With the 2024 Bitcoin Block Reward Halving coming and going, the approval of Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs, and Donald Trump’s re-election to the White House, there is much excitement surrounding crypto assets as we’re just hours away from 2025.
Today, we’ll look at the three altcoins/tokens in the top 100 (by market cap) that generated the biggest ROI in 2024, with some notable mentions towards the end.
Let’s begin.
3) Bitget Token (BGB) — 860% profit in 2024
Category: Utility token (centralised exchanges)
The native asset of the eponymous centralised exchange has quadrupled in price since the beginning of December. It is currently at $6.13 and reached a local peak of $7.20 last week.
The exchange has processed over $4.8 billion of 24-hour trading volume, consistently reaching $7.5 billion daily.
BGB holders benefit from these consistently high (and growing) volumes through discounts on spot transaction fees, higher Earn rewards and other perks. An upcoming deflationary mechanism (i.e., token burns, similar to BNB and Binance) provides an extra incentive for holders.
2) Pepe ($PEPE) — 1,260% profit in 2024
Category: Meme coins
The most renowned frog-themed meme eclipsed the local peak it set in March, hitting a new ATH on December 9. This translated to a circulating market cap of $11.58 billion.
Will it continue to do well in 2025? It’s possible, but the gains from this point onwards will be nothing to write home about.
The reality for (almost) all meme coins, let alone the market at large, is that priority will be assigned to small and micro-caps, where most degens are banking on the explosive gains that are no longer available to PEPE, owing to its high market cap.
1) Mantra ($OM) — 5,900% profit in 2024
Categories: DeFi, RWAs
I would have never guessed this one would top the list, but once you delve into this project, it’s worth making the top three.
Mantra is a bespoke layer-1 blockchain that streamlines regulatory compliance for tokenising real-world assets (RWAs).
This Layer 1 system was built using Cosmos SDK. Mantra is compatible with Ethereum and other EVM-compatible chains, such as BNB Chain, Polygon, and Base, to facilitate network connectivity.
OM is a utility token for Mantra. It is mainly used to secure the network with its proof-of-stake system and pay fees to the protocol treasury when new tokens are made or burned within the Guard Module. Click here to learn about other ways OM is used within Mantra.
Will Mantra continue its incredible run into 2025? I am optimistic, as Washington D.C. is expected to deliver more crypto-friendly regulations in the coming months, which will benefit the entire industry.
Its focus on RWAs should be one of the protocol’s biggest drawcards, particularly when the tokenisation of physical assets is expected to exceed $16 trillion by 2030, representing 10% of global GDP.
This is one of the top five trends to follow in 2025, which I covered in a recent article.
After about ten days of the US Elections, OM’s price nearly tripled within a week, shooting up from $1.53 to roughly $4. It appears to have maintained a new resistance level at $3.50 over the past five weeks.
Notable mentions
ai16z ($AI16Z)
Category: AI agents
If this token had over an entire 12-month period, it would have comfortably made it into the top three.
The same applies to similar AI assets such as Virtuals Protocol ($VIRTUALS) and Dasha ($VVAIFU),
AI16Z has been on an absolute tear since launching in October, up 3,400%. This would be a whopping 16,800% if you bought at its all-time low of around $0.01 on November 3.
Expect cryptos and projects closely aligned with AI agents to continue going parabolic into 2025.
There will also be plenty of capital rotation from higher-capped AI tokens into smaller (emerging) ones, BTC, and other blue chips as part of profit-taking strategies.
XRP
Category: Blockchain-based fintech (gross-payment settlements)
Many of us love an underdog; XRP has been crypto’s epitome of this in recent years.
Love or loathe it, XRP has started proving the naysayers wrong again.
Emerging as the second-most lucrative top-10 asset in 2024, up by 229% (just behind DOGE’s 248% year to date), what’s even more remarkable is the majority of XRP’s price increases for the past 12 months have occurred since early November.
While it’s still far from its all-time high of $3.60, which hasn’t been seen for seven years, I expect it to continue its strong performance into 2025.
Read this post to learn more about major developments surrounding XRP and Ripple.
Sui ($SUI)
Categories: Layer 1, smart contracts platform
Touted as a Solana competitor, SUI was the most profitable top-20 crypto in 2024, up 421%, well ahead of SOL, which had a massive renaissance in 2023 and thus also featured in last year’s article.
Sui is gaining much traction on crypto Twitter, not to mention its significant developer growth in recent months as an emerging L1.
Over time, I envisage this becoming a blue-chip asset alongside BTC, ETH, XRP, DOT, and, to a lesser extent, SOL (I still have my reservations about the latter).
I will write a post in the coming weeks focusing on Sui, so subscribe to receive notifications for that piece and other relevant crypto and blockchain-tech content.
Dogwifhat (WIF) continued its impressive form in the latter part of 2023 and narrowly missed a top-3 spot this year. At the time of writing, it has registered an 850% increase since January 1.
It was poised for a podium finish by early April, going from $0.17 to its ATH of $4.85 on March 31. However, it failed to build on its massive momentum in Q1 and is now at $1.78.
This is mostly due to significant capital rotation from WIF, PEPE, FLOKI and other meme coins to the explosion of micro-cap memes built on top of Solana.
Before I forget, I want to mention BRETT, the most popular meme coin running on Base, the Ethereum L2. It is up by 13,000% since its inception on February 28.
Looking a year ahead, which crypto assets will be the top three (or even top five) by the end of 2025? Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments section.
Thanks for reading. I wish you a happy New Year 2025 and a productive and prosperous year, both financially and health-wise.
Acknowledgements
I obtained the background and logos used in the featured image from the following sources:
• Podium background by user21155762 at Freepik
• The Crypto Logos website supplied BGB, PEPE, and OM logos. Thank you very much for making these available to the general public.
Disclaimers
• N.B. None of this is financial advice; I am not a financial advisor. This content is for educational purposes only. You are ultimately responsible for crypto investments, let alone in any asset class.
• The opinions expressed within this piece are my own and might not reflect those behind any news outlet, person, organisation, or otherwise listed here.
• Please do sufficient research (DYOR) before investing in any crypto assets, staking, NFTs or other products affiliated with this space.
• Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum account for about half of my crypto holdings, followed by Cardano (ADA) and XRP, making up another 25%. The only crypto I have listed here is PEPE, valued at around $200 at the time of writing.