According to a recent analysis and report by CoinGecko, memecoins emerged as the most profitable crypto story in the first quarter of 2024 (Q1), earning huge average returns of 1312.6% across its top tokens.
This chart demonstrated the increasing craze and popularity of memecoins in the cryptocurrency market, as it greatly outperformed the returns of other storylines.
At the end of the quarter, three recently released tokens—Brett (BRETT), BOOK OF MEME (BOME), and Cat in a Dogs World (MEW)—were among the top 10 memecoins by market capitalization.
With a gain of 7727.6%, BRETT produced the largest returns since its introduction. Dogwifhat (WIF), on the other hand, gained a mere 2721.2% throughout the quarter. Notably, the memecoin narrative did noticeably better than other crypto narratives.
Memecoins were 4.6 times more profitable than RWA, the second-most profitable narrative, and their returns were 33.3 times higher than those of the Layer 2 narrative, which saw the lowest gains in Q1.
"Real-World Assets," or RWA, was the name of the story that returned 285.6% in Q1. Memecoins and tokens based on artificial intelligence (AI) beat RWA in terms of returns, even though RWA temporarily held the title of the most profitable narrative in early February. By the end of March, RWA was able to take the lead again over the AI story.
MANTRA (OM) and TokenFi (TOKEN), which reported quarter-to-date (QTD) returns of 1074.4% and 419.7%, respectively, were notable winners in the RWA category. With a quarterly decrease of 15.6%, XDC Network (XDC) was the only RWA token to experience a decline.
The only other narrative to yield three-digit returns was artificial intelligence, which came in second place to RWA and reached 222.0% in Q1. All large-cap AI tokens saw increases, with Fetch.ai (FET) coming in close behind at 378.3% and AIOZ Network (AIOZ) leading the pack at 480.2%.
Trailing Layer 1 Tokens
In the first quarter, moderate returns of 98.9% were obtained by the decentralized finance (DeFi) concept. The Uniswap (UNI) fee switch plan helped to increase DeFi returns around the end of February. Jupiter (JUP) with gains of 125.7%, Maker (MKR) with 121.2%, and The Graph (GRT) with 111.0% QTD were among the DeFi tokens that did well.
The Layer 1 (L1) narrative, on the other hand, produced comparatively lower profitability in Q1 2024, with returns of 70.0%. The top-performing major L1 cryptocurrencies were Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Toncoin (TON), with increases of 130.5% and 131.2%, respectively, while Solana (SOL) attracted notice as a well-liked memecoin chain.
Despite the excitement around US spot Ethereum ETF applications, Ethereum (ETH) had a more moderate 53.9% increase, while Bitcoin (BTC) saw a 65.1% gain and new all-time highs.
With a comparatively smaller gain of 39.5%, Layer 2 (L2) emerged as the least profitable crypto story in Q1. With a 5.6% return from Arbitrum (ARB), a 1.2% gain from Polygon (MATIC), and a 1.2% decrease from Optimism (OP) at the end of the quarter, established Ethereum L2 solutions underperformed. But Mantle (MNT) and Stacks (STX) saw comparatively robust returns of 95.8% and 142.5% QTD, respectively.
April 2024, Cryptoniteuae