Author: Lim Yu Qian, Coingecko; Translated by: Deng Tong, Golden Finance
Which crypto narrative has the best returns?
The most profitable crypto narrative in 2024 was AI, which had the highest year-to-year (YTD) average price gain of 2,939.8%, followed by meme, which had a YTD return of 2,185.1%. This makes the AI and memecoin narratives more than twice as profitable as other popular crypto narratives.
The memecoin narrative initially began to outperform other narratives in March, when its returns soared from 96.6% to 1,713.1% in a month. Despite high volatility, memecoin subsequently continued to achieve the highest returns and became the most profitable narrative for most of 2024. However, after setting an all-time high return of 3,211.4% on December 9, the memecoin narrative price retreated as interest in memecoin waned.
In contrast, the AI narrative rebounded strongly at the end of the year, with its returns almost doubling from 1,598.1% to 2,939.8% in December. This was mainly due to the surge in popularity of AI agent launchpad Virtuals Protocol (VIRTUAL), which also saw the biggest gain among cryptocurrencies this year. As a result, the AI narrative finally surpassed the meme narrative in late December.
Meanwhile, RWA is the third most profitable cryptocurrency with an average return of 819.5% year-to-date. RWA's returns rose steadily at the beginning of the year, reaching 365.3% on April 12, but then went sideways for the next six months. Then, in November, RWA's returns resumed rising, with the price of MANTRA (OM) soaring.
Modest gains for Layer 1, DePIN, and the DeFi narrative
The Layer 1, DePIN, and DeFi narratives performed similarly in 2024, recording modest returns of 142.5%, 135.4%, and 101.4%, respectively. This means that the Layer 1 and DePIN narratives only slightly outperformed Bitcoin itself, which gained 125.5% during the same period, while the DeFi narrative was less profitable than Bitcoin.
In other words, simply holding Bitcoin could allow conservative investors to earn profits comparable to at least three of the major cryptocurrency narratives this year.
Gaming and Layer 2 narratives underperform
GameFi and the Layer 2 narrative emerged as the least profitable narrative in 2024, underperforming even compared to Ethereum’s 49.0% return.
Specifically, the GameFi narrative has returned just 14.7% year-to-date, with six of the top 10 gaming tokens losing between 3.1% and 32.9%.
Layer 2, on the other hand, is the only narrative to lose money this year, with a negative return of 20.7%. Seven of the ten largest Layer 2 tokens have seen price declines, ranging from 6.3% to 75.3%, as more projects seek to launch their own Layer 2s.
Crypto narrative returns rankings for 2024
Performance of crypto narratives in 2024, ranked by average annual ROI of their 10 largest tokens by market cap:
