The stock market has been viewed as an asset class that can consistently outpace inflation and increase your purchasing power in the long term. The average returns derived by major equity indices such as the S&P 500 have been significantly higher compared to bonds, gold, or instruments such as guaranteed income certificates, in the last several decades.
But in recent years, cryptocurrencies have gained meaningful traction, as this highly disruptive asset class managed to crush equity market returns by a huge margin.
Here, we’ll take a look at three digital assets that are part of the cryptocurrency universe that have generated staggering returns for investors in the last year.
SHIBA Inu
SHIBA Inu was launched back in August 2020. On the first day of trading, the price of one token stood at just $0.00000000051. The SHIBA Inu token, or SHIB, is currently trading at $0.00006733, at the time of writing, indicating gains of 13,250,880% in fewer than 15 months. So, if you’d bought $100 worth of SHIBA Inu tokens last August, your investment would be worth $13.25 million today.
Valued at a market cap of US$36.87 billion, SHIBA Inu is now the ninth-largest cryptocurrency in the world. SHIB was listed on the Coinbase trading platform in September 2021, which has increased the coin’s liquidity and trading volumes significantly. In the last few months, major exchanges, such as Binance, BitMax, and CoinFLEX, have also listed the cryptocurrency.
However, investors should also understand that investing in SHIBA Inu comes with massive risks. It is a meme-based coin with almost no utility and is accepted by fewer than 100 businesses in the world.
The average holding period for the SHIB token on Coinbase is less than two weeks, which indicates that traders view the digital currency as a speculative asset and not a viable long-term investment.
Dogecoin
Another meme-based cryptocurrency that has returned over 10,000% in the last year, Dogecoin is the 10th-largest digital asset, valued at a market cap of more than US$35 billion. A $100 investment in Dogecoin last October would be worth close to $1,03,000 today.
Dogecoin was founded back in 2013 and is an inflationary cryptocurrency, which suggests there will be no limit on the number of tokens that can be mined. There are more than 130 billion Dogecoins in circulation, and this figure is expected to rise by five billion each year. The ongoing dilution makes Dogecoin unattractive, as it cannot be viewed as a store of value.
Solana
The last cryptocurrency on my list is Solana, which has gained 14,722% in the last year. Solana is now the sixth-largest cryptocurrency in the world and is valued at a market cap of US$62.77 billion. While Dogecoin and SHIBA Inu have risen on the back of their meme-based popularity, Solana is viewed as one of the best digital assets in the world for several reasons.
Solana is one of the fastest blockchain networks in the world and has already attracted over 400 projects across segments such as DeFi and NFTs. The Solana blockchain network has processed more than 35 billion transactions to date and can compute over 1,000 transactions each second at a cost of just $0.00025 per transaction.
