Altcoin Showdown: Only 9 Outperform Bitcoin Since Peak
The promise of investing in altcoins has been to offer higher returns than Bitcoin for those willing to take on additional risk. However, identifying the handful of alts that can outperform BTC over a longer timeframe is surprisingly difficult.
Fresh data from Glassnode shows that only 9 out of the top 50 largest altcoins at the time of Bitcoin's peak last October have generated returns better than bitcoin's since then. Zcash (ZEC) stands out as the clear winner, delivering almost 14.5 times BTC's return over the period.
The other top performers include HYPE ($93.07 · Live), with gains of around 2.9x compared to BTC, XMR ($556.99 · Live) and NEAR ($5.22 · Live) at 2.6x and 2.1x respectively. UNI ($9.98 · Live), TRX ($0.33 · Live), LEO ($9.02 · Live), and TAO ($331.45 · Live) also outperformed.
However, this means that 41 of the original top 50 altcoins were unable to beat simply holding the largest cryptocurrency. The comparison highlights the opportunity cost of moving capital away from Bitcoin in search of larger gains from more risk-on altcoins.