2021 Altcoin Year in Review

2021 was a big year for altcoins as it was for Bitcoin. The altcoin season really began to heat up in January 2021 and extended into mid-May. The Altcoin index, which tracks the performance of 10 different cryptocurrencies, excluding Bitcoin, has gained over 566% during the first 4.5 months of 2021.

The altcoin rally was then interrupted by a brief sell-off that whipped out 65% of the previous gains.

However, the sell-off only lasted for a month, and a new bullish cycle emerged in the second half of the year that culminated with the 6,707 high – an approximate 172% gain from June's bottom.

Year-to-date, the Altcoin index, which asses the strength or weakness of the broader altcoin market, has remained up over 331%.

To better assess the strength of the altcoin market, we can notice that predominantly the Altcoin index traded above the key 200-day Simple Moving Average (SMA). Moreover, even during the pullbacks, the Altcoin index only briefly traded below the 200-SMA signaling a strong bullish cycle.

2021 Key Altcoin Stats

The total Altcoin market capitalization has reached a new all-time high of $1,677 trillion on November 10 compared to $229,433 billion as it was at the beginning of 2021.

2021 saw massive growth in Decentralized Finance (DeFi) and Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), which helped the altcoin market gain more upside momentum.

The smart contract adoption increased to over $3.6 trillion in volume on the Ethereum network compared to $772 billion in 2020 Q4.

Memecoins like Dogecoin and Shiba Inu steal the show, leading to more people getting into the crypto space, which helped the explosive growth we saw in 2021.

Looking Ahead: Overall, 2021 was an excellent year for the altcoins, which saw a great increase in their price and more adoption than before. We hope you are as excited as us to see what 2022 has in store for the crypto market!