Author: Vince Quill, CoinTelegraph; Compiled by: Wu Baht, Golden Finance
The most profitable areas of the cryptocurrency industry in the first half of 2024 have been revealed, with Meme coins and emerging industries accounting for the largest share of profits. .
According to data from BitEye, CoinGecko and Wu Blockchain, Memecoin has returned 1,834% since the beginning of 2024 , leading the competition. In second place is the field of real-world asset tokenization, which delivered a 214% return for investors. AI blockchain projects have a 72% return, while Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network (DePIN) has a 59% return.
Digital asset staples Bitcoin and Ethereum continue to perform well, with Ethereum up 50% year-to-date and Bitcoin returning about 45%.
Additionally, the average return for Layer 1 platforms is 43%, while industries such as gaming and decentralized finance lag behind their competitors but still achieve modest returns of 19% and 3% respectively. However, the Layer 2 industry has seen a significant decline, with total losses averaging around 41%.
Profitability breakdown by department. Source: BitEye, Wu Blockchain
Meme Mania
Meme’s meteoric rise is partly due to the Solana network. In May, 541,000 new token projects were minted on the Solana blockchain alone. Celebrities and influencers such as Andrew Tate, rapper Lil Pump and Iggy Azalea have flocked to the Internet to promote their memes. Many of these projects have been accused of insider trading activity and, in some cases, pump-and-dump schemes.
Solana’s architecture and focus on user-friendly features that simplify token and smart contract deployment have earned the network a reputation as a blockchain MacOS, a designation bestowed upon Solana by Pantera Capital.
Real-world asset tokenization
If the booming real-world asset tokenization is not addressed No industry analysis would be complete without the industry, which has become a favorite topic among institutional investors and banks.
As global investment funds, stocks, bonds, mutual funds and even real estate move on-chain, the tokenization of real-world assets is widely seen as the next frontier for digital assets, which may eventually encompass 874 trillion dollar wealth.
Projects like Chainlink continue to make progress in bringing the world’s assets to the blockchain, and new partnerships have been formed to prioritize the digitization of wealth through distributed ledger technology.