Coin Race: Top Winners/Losers of May; Is Summer Coming for Crypto Holders?

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Fredrik Vold

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Fredrik Vold

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June 26, 2023

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June is here, summer has arrived, and the outlook for the crypto market has in recent days finally seemed a bit brighter.

But although there have been some green shoots in the past few days, the past month as a whole has still been rather miserable for most crypto investors. The falling prices in May have not only affected those holding heavy bags of the luna classic (LUNC) token or the failed stablecoin terraUSD (UST), but also ordinary bitcoin (BTC) and ethereum (ETH) investors.

The losses in May followed another month of losses seen in April, when all coins in the top 10 by market capitalization (as ranked by Coincodex.com) posted losses. That came after a relatively good month in March, with all of the top 10 coins posting gains for the month.

In May, however, the market was back in a sea of red.

Top 10 coins in May

Like last month, all of the top 10 coins by market capitalization – with the exception of stablecoins – were down in May.

The worst-hit from the top group of coins was solana (SOL), which dropped by nearly 50% for the month. The fall is significant considering the size of the coin’s market capitalization – USD 15bn. As a result, SOL has fallen in the ranking, from being number 6 per market capitalization on May 1 to number 9 today.

Following SOL, bag holders of the original meme coin dogecoin (DOGE) were the second-hardest hit last month. Over the course of May, DOGE fell by close to 35% to a price of USD 0.08589, weighed down partly by the news that Tesla boss Elon Musk has put his bid to buy Twitter on hold.

Looking instead at which coins did well, it’s clear that investors have found a ‘safe harbor’ in bitcoin, despite the coin being down close to 17%. The number one crypto was followed by BNB as the second strongest performer on a relative basis last month if we exclude stablecoins.

Best from the top 50 in May

Despite May being a bad month for most cryptos, some coins in the top 50 by market capitalization still saw fairly decent gains.

The best performer in this group was chain (XCN), a little-known smart contract platform that spiked in price in May to land a spot in the top 50 by market capitalization. The token jumped by a massive 124% in May to a price of USD 0.181.

XCN was followed by tron (TRX), which gained 25% for the month, rising to a price of USD 0.083, after also seeing a stronger performance than most other coins in April. The third is the lending and borrowing platform Compound (COMP)’s interest-earning cUSDC token, which gained 15% for the month.

Worst from the top 50 in May

Moving to the worst performers in the top 50 by market capitalization, it becomes clear just how bad the month has been for some unlucky investors, with holders of several tokens seeing their wealth cut in half.

On top of this list is apecoin (APE), a token issued by and for the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) non-fungible token (NFT) community. The token fell by a whopping 61% for the month to a price of USD 6.72.

The second-worst performer last month from this group was avalanche (AVAX), which fell 56% to a price of USD 25.79. The third is the already-mentioned SOL token with its fall of 49%, followed by near protocol (NEAR), which dropped by 48%.

Winners & losers from the top 100

Taking a look at all coins in the top 100 by market capitalization, the above-mentioned XCN token again stands out as the clear winner. The token was followed by WEMIX, a little-known project that sites like CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap have ranked far lower in terms of market capitalization – and which gained 71%.

In terms of the losers, the failed Terra network took the throne as May’s worst performer by far. The network’s native token, which now goes by the name luna classic, fell by 100% over the month to a price of USD 0.000106. It was followed by the same network’s algorithmic stablecoin UST, which dropped by 93%, from its peg at USD 1 to just USD 0.067 as of the end of May.

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