Top Cryptos Of 2021: We Bet You Have Never Heard Of The Top Gainer!

In a collaboration with cryptocurrency market data platform CoinStats, Benzinga gained insight into which cryptocurrencies saw the best price-performance in 2021 — with results that could be surprising to most.

What Happened: Data shared with Benzinga shows some of the top five cryptocurrencies of 2021 are assets so unknown that even the most expert crypto pundits could be surprised by the list.

The coin with the highest yearly percentage gain, according to CoinStats data, with an astonishing gain of nearly 39,500% is Gala GALA/USD with its current market cap of about $3.6 billion and price of $0.47 per token. This is the native asset of a gaming platform featuring the play-to-earn model to create blockchain games based on the Ethereum ETH/USD blockchain.

The second coin that reported the highest gains is Axie Infinity AXS/USD, reaching a price increase of nearly 19,900% at its current price of $95.7. This is the token powering a blockchain trading and battling game that is in part owned and administered by its players and employs a play-to-earn mechanic.

ECOMI OMI/USD comes in third, with its current price of $0.00642 and a market cap of $1,067 million. Its yearly gain was 18,080%. This is the coin of a Singapore-based company operating in the digital collectible space and the VeVe social collectible marketplace.

The next crypto to report the highest gain is The Sandbox SAND/USD, which saw its value increase by about 17,050% this year, reaching its current price of $5.95 and a market cap of $5.5 billion. The Sandbox is a blockchain-based virtual world that provides both a team's interpretation of the metaverse and gaming experiences while leveraging non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to manage land ownership.

The fifth top cryptocurrency is XYO XYO/USD, which saw its value increase by about 15,650% over the year, reaching a market cap of $423.2 million and its current price of $0.03388. XYO is an Ethereum-based token that powers a geolocation system for blockchain applications featuring staking mechanics.

An Early Trend? It is worth pointing out that there is a clear prevalence of gaming-oriented cryptocurrencies among the top gainers featured in this list. Three out of the top five cryptocurrencies are gaming-related, namely Gala, Axie Infinity and The Sandbox. This may indicate an early trend that could grow and show more potential next year.

Attentive readers may ask, "Where is Shiba Inu SHIB/USD on this list?" After all, we reported in November that investing in SHIB as little as $15 on day one would have been enough to make the lucky crypto holder a millionaire later down the line.

Benzinga asked a CoinStats representative to explain the absence of the token on the list. He said on Jan. 1, Shiba Inu's price was so low that the system used to calculate percentage gains to determine the price at the time indicated zero and excluded it from the list of top cryptocurrencies — how could it calculate a price increase with a starting price of $0?

Photo: Ben White via Unsplash