The Most Successful Investments of 2024 in the Cryptocurrency Market. Where Should You Have Invested?

Journalists from Decrypt analyzed the coin industry and its representatives to compile a small rating of the most profitable crypto investments of 2024. To be selected, assets had to have an initial capitalization of at least $500 million as of January 1 – the figure should not have fallen below the mentioned mark until this month.

So, which coins can be called the best of their kind?

Pepe – meme record holder of the year

One of the new meme tokens to take the top spot is Pepe, which was launched last year and is based on the internet culture character Pepe the Frog.

Pepe hit a new all-time high in December. The token based on the internet character started the year with a market cap of $590.8 million, and by December 17, it had reached the $9.4 billion line. That’s a total gain of 1,492 percent.

Pepe has attracted attention for its absurd meme-token-style price and how it has made a small group of traders extremely rich. Unlike many other assets in its niche, Pepe has proven to be a long-lived coin, now ranking 28th in the cryptocurrency market cap.

Sui – the king of altcoins

Sui is a relatively newcomer to the market: the blockchain was launched in May 2023 by former Meta (formerly Facebook) engineers. Today, the project has an active community using its fast network.

SUI’s native asset has seen impressive growth this year. In January, its market cap was $925 million. By December, after growing 1,193 percent, it had reached almost $12 billion. SUI is now the 18th largest cryptocurrency by market cap.

MicroStrategy Stocks Are the Best Alternative Investment

Michael Saylor’s company made a bet on Bitcoin back in August 2020, starting to add the cryptocurrency to its balance sheet on an ongoing basis. The result of this strategy and its success is clearly demonstrated by the MSTR share price.

While they were trading below $70 at the start of the year, by December their value had risen almost fivefold to $386, a 464 percent increase. MSTR has outperformed many Nasdaq stocks, including Nvidia.

Moreover, the company’s connection with crypto became the basis for this, since today MicroStrategy’s activity is associated primarily with Bitcoin, and not with its ordinary tasks.

Dogecoin – The Oldest Meme Token

Dogecoin was created as a joke about the absurd number of altcoins being issued, but it now ranks seventh by market cap. Its market cap has grown 342 percent this year to $45.9 billion, a rise that has traditionally been fueled by Bitcoin’s success.

Billionaire Elon Musk has also gotten in on the action. After all, the Tesla CEO has tweeted about Dogecoin frequently in 2020–2021. He also brought the asset back into the spotlight this year amid rumors of the coin being used by social network X under his leadership.

XRP – an asset that is back in the game

XRP has had a very successful year. XRP’s market cap has grown so much that it has become the fourth-largest coin in the world, growing from $34 billion to $131.2 billion. This month, the crypto briefly overtook USDT to take third place, although it was ranked sixth on January 1.

The asset has long been in the spotlight due to its legal battles with regulators, as the SEC previously filed a lawsuit against Ripple in late 2020, accusing the company of selling unregistered securities. In 2023, Ripple partially won the case when a judge ruled that sales of XRP on crypto exchanges to retail investors could not be considered transactions with unregistered securities.

The ruling was a victory for Ripple and the entire crypto industry. However, the judge also acknowledged that the $728 million token sales to institutions were still regulated under securities law.

BlackRock IBIT Exchange Traded Fund

This asset deserves a special honorable mention. 2024 has been an incredible year for Bitcoin, and the world’s largest investment company BlackRock has helped make it happen by giving people the opportunity to invest in the cryptocurrency through ETFs.

It was iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), a traditional investment vehicle that allows investors to buy and sell Bitcoin-based stocks. The shares are traded on Nasdaq.

Since it began trading in January, IBIT has broken multiple records for trading volume and capital inflows. By December, the fund’s assets under management had surpassed the $50 billion mark, a record. It achieved this feat in just 228 days, faster than any other ETF in history.

Most importantly, IBIT has recorded net capital inflows of $37.2 billion to date, the best result in this investment vehicle category.

Statistics show that 2024 has become a great year for earning money on crypto. And although serious profitability has not affected all coins, it was still possible to get additional money. Well, 2025 promises to be the final year in the current crypto growth cycle, so it is clearly not worth ignoring.