Source: iStock/microgen

Despite the bloody bear market, which is, hopefully, about to end, every month there were ten coins which performed better or worse than the rest of the market. Among top 50 coins by market capitalization the absolute winner in the past year was Binance Coin (BNB), the native token of major crypto exchange Binance. The most often loser was ICON (ICX).

In May 2018 we released the first article of the monthly series “Coin Race” where we review the top 10 best and worst performing tokens among the top 50 coins (the list of top tokens was constantly changing.) In this yearly review article, we’ve counted which coins had “won” the most appearances in the both winners and losers lists, and reviewed all their net gains and losses over the past twelve months. However, it should be noted that if a coin appeared among the "winners" or "losers", sometimes it just meant that it dropped or grew less than the competing tokens.

Most often winners: BNB, BAT, REP, MKR

BNB was among top 10 gainers during 7 out of 12 months. Overall, this token is the only coin which appreciated (from May 1 of 2018 to May 1 of 2019) - it gained almost 55% nearing its all-time high recently.

Other coins that performed well against the market are Basic Attention Token (BAT), Augur (REP) and Maker (MKR). All of them were among the top 10 performers at least five months of the bear market. Despite that, their net annual change is negative and ranges from approx. 25% to 50% of their value.

Also, Ontology (ONT), OKEx’s OKB coin, Bitcoin (BTC), Monero (XMR), Dogecoin (DOGE), EOS (EOS), and Chainlink (LINK) were among the market leaders for minimum 3 months of the year. The latter coin, LINK, lost only 17% of value since last May, while Bitcoin and Dogecoin depreciated 40% and 51%. The remainder of “winners” tell an even sadder story - most of them lost up to 86% of their former value held over a year ago.

Most often losers: ICX, ONT, OMG

ICX was the most frequent loser on a month-to-month basis and could be found in the top 10 worst performers for the six months of the year. Not surprisingly, it lost more than 92% of its value. However, the coin managed to appear in the winning list once.

Other “top losers” among hyped up projects include Ontology (ONT), whose significant gains were quickly erased month after month, and OmiseGO (OMG). Both ONT and OMG were on the opposite end of the coin race for five months. While ONT managed to rebound and had several winning months which led it to lose “only” 86% value, OMG didn’t lead the market any month and lost more than 90% of its net worth during the year.

Other notable “losers” of the year were: OKB, Bitcoin Gold (BTG), NANO, Aeternity (AE), Ethereum (ETH), IOTA (IOT), VeChain (VET) (which also went through 1:100 coin dilution process), QTUM, and Bitcoin SV (BSV). It is mention-worthy that BSV found its place among the worst performers even though it appeared on exchanges only half a year ago - on November 2018. All these underperforming coins lost between 75% and 85% value to the bears. The only exception is BSV, which devalued approx. 25% since its listing last November.

All in all, the total market cap went from USD 423 billion to USD 175 billion that we had on May 1, 2019, which constitutes a 58,62% contraction.

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Below you'll find two infographics:

"Wins & Loses" shows how many times a coin appeared among the "winners" or "losers"

shows how many times a coin appeared among the "winners" or "losers" "Price change" shows what was the average change when a coin appeared in the Coin Race series, how it price changed in the past 12 months and how it has changed in 2019.

* - OKB was listed in June 2018.

** - BSV was listed in November 2018.

*** - VET went through 1:100 coin dilution process.