The first half of this year is almost over. Since BTC broke through the previous bull market high and rose to 70,000, it has never seen any exciting glory again.

In recent months, the market has fluctuated repeatedly, and the goal of making money set at the beginning of the year has also been slightly shaken. In any case, the main uptrend of the bull market has not yet arrived, and there will be opportunities everywhere, so don't be anxious.

This is a good time to reflect and review. This article is a statistical comparison of the returns of different crypto tracks from 2024 to the present. It is no longer an era of "picking up money". Which track is the most profitable? You will know after reading this article.

How have the returns of different crypto tracks performed since the beginning of the year?

The ranking is based on the average YTD (January 1, 2024 to June 21, 2024) price return of the top 10 tokens in each track. The data source is CoinGecko. The performance of the cryptocurrency track in the first half of 2024 is shown in the figure below.

Meme coin becomes the most profitable track

In recent months, "value investing is all in vain, all in MEME and live in the palace" has gradually become one of the "cryptocurrency trading mantras" in this bull market.

After statistics, there is no doubt that Meme coin has been the most profitable track so far in 2024, with the highest average return rate reaching 2405.1%. As of June 19, three of the 10 largest Meme coins by market value were newly launched around March-April: Brett (BRETT), BOOK OF MEME (BOME), and DOG•GO•TO•THE•MOON (DOG).

Among them, BRETT had the highest return rate, up 14,353.54% from its issue price; dogwifhat (WIF) rose 933.93% from 2024 to date (YTD), triggering the Meme coin craze at the time.

It is worth noting that the profitability of Meme Coin is 8.6 times that of the second most profitable track RWA, and 542.5 times that of the least profitable DeFi track.

The second most profitable track, RWA, has a return rate of 213.5% since 2024.

The concept of RWA (Real World Assets) has been discussed constantly in recent months, and major institutions have made arrangements in this field, including BlackRock Fund.

As a result, RWA briefly became the most profitable track in February, ranking first in terms of return rate, but was subsequently surpassed by Meme Coin and AI tracks, until it surpassed AI Narrative again at the end of March, and performed well in early June.

Among the RWA tokens with the highest market capitalization, MANTRA (OM) and Ondo (ONDO) have the largest increases, 1123.8% and 451.12% YTD respectively, while XDC Network (XDC) has the worst performance, down 44.38%. Except for some old DeFi, the RWA project is generally in its early stages and can be paid more attention to.

The AI ​​track followed closely behind with a return rate of 71.6%

As early as the end of 2023, the AI ​​track has frequently appeared in the annual outlooks of major investment institutions. As Messari said in its 2024 investment forecast, AI has become the new darling of the technology field. Indeed, it lived up to expectations. From 2024 to date, the average return rate of the AI ​​track is 71.6%, ranking third.

Among them, Arkham (ARKM) had the highest increase of 215.50%, followed by AIOZ Network (AIOZ), which increased by 192.19%. Render (RNDR) and Fetch.ai (FET), which received much attention in the first half of the year, also performed well with return rates of 57.47% and 116.00% respectively.

DePIN and Layer1 achieve steady growth

DePIN's return rate was basically negative in the first half of the first quarter, but it began to reverse the downward trend since March, with a return rate of 58.7% to date.

The best performer among large-cap DePIN tokens is JasmyCoin (JASMY), with a 323.42% increase, followed by Arweave (AR) and Livepeer (LPT), with YTD increases of 174.07% and 116.06%, respectively.

In contrast, Helium (HNT) performed poorly and was the only large-cap DePIN token to fall by more than 50%, with a return of -50.94%.

DePIN is also one of the tracks that capital is betting on in this round of bull market. If the total market value of DeFi increases 10 times, and the total market value of DePIN reaches half of DeFi, then the total market value of DePIN will reach 500 billion US dollars, with at least 20 times of growth space.

The Layer 1 (L1) track has a return rate of 43.0% since 2024. Although Solana (SOL) has received a lot of attention as a public chain that has given birth to many high-potential memes, with a YTD increase of 22.91%, it has fallen a lot compared to the return rate of 85.05% in mid-March.

The best performing large-cap L1 cryptocurrencies are actually Toncoin (TON) and Binance Coin (BNB), with gains of 204.72% and 86.10%, respectively.

In comparison, Bitcoin (BTC) is up 45.06% from the beginning of the year after hitting a new high, while Ethereum (ETH) has only risen 49.65% YTD, comparable to BTC, despite high expectations through its ETF application.

GameFi, DeFi, and Layer 2 Lag

The return rate of the GameFi track is 19.1%. It is a track with relatively less market rotation since the beginning of the year. It has raised a lot of funds overall, but has not yet produced a hit product.

The best performing GameFi tokens were FLOKI (FLOKI), up 362.79%, and Ronin (RON).