According to U.Today, despite the overall growth in the cryptocurrency market capitalization in 2024, several large-cap cryptocurrencies have experienced significant losses since the start of the year. Among the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, 37 have seen a decline in their capitalization metrics year-to-date. Starknet (STRK), ORDI (ORDI), and MultiversX (EGLD) were the worst performers, with losses ranging between 40% and 50%.
STRK, the core native cryptocurrency of Starknet, an Ethereum L2, saw 50.33% of its value erased. Other second-layer solutions for Ethereum (ETH) also posted dramatic losses: Optimism's OP lost 38%, Arbitrum's ARB is 31.5% down, while Polygon (MATIC) registered a 27.6% dropdown. However, Chainlink's main token LINK and Internet Computer (ICP) showed resilience with sub-1% losses.
In contrast, the two largest cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH), posted impressive gains. BTC increased by 48.9% and ETH by 36.4%. The total crypto market cap added 40% in 2024, driven by the long-anticipated approval of spot Bitcoin ETF in the U.S. This led to a new phase of growth in cryptocurrency prices, with the net valuation of cryptocurrency tokens rising from $1.773 billion to $2.467 billion. The metric peaked on March 13 at $2.891 billion.
Bitcoin (BTC) dominance, the ratio of the BTC market cap to the cumulative market cap of cryptocurrencies, was surging during the whole period. After adding over 6.2%, BTC.D exceeded a three-year high and peaked at 57% in mid-April, according to TradingView data.
