The first half of 2018 was something of a bloodbath for crypto investors – the entire cryptocurrency markets fell from a historic peak of just over $810 billion at the end of the first week of January to a 2018 low of just over $230 billion in the last week of June – representing a whopping fall of 71%.Â
To add to the misery for those investors with a strategic focus on the top ten alt coins, over the course of that same period – at least according to one market analyst –Â at no stage did they collectively outperform the market itself. The implication is, then, that investors seeking to perform better than the market needed to choose judiciously from amongst lower profile cryptocurrencies and ICO tokens.Â
Summer Recovery
However, July appears to have sparked a reversal which, whilst remaining sheepish, has since added $35 billion to June’s 2018 low, an increase of 15%. For holders of Ethereum and Stellar, the news is particularly positive as they now sit at the top of the rankings for best performing top ten alt coins in 2018.Â
Whilst the top ten alt coins have fallen by a collective (non-weighted) average of 59% over 2018, those figures fall to 34.4% and 38.3% for ETH and XLM respectively. For holders of Cardano (ADA) and Ripple (XRP), the news isn’t quite so good – both find themselves at the bottom of the top ten alts table displaying a loss of 79.6.8% in the case of the former and 77.8% for the latter.Â
However all of the top ten alts – with the exception of Bitcoin Cash (BCH) – are up since the beginning of July, with some market analysts anticipating a moderate recovery for the summer months which, traditionally, represent a period of stronger engagement in the crypto markets.Â
