May Crypto Winners: Kava and XRP went okay, while Bitcoin walked the other way

Coinhead Rob Badman
May crypto winners

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Another month bites the dust, so how did it fare for Bitcoin and the wider crypto market? Was it a good time to “walk away in May”? Let’s see.

As it turns out, yeah, May wasn’t the best month so far this year for crypto. In fact, it was the worst – for Bitcoin (BTC) at least, as you can see from the bitcoinmonthlyreturn.com chart below.

Source: bitcoinmonthlyreturn.com

Still, a -6.96% monthly result wasn’t a disaster. In fact, it was actually the best-performing May for BTC in the past three years. Let’s hope June fares a LOT better than last year’s bloodbath. Which was pretty much peak Terra Luna-induced fear, uncertainty and doubt in the market. Christ, what fun that was.

Anyway, let’s take a quick look at what cryptos did go okay in May. Actually, before that, a quick market vibe check…

Source: alternative.me

Around about this time last month and perhaps for a the first week or so of May, there was some memecoin-led exuberance in the market, with a touch of froth and greed.

Ever since then, however, it’s been a bit of a meh-fest for the bull goose crypto and its top-10 pals. Still, at least the most significant, market-moving cryptos haven’t dropped off cliffs.

In fact, many an analyst we clock into with our hopium pipe smoking, thinks Bitcoin is in a consolidating, coil-up zone for a bigger push.

Here’s one, who goes by the pseudonym InvestAnswers, who tells his 141k Twitter followers and some 444k YouTube subscribers that a “historic gold cross” could be just around the corner for BTC. And, in technically analytical speak, that’s when when the 50-week moving average climbs back above the 200-week moving average momentum trend line.

In non TA-speak, that means Bitcoin could well moon if and when that occurs, if historical performance is anything to go by. And we know that often it is, sometimes it isn’t. In any case, the analyst believes it has a strong chance of hitting sometime in August.

 

May’s 10 leading gainers in the top 100 (and some losers)

According to CoinGecko data…

Source: CoinGecko.com

There you have it – certainly not the most stupendous monthly altcoin gainage in the top 100 that we’ve ever seen.

Looking back further, April’s top performer, for instance was PEPE, with a +186% leap. It managed a small croak in May: +4.2%, which was at least a lot more optimistic than Optimism (OP), which has been suffering, in part, on some inflationary token unlock news for a little while now.

But the biggest winner in May, in this category, was Kava (KAVA): +35.8%. And why would that be? Firstly, what is it again?

It’s a decentralised finance (DeFi) lending platform that rose to prominence in mid 2020, with a price peak a year later.

According to the Messari crypto-analysis platform, Kava is also a “fast and secure layer-1 blockchain featuring a unique co-chain architecture that combines the speed and interoperability of the Cosmos SDK with the flexibility and developer support of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).”

It’s also a proof-of-stake layer 1 chain, in which its KAVA token can be staked by validators/holders to earn passive rewards by locking up their tokens in a staking pool.

The main reason the KAVA token did so well in May can be put down to a throughput and security-enhancing mainnet upgrade that took place on the 17th, with the token particularly performing well in the lead-up.

As for XRP? We’ve touched on this a bit this week, but the main narrative around this is the continued hope and indeed expectation that SOON (honest), XRP’s founding firm and issuer, Ripple, will be able to settle with the SEC in the two entities’ painfully ongoing lawsuit.

Popular Crypto Twittering opinion seems to suggest that Ripple stands a good chance of victory in the securities case, or at least a favourable standoff settlement. For the sake of the crypto industry in the US, let’s hope so.

 

Meanwhile, BGB, the token for crypto exchange and copytrading platform Bitget did very well in May, too, posting a near 14% 30-day gain. Justin Sun’s layer 1 platform Tron (TRX), too: +9.6%.

 

May’s 10 leading gainers and losers in the top 300

Zooming out a tad, here then, were the top 10 winners and losers from the top 300 cryptos by market cap, with thanks again to CoinGecko…

Source: CoinGecko.com

As is always the case the biggest monthly gainers are to be found further down the market cap list.

You’re far more likely to be playing with fire down there, but we’re spotting a couple of decent, past bullrun performers among them, including Cosmos-built decentralised cloud-computing platform Akash (AKT) and DeFi/synthetics protocol Linear (LINA).

 

Around the blocks

Some pertinence and randomness that stuck with us on our daily moves through the Crypto Twitterverse.

Remember kids, always be careful when playing around with leverage…

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