2019 in review: Which altcoins performed the best vs Bitcoin?

2019 has proved to be a roller-coaster year for the cryptocurrency market.

Bitcoin started the year at lows of around $3,150 before threatening to break its all-time high in the summer, surging all the way up to $14,000.

However, as can be expected with the volatility of the crypto markets, the world’s largest cryptocurrency is now around 45% down from that summer high and is currently trading at $7,500 at the time of writing.

But which altcoins grew the most against Bitcoin during 2019?

In this article, I’ll take a look at the top three altcoins that have performed the most impressively over the course of the year.

2019 in review

Before I dive a bit deeper into each altcoin individually, let me take a moment to compare the gains among the top five coins vs Bitcoin.

Much to my surprise, the top altcoin of 2019 is Ocean Protocol (OCEAN). The OCEAN token grew a whopping 404% against Bitcoin over the year.

Next up is Chainlink (LINK) with an impressive 256% gain, followed closely by Egretia (EGT), Tezos (XTZ), and Ripio Credit Network (RCN).

Let’s take a closer look at the biggest movers individually: Ocean Protocol, Chainlink, and Tezos.

OCEAN/BTC

Above we can see the chart for OCEAN vs Bitcoin, courtesy of TradingView.

What the chart shows is a fairly straightforward positive trend line since the summer. From mid-August 2019 to December 2019, Ocean Protocol grew over 400%.

Moreover, looking at the EMAs, price is still performing quite well. It is currently sitting at 621 sats and is looking to break 700 sats soon.

Ocean Protocol claims it is kickstarting a data economy by breaking down data silos and equalising access to data for all.

OCEAN provides an ecosystem for the data economy and associated services, with a tokenised service layer that securely exposes data, storage, and algorithms for consumption.

However, since its inception, the OCEAN token is down quite a lot from its original IEO price.

I personally believe the rally this year has been led by early investors who got a 22.5% discount rate from the IEO price. As such, I cannot vouch for the fundamentals of the project since it has only recently started trading to the public.

Depending on the behaviour of OCEAN whales (institutional investors who bought in during the pre-seed stage), the token could continue to increase in price.

However, since so much of the supply is locked away with big players, I do expect a major dump to take place sometime in the near future -much like what happened with Matic and other IEOs.

LINK/BTC

Here we can see the chart for Chainlink vs Bitcoin, courtesy of TradingView.

Fundamentally, the Chainlink network provides reliable tamper-proof inputs and outputs for complex smart contracts on any blockchain.

LINK is currently trading above 25,500 sats. Until fairly recently, LINK was the top performing altcoin of the year. However, a substantial dump in November took the altcoin below its 20-day and 50-day EMAs.

At the moment, it’s looking grim for Chainlink as price is almost touching the 200-day EMA, near 24,000 sats.

Despite this latest downtrend, LINK is still up over 230% against Bitcoin since the start of the year. At its peak, Chainlink was up over 330% versus Bitcoin.

However, LINK hasn’t been able to hold its gains and the volume profile shows the coin could be in dire straits. If LINK is unable to hold support near 24,000 sats, it could drop further down towards the next levels of support at 20,000 and 12,000 sats.

It’s important to underline though that Chainlink dumped over 50% between July and September before making its way to new all-time highs.

This means we could see LINK drop below 18,000 sats before pumping again.

If buyers remain in control, I expect LINK to pump sometime during Q1 2020. The altcoin historically reaches new all-time highs every 115 to 130 days, so we could see a new high during February or March 2020.

On the other hand, if price drops down further below 12,000 sats and is incapable of pushing towards the 200-day EMA, I would switch my position and avoid LINK.

XTZ/BTC

Next we can see the chart for Tezos vs Bitcoin, once more courtesy of TradingView.

That November pump looks quite impressive, doesn’t it? That’s because Tezos’ mainnet was released around that time.

Fundamentally, Tezos is an open-source platform for assets and applications backed by a global community of validators, researchers, and builders.

At the moment, XTZ is trading at around 22,800 sats. The altcoin has grown over 170% against Bitcoin since early November.

From March 2019 to the end of April 2019, XTZ grew over 150% versus BTC. However, the pump convinced investors who had been holding Tezos since 2017 to start selling.

Tezos dropped below all its EMAs, and the ensuing death cross saw XTZ touch a low of 8,000 sats. Essentially, the altcoin fell close to 70% in just over 60 days.

From July to November, there was a strong consolidation period while sellers remained in control. XTZ’s year was saved by the November pump and Tezos once again finds itself above all its EMAs.

However, the volume profile doesn’t show a major support interval until the 12,000 sats range, meaning we could see substantial drops even during bullish rallies.

My current analysis is that if XTZ isn’t capable of breaking the 26,000 sats level and drops below its 20-day and 50-day EMAs, I’m expecting Tezos to consolidate between 10,000 and 12,000 sats for quite some time.

Nevertheless, it seems a great time to wait for XTZ to cool down before making any serious moves.

Safe trades!