2018 started off very strongly for crypto. Following the frenzy of December, with bitcoin reaching an ATH of over $20,000, people thought that January would continue the upward trend. The first week of January saw BTC prices break 17k again but from that point on it was all downhill.

source: Tradingview (as of 2018–04–26)

Bitcoin would tumble all the way down to just above $6,100 over a period of a month. Total market cap would fall more than 65% to reach a low of $287 billion. Daily trading volume also plummeted, falling to just a quarter of what it was at it’s peak. The following time would be one of little changes, especially for what crypto is used to. This was particularly true for the 1 month period of mid-march to mid-april where most coins were trading within a narrow band.

Recently, the market has been on a bit of an upswing. Bitcoin has risen over 37% from around $6,700 to $9,200. Both total market cap and daily trading volume are also trending up and the bulls look to be gaining force.

Now that we are almost a third of the way through the year, and following this bounceback, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the top performers so far of 2018.

source: Coincodex

Most of the top performers are more recent coins. This makes sense as they were not around to set all time highs during Dec/Jan. The most obvious winner here is Mithril (MITH) with a YTD gain of 617%. They are beating second place Pundi X (NPXS) by over 381%. Mithril is an interesting project which focuses on rewarding people for their social media content. They also have an app available, called Lit , that people can use to mine for MITH.

Of the coins that were trading at the start of the year, Bytom (BTM) takes the top spot. Bytom (BTM) is a Chinese altcoin that is designed specifically for the area of asset management. They placed third overall on the list and gained 190% since the start of the year.

Top 3 Winners of 2018 (as of 2018–04–27)

The top performer from the list in terms of daily volume is, unsurprisingly, EOS (EOS). This coin is in the top 5 overall for market cap and so attracts a large number of traders. What’s surprising though, is that Mithril (MITH) ranks second for 24h volume. Even for being a relatively newer token, their is high trading volume, especially on Bithumb and OKEx. High trading volume is a good sign that interest is real and not just being manipulated by a few whales.

Bithumb Top Volume ( as of 2018–04–27)

It will be interesting to see how this list shakes out during the next third of the year. Will MITH and NPXS stay on top or will they be dethroned by newer coins that are yet to come? All I know is that holders of MITH and NPXS should be pretty happy right now.

Christian Ng is an entrepreneur and investor with experience in cryptocurrency and global financial markets. He enjoys identifying opportunities and getting involved with blockchain projects to bring them to scale and profitability.