Written by: Babywhale, Techub News
When everyone thought that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had approved the Bitcoin spot ETF, and the scene of 'all coins rising together' in 2021 would reappear, reality dealt a heavy blow: aside from Bitcoin aiming for $100,000, a large number of 'altcoins' that shone in the last bull market not only did not reach new highs in this round of market, but even lingered at the bottom.
To some extent, this may also indicate that as cryptocurrency investment gradually becomes mainstream in the U.S., new incoming funds will concentrate on quality targets, just like in the U.S. stock market. In this round of market, some tokens that once stood at the peak in the last bull market have again become the favorites of profit-seekers. I have compiled some tokens that set phase highs in the 2021 bull market and reached new highs again in this round, but my understanding is limited and may not cover all tokens that fit this situation.
SOL
During the 'Alt L1' boom in 2021, L1s compatible with EVM, including Fantom, NEAR, and Avalanche, took on the overflow traffic due to high Ethereum gas costs. Among them, Solana did not follow the trend but instead re-established an ecosystem outside of EVM. With the support of FTX's founder SBF, who was at the peak of his influence, and the operations of the team itself, the price of SOL soared from less than $1 when it first launched on exchanges to over $200.
However, as the overall market shifted from madness to calm, coupled with the downfall of FTX, one of Solana's biggest supporters, SBF, was imprisoned, causing SOL to drop to around $7. Many well-known NFT projects on Solana left one after another, and many investors thought Solana's story might have come to an end.
Unexpectedly for these people, in this cycle, Solana re-emerged with the rise of Meme, and together with the emergence of several ecological projects like the re-staking project Jito, the price of SOL has been rising, breaking through the nearly $260 high set in early November 2021 about a week ago.
BNB
As the only public chain among 'exchange platform tokens' that has truly diversified its ecosystem, BNB issued by Binance has impressed both during the bear market with its 'resilience' and during the bull market with its rise. In the bear market of 2022, BNB fell from a peak of around $660 in May 2021, briefly dropping below $200. Although the decline was significant, compared to many tokens that fell over 90% or almost went to zero, BNB can be considered a relatively 'high-value' asset.
Afterwards, as the market recovered, and with Binance launching Launchpool and Launchpad projects at an almost frantic pace, BNB also surged, breaking through the price peak of the last bull market on June 24 of this year, reaching a maximum of over $700. Compared to the dismal exit of HECO Network under Huobi, BNB still holds a lot of potential value waiting to be explored both within the exchange and on the BNB Chain.
TRX
The new high of the Tron token TRX in this cycle can be considered both unexpected and expected. The issuance of USDT has already approached 140 billion, and Tron has been the preferred choice for USDT transfers for a long time. Although Ethereum has now surpassed Tron in terms of USDT issuance and Tron is clearly inferior to Ethereum in practical applications, it must be admitted that at least in terms of capital flow, Tron remains the top choice for USDT holders.
According to DefiLlama data, at the time of writing this article, the TVL on Tron is about $7.555 billion, which had once exceeded $10 billion in March this year. The price of TRX reached a peak of $0.18 on April 17, 2021, and three and a half years later, on November 12 two weeks ago, TRX set a new high before rising to over $0.22 in the following days.
TON
The emergence of TON can be traced back to the ICO era when Telegram raised $1.7 billion through an ICO for its token Grams and planned to launch The Open Network (TON), but a lawsuit from the SEC put everything on hold. This typical SEC lawsuit, which treats everything as a security, did not finally settle until 2020, and Telegram had to pay the price of not being able to continue developing TON.
After that, TON has been running continuously with the support of the community but has not made significant waves in the industry. Its token price followed the market trend, continuously declining after reaching a high of $4.4 at the end of 2021.
Fast forward to 2022, from April to July, the TON Foundation, along with several institutions, frequently launched ecological funds worth tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars, sounding the horn for the rapid expansion of the TON ecosystem. As a blockchain under Telegram, which has tens of millions of users, TON did not put much effort into the issue of user numbers. Its various games and the interactive experience integrated with Telegram made the process from 0 to 1 very smooth, and the speed from 1 to 100 is astonishing.
Accompanied by market enthusiasm, the price of TON also briefly surpassed $8 in June this year, nearly doubling from its previous 'peak'.
LEO
To be honest, if I hadn’t checked the data site, I wouldn’t even know this token existed. LEO is a token issued by the old exchange Bitfinex, and its functions include fee reductions, etc. I didn’t find any convincing news explaining why this token set a new high, the only possibility might be that the hacker who once stole 120,000 bitcoins from Bitfinex was sentenced, which could be seen as a positive signal to some extent.
LEO briefly exceeded $8 in early February 2022, and on November 20 last week, LEO set a new high, briefly rising to nearly $9.
FET
Fetch.ai, born before the last bull market, has managed to survive until AI became the 'hot topic' of today. In the early days when the 'blockchain +' concept was booming, many related projects were established, but most have since become dust in history. However, some projects have managed to persist until today, welcoming a true second spring, including 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, and this plan has now been completed. The significant impact of AI on human social development is already undeniable, but whether Crypto can truly drive this process still requires time to observe.
In early September 2021, FET reached a peak of nearly $1.2, while this year's AI boom led by OpenAI brought FET's price to around $3.5, nearly doubling from the peak of the last bull market.
OKB
As one of the former 'big three' exchanges in China, OKX has performed impressively in the past two years. On one hand, OKX has made a series of optimizations to trading-related functions and user experience, allowing traders to personalize their trading plans more. This has led other exchanges to follow suit; on the other hand, the Web3 wallet launched by OKX may even deserve to be called a phenomenal product, becoming the top choice for many treasure hunters when inscriptions became the talk of the town.
As for the price of OKB, it actually set a historical high early last year, coinciding with OKX's major innovations. In March this year, OKB reached a historical high of nearly $74, up over 70% from the peak of around $44 in early May 2021.
STX
One must marvel at the fact that some projects whose token prices set new highs in this round were not the favorites of the last bull market, but rather existed many years ago and 'met their kindred spirits' in this cycle.
Stacks can be seen as an early Web3 attempt to establish a smart contract platform using the Bitcoin network. Its design is quite interesting; simply put, Bitcoin holders bid with Bitcoin to receive block rewards and transaction fees for new Stacks blocks, while block packaging is done by STX stakers. After the block is added to the chain, they can receive 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 brought by the inscriptions has revitalized this project that has cultivated the Bitcoin ecosystem for many years, and the price of STX rose to a maximum of about $3.85 this year, surpassing the previous phase high of around $3.6 set in November 2021.
INJ
The Cosmos ecosystem is undoubtedly an indelible shadow in the minds of many investors, having a unique style and technical strength in the cross-chain field, like Polkadot, but failing to trigger a trend similar to DeFi. According to token price information websites, Injective is also a project that was born before the last bull market, but perhaps it wasn't until it received $40 million in funding in August 2022 that it became known to most people.
From the perspective of investors and participants in the ecological fund it launched, including market makers and hedge funds, Injective seems to want to establish a DeFi liquidity center. This plan is not unique, and on the surface it seems there is nothing particularly special, but the price of INJ has been rising steadily. In mid-March this year, the price of INJ exceeded $52, more than doubling from the peak of around $25 in April 2021.
BGB
If the price increase of BNB and OKB is 'justified', then the emergence of Bitget must have been unexpected for most people. From my perspective, it is hard to imagine that new players can still carve out a niche in a field dominated by giants, but Bitget has truly achieved this. Its aggressive market strategy, frenzied yet efficient culture, wallet products, and various investment assistance have likely been part of a comprehensive plan designed long before the market battle officially began, seizing the momentum of the previous bull market and the influx of new users into Web3.
Compared to the previously introduced tokens that reached new highs in 2021, followed by a decline and then again reached new highs, BGB has been in a climbing phase since its inception in 2021, and recently reached a high of $1.7.
