If 2023 was a decidedly favorable year for major cryptocurrencies, particularly Bitcoin and Ethereum, the same cannot be said for exchange tokens: let’s analyze the performance of BNB, CRO, and BGB.
Then again, the price performance of the latter follows the fortunes of their reference exchange more than that of the real cryptocurrencies.
Summary
The tokens of the major exchanges compared: BNB, CRO and BGB
The exchange that has been most talked about throughout the year is Binance.
Its benchmark token is actually BSC’s (Binance Smart Chain) cryptocurrency, or BNB. Initially it was in effect a token, called Binance Coin, but now it is a real cryptocurrency called just BNB. Nevertheless, its fortunes are still closely linked to those of Binance.
Currently BNB is losing almost 5% since the beginning of the year.
Actually in January it was performing well, as it rose from $245 to over $330 in early February, and until June it lateralized around $300.
The problems really started in June, when news came out about the U.S. authorities’ investigation of Binance.
By mid-June the price had fallen to $230, which was lower than at the beginning of the year, and in August the descent continued to $210.
The annual low peaked in mid-October, just above $200. At that time it was also below the $210 touched in 2022.
In other words, the bottom of BNB’s bear-market did not occur in 2022, but only just over a month ago.
Since then it had managed to rise as high as nearly $270, but only to fall back in recent days to just above $230.
BNB’s 2023 in other words has not been a good year, albeit less worse than 2022. Suffice it to say that the all-time high in May 2021 was at $690.
Crypto.com’s token: CRO
Crypto.com’s 2023 token also seemed to be not great.
CRO, actually, is not a token, but an actual cryptocurrency, called Cronos. However, it started out as Crypto.com’s token and follows its fortunes.
In recent weeks, however, CRO has recovered big time, so much so that it is now +78% since the beginning of the year.
However, after starting the year on the upswing, rising from $0.055 to $0.083, it had entered a long period of distress that, similarly to BNB, caused it to hit the bottom of the bear-market about mid-October, when it also fell below $0.05.
Everything has changed since late October, however. In fact, within less than two weeks the price sprang to $0.120, or +650% in a matter of days.
This was basically a quick and mighty rebound, bringing it back to the price levels before the FTX bankruptcy.
In fact, with the FTX exchange failure, the price of CRO had literally collapsed in just a few days from $0.124 to $0.064, then dropped again to $0.055 in late 2022.
So the rise in recent weeks has been important and mighty, but it was only a rebound from really excessive lows due to fears that Crypto.com might suffer from similar problems as FTX.
BGB: analysis of the Bitget token
BGB is the token of the Bitget exchange.
The BGB 2023 was completely different from that of BNB and CRO, and much more similar to that of Bitcoin, for example. In fact right now it is at +190% since the beginning of the year.
Note, however, that this is a token that was only launched in 2021, and during the last big bull run it did not go up much. So it practically did not suffer the crash of 2022, and its current all-time high only touched it a few days ago at over $0.58.
It had an initial rise in January, going from $0.18 to $0.46, and then lateralized between $0.40 and $0.48 until just before mid-November.
It boomed starting on 13 November, with a sudden leap above $0.57 that gave it its new all-time high.
Having not outperformed during the last big bull run, it may be outperforming now.
It should be mentioned that its current market capitalization near the highs is about $750 million, compared to CRO’s $2.5 billion and even BNB’s more than $35 billion.
LEO and OKB
Among the tokens of the major crypto exchanges, LEO and OKB should also be mentioned.
LEO is the token of Bitfinex, which is the exchange of the iFinex group to which Tether also belongs.
LEO is only at +13% since the beginning of the year, but it is a token that has a less volatile price trend than many others.
It even started 2023 down, as low as $3.3 in February, but then by the end of June it was back above $4. Although it was back to $3.6 in September, it is now above $4 again.
OKB, on the other hand, is the OKX exchange token, and although it has been around since 2019 and went through the 2021 bubble, its current value is near all-time highs.
It started 2023 at around $22, rising to $57 in early February.
After a long lateralization around $45 that ended only in early November, it began a small surge starting on 5 November that led it nine days later to record its all-time high above $64.
This also led it to capitalize more than CRO, or $3.5 billion, though less than LEO’s $3.8 billion.
