Bitcoin (BTC) has had a stellar 2020, just how are other top crypto assets faring? Allow's take a look at how some of the top cryptocurrencies by market capitalization performed this .

Bitcoin

First, Bitcoin has seen a massive gain since Jan. one, as its price soared from $seven,195 to equally high as $28,422.

Within 12 months, the price of Bitcoin rose by 290%, outperforming all major stock indices and near stocks, apart from a select few including Tesla (TSLA).

The main catalysts backside Bitcoin'southward rally have been the increase in institutional demand, favorable fiscal conditions as a issue of central bank liquidity injections, and the decline of the U.South. dollar.

BTC/USD monthly chart (Coinbase). Source: TradingView.com

The combination of the three macro factors fueled Bitcoin's momentum in October. Somewhen, as major institution-focused platforms including CME and Grayscale saw a large spike in volume and inflows, accelerating Bitcoin's rally.

Ethereum

Ether (ETH) price performed strongly throughout 2020, despite its recent stagnant phase confronting Bitcoin.

The Ether price started 2020 at $128 beyond major exchanges and at its peak on Dec. 30, ETH achieved $748.

The principal driver of Ether'south rally throughout November was the release of Eth2. After reaching a threshold of over 400,000 ETH in deposits, Eth2 commenced.

Eth2 is a major network upgrade for Ethereum equally it scales the blockchain exponentially over time. Without Eth2, Ethereum is able to process under 20 transactions per second. With Eth2, this figure increases to potentially thousands of transactions per second.

Old school altcoins

In year-to-date performance, most of the old school altcoins (the 1's from 2017 and earlier), including XRP, Cadano (ADA), and Stellar (XLM), lagged behind Bitcoin pr.

Out of the original altcoins, XRP initially performed particularly well in November as Bitcoin rallied towards its all-fourth dimension high.

XRP began the twelvemonth at $0.1923 and surged to equally high as $0.9210, demonstrating a four-fold increase in most 11 months. However, as BTC surged past $twenty,000, altcoins took a hitting, causing XRP to drib to $0.52. Later on the SEC's lawsuit against Ripple, XRP dropped further, failing to as low every bit $0.17.

Smart contract protocols

Polkadot, Chainlink, EOS, and Tezos have also rallied since the starting time of the year. The iv smart contract-related cryptocurrencies each saw considerable catalysts for brusk-term rallies when BTC rallied towards $20,000.

Bitcoin weekly chart versus Chainlink, Polkadot, EOS, and Tezos. Source: TradingView.com

For instance, Chainlink benefited from the explosive growth of the decentralized finance (DeFi) infinite. Chainlink is an oracle-focued blockchain network and the objective of an oracle is to feed data to DeFi protocols.

Every bit such, as the full value locked in DeFi reached $16 billion, Chainlink rallied and so did many other DeFi-linked tokens.

Despite various corresponding catalysts, Polkadot, EOS, Tezos, and Chainlink lagged behind Bitcoin in year-to-date gains. The primary reason behind the muted price action was Bitcoin's meteoric rally mail-$20,000, which caused altcoins to pull back.

Specialized tokens, such every bit Wrapped Bitcoin, USDC, and Tether also saw meaning growth in terms of market cap. These tokens are mainly utilized on DeFi protocols and the rapid increment in user activeness fabricated each token endemic to the DeFi ecosystem.

Tether, in particular, saw a rapid increase in marketplace capitalization in the fourth quarter of 2020. As Cointelegraph reported, Tether, the well-nigh used stablecoin in the cryptocurrency marketplace, surpassed $20 billion in valuation.