In the first half of 2024, the cryptocurrency market saw explosive growth, with Ethereum (ETH) and Bitcoin (BTC) both rising by nearly 50%. Various types of cryptocurrencies demonstrated their enormous potential and diversity, from the Meme Coins craze to the rise of Real World Assets (RWA) tokenization, to the steady growth of AI blockchain projects, and to the unique advantages exhibited by each race in the fierce market competition.
According to data from BitEye, CoinGecko, and Wu Blockchain, Meme Coins led the market with a return rate of 1,834%, making it the most profitable area. RWA projects ranked second with a return rate of 214%, followed by AI blockchain projects with a return rate of 72%, and DePIN with a return rate of 59%.
The Meme Coins craze was largely attributed to the support of the Solana network. Solana blockchain simplified the deployment of tokens and smart contracts, providing developers and users with a better user experience and earning the reputation of “Blockchain MacOS.” The rapid rise of Meme Coins also brought some negative news, with many projects being accused of insider trading activities and some even being accused of pump and dump schemes. However, these accusations did not stop the continuous rise in the return rate of Meme Coins.
In addition to Meme Coins, Real World Assets (RWA) tokenization has also become a focus of investor attention. This race had a return rate of 214% in the first half of 2024, ranking second only to Meme Coins. The concept of RWA has attracted the layout of many giant institutions, including BlackRock, and has become a favorite topic of many institutional investors and banks. As global investment funds, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and even real estate gradually migrate to the blockchain, the potential of this race is highly regarded by many investors, and the RWA race is expected to eventually reach a wealth of up to $874 trillion.
Some tokens in the RWA race have performed particularly well, such as MANTRA (OM) and Ondo (ONDO), with return rates of 1123.8% and 451.12%, respectively, from the beginning of the year to the present.
AI blockchain projects and DePIN also showed steady growth in 2024. The return rate of AI projects ranked third with 72%, while DePIN had a return rate of 59%. The AI race has been widely watched since the end of 2023, with Arkham (ARKM) having the highest return rate of 215.50%. This performance once again proves the important position of AI technology in the future digital economy.
DePIN, which was also very popular this year, is considered one of the races with huge growth potential in the future. Projects such as JasmyCoin (JASMY), which sells data generated by IoT devices to various enterprises, have performed well. JASMY had a return rate of 323.42%, while other projects such as decentralized cloud data storage Arweave (AR) and decentralized live video streaming network protocol Livepeer (LPT) had return rates of 174.07% and 116.06%, respectively.
In contrast, the GameFi and DeFi races performed relatively poorly in the first half of 2024. The return rate of GameFi was 19.1%, while that of DeFi was only 3%. From the market conditions in the first half of the year, the GameFi race has not yet produced explosive projects, and although the overall financing is not small, the market’s overall rotation is relatively small. Among the large-cap GameFi tokens, FLOKI had the highest return rate of 362.79%.
In the first half of 2024, the cryptocurrency market experienced dramatic changes and reshuffling. In this market full of variables, investors need to remain cautious and closely monitor market dynamics to seize the next wave of opportunities.