycle, Solana regained new vitality through the rise of memes, along with the emergence of several ecological projects such as the re-staking project Jito, with SOL's price rising high and breaking the previous high of nearly 260 dollars set in early November 2021 about a week ago.
BNB
As the only public chain that has truly achieved ecological diversification among 'exchange platform tokens', Binance's BNB has left a deep impression whether in its 'resilience' during bear markets or its rise in bull markets. In the bear market of 2022, BNB fell from a high of about 660 dollars in May 2021 and briefly dipped below 200 dollars. Although the decline is not small, compared to many tokens that have dropped over 90% or nearly to zero, BNB can still be considered a relatively 'high value retention' asset.
Subsequently, with the market recovery and Binance launching Launchpool and Launchpad projects at an almost frantic pace, BNB surged forward, breaking the previous bull market price peak on June 24 this year, exceeding 700 dollars. Compared to the dismal exit of Huobi's HECO Network, BNB still holds a lot of potential value to be further explored both within the exchange and on the BNB Chain.
TRX
The TRON token TRX reaching new highs in this cycle can be said to be both unexpected and expected. The issuance of USDT is nearing 140 billion, and TRON, as the preferred choice for USDT transfers for a considerable time, though surpassed by Ethereum in USDT issuance and clearly inferior to Ethereum in practical applications, still remains the top choice for USDT holders in terms of capital circulation.
According to DefiLlama data, when this article was written, the TVL on TRON was approximately 7.555 billion dollars, having once exceeded 10 billion dollars in March this year. The price of TRX reached a high of 0.18 dollars on April 17, 2021, and three and a half years later, on November 12, two weeks ago, TRX set a new high and subsequently rose over 0.22 dollars in the following days.
TON
The emergence of TON dates back to the ICO era when Telegram raised 1.7 billion dollars for its token Grams through an ICO and planned to launch The Open Network (TON), but a lawsuit from the SEC pressed the pause button on everything. This typical SEC lawsuit, which treated everything as securities, did not conclude until 2020, and Telegram paid the price of not being able to continue TON's development.
After that, TON continued to execute with community support but did not stir up much excitement in the industry. Its token price followed the market decline after reaching a high of 4.4 dollars at the end of 2021.
As time moved into 2022, from April to July, the TON Foundation, along with several institutions, frequently launched ecological funds worth tens of millions or even over a hundred million dollars, sounding the horn for the rapid expansion of the TON ecosystem. As a blockchain with tens of millions of users under Telegram, TON did not spend much effort on user quantity issues, and its various games and interactive experiences integrated with Telegram made its process from 0 to 1 very smooth, and the speed from 1 to 100 was astonishing.
With the market heat, TON's price briefly surpassed 8 dollars in June this year, nearly doubling from its previous 'peak'.
LEO
To be honest, if it weren't for researching on data websites, I wouldn't have known about the existence of this token. LEO is a token issued by the established exchange Bitfinex, with functions including fee reductions. I haven't found persuasive information on why this token reached a new high; the only possibility is that the hacker who once stole 120,000 bitcoins from Bitfinex was sentenced, which might be seen as a positive factor to some extent.
LEO briefly surpassed 8 dollars in early February 2022, and on November 20, just a week ago, LEO set a new high and once surged to nearly 9 dollars.
FET
Fetch.ai, born before the last bull market, has managed to survive until AI became the 'hot topic' today. In the early years when the 'Blockchain+' concept was booming, many related projects were established, and as of today, the vast majority have become dust of history, but some projects have persevered and welcomed a true second spring, among which are Fetch.ai and others like IoTeX.
In the first half of this year, SingularityNET, Fetch.ai, and Ocean Protocol proposed to establish a super artificial intelligence alliance and merge their tokens, which has now been completed. The significant impact of AI on human social development is beyond doubt, but whether Crypto can truly drive this process still needs time to observe.
In early September 2021, FET reached a milestone high of nearly 1.2 dollars, while this year the AI wave led by OpenAI has brought FET's price up to about 3.5 dollars, nearly doubling from the previous bull market's peak.
OKB
As one of the three giants of domestic exchanges in the past, OKX has performed well in the past two years. On one hand, OKX has made a series of optimizations in trading-related functions and user experience, allowing traders to personalize their trading plans. This has prompted other exchanges to follow suit; on the other hand, the Web3 wallet launched by OKX may even be regarded as a phenomenal product, becoming the top choice for many gold diggers during the peak of inscriptions.
As for the price of OKB, it actually set a historical high as early as last year, coinciding with the significant innovations at OKX. In March this year, OKB reached a historical high of nearly 74 dollars, over 70% higher than the peak of around 44 dollars in early May 2021.
STX
It must be said that some projects whose token prices reached new highs in this cycle were not the favorites of the last bull market but had existed for many years and 'met like-minded individuals' in this cycle.
Stacks can be considered an early Web3 attempt to establish a smart contract platform using the Bitcoin network. Its design is quite interesting; simply put, Bitcoin holders use Bitcoin to bid for block rewards and transaction fees of new Stacks blocks, while block packaging is done by STX stakers. After completing the block on-chain, they can retrieve the Bitcoin used for bidding. Since it also uploads state information to the Bitcoin network for final confirmation, Stacks can be considered a kind of 'Bitcoin L2' to some extent.
The wind from the inscriptions has revitalized this project that has been cultivating in the Bitcoin ecosystem for many years, with STX's price rising to a high of about 3.85 dollars in April this year, surpassing the peak of about 3.6 dollars set in November 2021.
INJ
The Cosmos ecosystem is undoubtedly an indelible shadow in the hearts of many investors, possessing a unique style and technical strength in the cross-chain field like Polkadot, yet it has not triggered a similar trend as DeFi. According to token price information websites, Injective was also a project born before the last bull market, but it might have only become widely known after securing 40 million dollars in funding in August 2022.
From the perspectives of investors and participants in its ecological fund, including market makers, hedge funds, and other roles, Injective aims to establish a DeFi liquidity center. This plan is not unique and may not appear particularly special on the surface, but the price of INJ has been rising steadily. In mid-March of this year, INJ's price surged over 52 dollars, more than doubling from the previous peak of around 25 dollars in 2021.
BGB
If the rise in BNB and OKB prices is 'natural', then the sudden emergence of Bitget is certainly beyond most people's expectations. From my perspective, I couldn’t imagine a new player making strides in an already crowded exchange field, but Bitget has indeed done it. Aggressive market strategies, a crazy yet efficient culture, wallet products, and various investment assists were likely part of a well-thought-out plan, perfectly seizing the residual warmth of the last bull market and the opportunity of a new wave of users flooding into Web3.
Compared to the previously mentioned tokens that reached new highs after following the market decline in 2021, BGB has been in a climbing phase since its inception in 2021, recently reaching a high of 1.7 dollars.
