Top gainers

• Bitcoin
• Dogecoin
• Shiba Inu
• Ethereum
• Solana

Top losers

• Shiba Inu
• Ripple
• Bitcoin
• Olympus v2
• Bitcoin Gold

Cryptocurrencies appeared in 2009 to offer an alternative to fiat money. The main purpose was to decentralize the control of money from national banks and states, to the people.

Bitcoin was introduced as the first cryptocurrency, and it remained an underdog until 2017 when it rose in value to more than $1,000 and grabbed huge attention from the media and news channels. After some time, more cryptocurrencies started emerging, drawing more attention from people and businesses, and even several Bitcoin ATMs were installed in different countries.

Each cryptocurrency can be exchanged for money, and the vast majority of them are exchanged for US dollars since it is the global currency of trade. However, some exchanges may quote cryptocurrencies against each other, like ETH/BTC, without having a usual currency involved or using balancers.

Given the fact that it is a decentralized currency, and is not backed by any physical commodity, the price of cryptocurrencies basically changes according to the supply and demand law. 

Other factors that cause cryptocurrencies to change in value are the worldwide regulations around them. When more countries limit access to cryptos, the value of cryptocurrencies might drop because fewer people have access now, and there is less demand for them.

However, cryptocurrencies gain value when countries and payment providers adopt cryptos as a payment option, which gives more people access, and therefore, increased demand for cryptocurrencies.

Trading cryptocurrencies

People make money from trading cryptocurrencies by buying and selling different cryptos in the marketplace. Given the high volatility of this market, some traders prefer to make some short-term gains by buying a specific cryptocurrency, then selling it when the price rises.

To start trading, you need to find a reliable financial broker that enables you to buy and sell different cryptocurrencies and make money from this highly volatile market.

Traders gain from trading cryptocurrencies when they buy a specific digital coin, or execute a buy order in the market for some period of time. When the cryptocurrency price rises, the trader sells back the crypto or closes their market position, reaping the gains they made from the price difference.

Unlike other financial markets, even the most commonly traded cryptocurrencies have high volatility rates. Less traded ones can be risky since they are not backed by money investors, but are characterized by higher volatility.

Besides Bitcoin ($415bn), there are other popular cryptocurrencies with huge market capitalization, such as Ethereum ($202bn), and Tether ($67bn). Other cryptos that were recently introduced also made their steps quickly as one of the most traded currencies, such as Solana ($12bn), and Shiba Inu ($8bn).

This means that well-established cryptos are always considered a good investment opportunity, while new cryptos which can be found every now and then can also provide some nice gaining opportunities.

This high-paced market witnessed the introduction of many cryptos, and depending on the speculations and the global events around the world, they can either surge or sink.

Out of the numerous cryptocurrencies available, there are some cryptos that achieved remarkable growth. Investors who traded using these cryptos gained hugely on their investment, some of them could see more than 12,000% return on their investment.

Bitcoin

Bitcoin is the first cryptocurrency that was introduced to us, and it is now widely used around the world as a payment method. There are Bitcoin ATMs in almost every country in the world, where people can exchange Bitcoin for money.

It is the main cryptocurrency that can be found on most brokers’ websites, and many businesses accept payment using Bitcoins. 

The value of Bitcoin grew tremendously from being on the verge of $15,000 in 2017 to hitting $68,000 by late 2021, marking one of the biggest crypto gains of more than 240%. 

Additionally, if a trader bought 1 Bitcoin in July 2021, 4 months later in November of the same year when the Bitcoin price reached $68,000, the investor would see a return on investment of more than 125%.

This way, if a trader invested $1,000 in Bitcoin, the value of the investment by the end of the year would be worth $2,250, making a profit of $1,250 in 4 months.

This huge gain in Bitcoin was caused by many exchange providers announcing that they would adopt Bitcoin as a payment method in a similar fashion to PayPal. Additionally, El Salvador announced adopting Bitcoin as a legal tender for buying goods and services in the country, which boosted the surrounding speculations. 

Dogecoin

The Dogecoin was created out of sarcasm by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, as they were making fun of the Bitcoin outbreak in 2013.

Dogecoin did not really hold a significant value until 2021. Before then, the price of 1 DOGE was 0.0025 USD. However, the Dogecoin cryptocurrency gained 128% within the first week of 2021 and started circulating on different social media platforms.

Since the cryptocurrencies fluctuated based on speculations, the meme-based Dogecoin gained more popularity in April, when more people heard about it - more people invested in it, causing one of the most profitable gains in crypto of more than 500% between the 10th and 16th of April 2021.

For example, if a trader predicted this trend and invested $1,000 in DOGE, in less than 1 week the investment would bring about an additional $5,000.

The growth did not last too long and in the few days after April 16th it dropped by around 50%, before jumping another 104% during the first week of May 2021.

The value of DOGE was highly tied to the tweets of Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Inc. who mentioned on different occasions his support for Dogecoin, and that his company would accept it as a method of payment, which triggered a great race for this digital coin.

Towards the end of the year, the CEO of Tesla Inc. announced that the company might adopt Dogecoin as a payment method, causing the DOGE price to jump around 20%.

Shiba Inu

Shiba Inu is another sarcastic or meme-based cryptocurrency that was created in 2020. The intention was to compete with trending Dogecoin. In May 2021, between the 8th and 11th, SHIB cryptocurrency gained more than 1,150%, marking the highest gains in crypto history.

For example, if a trader invested $1,000 in SHIB coin, in three days their investment would have been valued $12,500. But if they managed to withdraw their profits at this time it would be great, because SHIB lost most of its value by the end of the same year.

By October of the same year, the price jumped another 190%, marking the end of the SHIB trend, as it started to lose most of its value.

If we look at the bigger picture of Shiba Inu's life span in 2021, we see great inflation in its value with a growth of almost 2 million %, turning a $1 investment into millions of dollars.

Ethereum

Ethereum is considered the second biggest cryptocurrency in the market after Bitcoin in terms of trading volume, and market capitalization. It was created in 2015 and accompanied Bitcoin in the 2017 cryptocurrency boom, growing from $10 at the beginning of 2017, and closing the year with a 9,900% gain.

After reaching more than $1,300 in 2018, Ethereum's value deflated to $200 by the end of 2020. By then, more payment providers and exchanges accepted Ethereum besides Bitcoin as a payment method. As a result, the value of ETH increased by more than 210% during the first half of 2021, reaching $4,179.

The valuation continued, and by November of the same year, Ethereum increased to a new high of $4,818, a slight increase of 15%. This increase was linked to the upgrade in Ethereum which strengthened the ecosystem and the blockchain, gaining more confidence from crypto investors.

Other currencies were created to race Ethereum for second place, which did nothing but strengthen the Ethereum position as one of the biggest gaining cryptocurrencies.

Solana

This cryptocurrency was created to compete with Ethereum, which was created in 2020, and is mostly compared to Ethereum by crypto investors.

Solana is one of the top gainers in the cryptocurrency market. Its price witnessed more than 12,900% growth, reaching $290, which made many believe that it is going to beat Ethereum.

It can be differentiated from Ethereum since it uses different blockchain technology, which can be the reason not many traders believe in Solana as a competitive currency. On the other hand, its technology sounds promising since it can handle more transactions per second than Ethereum.

However, the beginning of 2022 was not the best start for SOL. Its network went offline during the first week of 2022, and it lost around 40% of its December 2021 value.

Some cryptocurrencies introduced themselves to the market and gained hugely, but not all of them managed to resist the market. In fact, plenty of them sank as soon as they made their buzz, which proves how volatile this market is.

Shiba Inu

Despite the huge success that Shiba Inu saw in 2021, its lifespan was quite short-lived. It was one of the biggest failing cryptocurrencies lately, and it lost most of its value by the end of 2021.

A tweet from the CEO of Tesla, where he indicated that he does not hold any Shiba Inu coin, marked the end for this currency that lost more than 900% of its value during the last two months of 2021.

This drop carried on at the beginning of 2022 when the currency lost another 40% of its previous value.

Ripple

Created by Ripple Labs Inc in 2014, this coin was designed to become a remittance and exchange converter, to facilitate sending money overseas. However, a later name modification established the XRP cryptocurrency in 2018.

It was a promising project, and it gained a value of more than 800% in the last month of 2017, however, it lost 80% of its value in the first quarter of 2018. 

XRP kept low performance until 2021 when it managed to pick up a price increase and reached $1.80. However, within 2 months it again lost 80% of its value, marking the failure of a project that once had promising potential.

Bitcoin

Despite being the leading cryptocurrency, Bitcoin had some huge failures in the crypto market, that are worth mentioning.

As we mentioned, cryptocurrencies are affected by speculations and market trends, and Bitcoin is not an exception. 2021 was a challenging year for Bitcoin investors, after reaching a new high of $63,000 in April, Bitcoin lost more than 50% of its value in two months.

It managed to pick up some price increases in the upcoming months and after another new high of $68,000 in November 2012, two months later it lost another 40% of its value. This downfall continued with the latest crypto winter and by August 2022 Bitcoin was trading for $25,000, marking one of the biggest Bitcoin price drops in the last few years.

Olympus v2

The Olympus V2 coin is meme-based crypto or a sarcastic currency, that was intended to spread a short-term awareness of a new shiny cryptocurrency.

It was introduced to the crypto market at the beginning of 2021 and witnessed a price increase that reached $1,450. People started thinking Olympus V2 was going to be the next big thing.

However, very soon sarcastic posts saying “Olympus has fallen” started circulating, which was true because this crypto lost more than 88% of its value within 4 weeks. It managed to pick up some weight and exceed the $1,000 mark in October 2021. However, it closed the year with a more than 75% loss.

Bitcoin Gold

This cryptocurrency was founded in 2017 by a group of developers and investors for the purpose of organizing the mining process that is taking place on the blockchain. The project offered the same services given by Bitcoin but using a more sophisticated network.

Unfortunately, it was one of the biggest failing cryptos. Soon after the network was launched, it faced several cyberattacks and hacks. One attack managed to leak around $18 million worth of coins from the newly developed blockchain. Later, the network was heavily criticized by famous crypto exchanges such as Bittrex and Coinbase.

Bitcoin gold was launched with a value of $500. However, it lost more than 60% of its value within the first week of its launch. Later, after less than two months, it lost another 77% of its value.

During 2019 and 2020, its value remained well under $30. In 2021, after picking up some upward trend, reaching $130 by May, it closed the year with a more than 75% loss, at a price of $36.

• The cryptocurrency market is highly volatile, and any currency can see its value moving up and down at a fast pace
• Crypto traders can become rich in a few weeks, even grow millions in several months as some cryptos grew more than 12,000% in less than a year
• Bitcoin is the main and biggest cryptocurrency. During its lifetime, it experienced some major gains and failures that caused some traders to go either rich or broke
• Cryptocurrencies that are based on memes and sarcasm do not last in the market. They might grab the attention of the public and many traders, but they usually fail too soon
• Cryptocurrencies rely highly on speculations and public interest. The more people talk about a certain crypto, the higher the demand for it, which increases its price