Short-term volatility is common in the cryptocurrency market. While that does translate to higher risk versus other investment instruments, there’s also plenty of upside potential. The past year, for instance, saw the cryptocurrency market’s total valuation briefly top $3 trillion for the first time. While this impressive growth was sometimes offset by slowdowns and even major dips, most tokens are still trading higher than they were only a few short months ago.
With the year now coming to an end, here’s a retrospective look at the performance of the 15 largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization — sorted from the highest returns to the lowest, as of December 30. We’ve also visualized just how far a hypothetical $1,000 investment in each cryptocurrency at the start of the year would’ve gone over the course of 2021. Of course, we left out any stablecoins since they can’t be held as an investment.