According to CoinMarketCap, there are nearly 2,500 cryptocurrencies in circulation, but few are as familiar or as dominant as Bitcoin. While most coins don't even come close to Bitcoin's overall wealth, there are some that have performed better as an asset than the crypto stalwart. Those holy five are: Chainlink, Binance Coin, Ren, Huobi Token and Tierion.

Chainlink was the best performer of the last eight months, having gained close to 800 percent this year. It was the only token that had more than a 400 percent return. Bitcoin, on the other hand, is up close to 185 percent since the start of the year, having climbed from just $3,746 up to its current value of $10,674.

The two tokens that rose the most this year (Chainlink and Binance Coin) have clear reasons behind their growth. Many projects have decided to implement Chainlink's set of decentralized oracles over the past year, many forming crucial partnerships with the team behind the coin. It's mainnet launched earlier this year and it has already been listed on Coinbase—setting its value rocketing from $1 to $4.40 in June.

AD

Crypto exchange Binance has largely been behind the rise in the value of its native coin Binance Coin—using 20 percent of its monthly profits to burn a proportional amount of it. By reducing the supply, it helped to push the price up. It has also built an ecosystem around the coin, with its blockchain platform Binance Chain supporting a range of new projects. Binance Coin rose from $6.50 in January to its current price of $28. This pushed it up the rankings to become the sixth-largest coin by market cap.

According to market research released by LongHash, just 18 digital assets provided investors with at least 100 percent returns in 2019. While this might sound impressive, 2017's bull run produced dozens of tokens that provided in excess of 100 percent returns. There were also several examples of tokens generating more than 10,000 percent returns, including Verge, Stellar and XRP. That was largely helped along by the ICO craze, which saw a small revival this year in the form of IEOs. But, apparently, the new exchange-backed offerings are already running out of steam.

Stay on top of crypto news, get daily updates in your inbox.