Most volatile cryptocurrencies of April 2020
14:25, 24 April 2020
The crypto industry seems to be little affected by the coronavirus pandemic. After the first shock and a major price crash in mid-March, the market quickly recovered. While Bitcoin grew to $7,000 after slumping below $4,500, many cryptocurrencies showed far more impressive results – though there were major losers, too. Let's look at the most volatile cryptocurrencies of April so far.
Please note that we've only included coins that are listed on CoinMarketCap and have a total capitalization above $10m. Smaller cryptocurrencies can often grow by 1000% and more, but such rallies are nothing but wash trading manipulations by their own founders.
The top gainers
1) Okschain (OKS)
Gains from 1-15 April: 930%
Market cap: $29m
Okschain positions itself as a “new-generation financial service”. It proposes yet another mobile app for managing crypto assets. Apart from the standard crypto payments, it integrates a fiat-crypto exchange service and P2P lending (crowdfunding). Yet another difference is that the project is built on the Stellar blockchain.
On 7 April, the coin got listed on VinDAX. It seems to have been that listing that prompted the incredible rally on 15-16 April, when the price grew ninefold from $0.003 to $0.025. This made it the champion among the most volatile cryptos of April. However, with the daily volume below $100k, the price increase looks like a classic engineered pump ’n’ dump. Indeed, there is hardly any media buzz around Okschain (apart from its own Twitter feed), and it has no product to show for its ambitious claims.
2) CyberVein (CVT)
Gains from 1-16 April: 220%
Market cap: $30m
CyberVein is planning to build a network of decentralized databases. That will allow it to solve one of the key issues of the industry: the storage of the offchain data used by distributed ledgers is still centralized. Instead of a traditional blockchain, the project uses the DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph) technology.
After a long period of complete obscurity, there was a sudden spike of media hype around CyberVein. At the peak on 8 April, the daily trading volume exceeded $4m, and the price shot up to $0.047. Since then, the coin lost circa 40% of its value, but it remains one of the best performers of April so far. However, you should only buy CVT if you have a high appetite for risk.
3) Binance Coin (BNB)
Gains from 1-16 April: 25%
Market cap: $2.4b
Of the top 10 coins by market cap, Binance Coin was the clear winner in the first two weeks of April. Its gains in the past 30 days have been even more impressive: +66% since 16 March. As you can see in the chart, the price of BNB relative to Bitcoin rose, too, showing a strong performance against the crypto market as a whole.
One of the reasons behind the rally was the launch of Bitcoin options on the Binance futures exchange. Another factor was the announcement of an upcoming IEO for a project called Cartesi. Since Binance users need BNB tokens to participate in IEOs, there is a surge of demand for Binance coins before each initial offering. As the exchange is likely to hold more IEOs in the coming months, BNB looks like a good buy.
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The biggest losers among the most volatile cryptocurrencies
1) Castweet (CTT)
Losses from 1-16 April: 46%
Market cap: $24m
Castweet is yet another attempt to create a fair incentive system for the streaming industry. The idea is to reward both streamers and viewers. The project is based in Korea and already has a product – a livestream app called Castjam.
The 46% fall in April becomes even more dramatic if we consider that almost all of it fell in just two days, 15 and 16 April. Before that, CTT experienced a very strong pump from $25 to $62 in just one week. Amazingly, it took only two hours for the price to fall from $62 to $7 – a 90% loss. The price later recovered somewhat but remains below $10.
Needless to say, these price movements hardly seem organic. Like some of the other projects on our list, Castweet is rarely mentioned in the media, and there was no increase in the public interest before the pump. Add to this the fact that the trading volume grew from roughly $200k a day to over $10m points to a wash trading operation. For this reason, we don't recommend buying CTT, even with the current dip: this highly volatile cryptocurrency is likely to fall even lower.
2) PRIZM (PZM)
Losses from 1-16 April: 38%
Market cap: $49m
PRIZM allows all token holders to mine PZM coins using a proprietary technology called paramining. The project runs on its own blockchain and already has a working multicurrency wallet for desktop and mobile devices.
PZM saw a strong period of growth in mid February, when the price rose to $0.38. Since then it's all been downhill, all the way to $0.38. Overall the coin lost 90% of its value in two months, and it's been gradual – a bad sign. Even though the Prizm wallet has garnered positive reviews, a wallet alone won't help the project rise again. For now, PZM could be a buying opportunity, but only if you have money you're not afraid to lose.
3) GAPS Chain (GAP)
Losses from 1-16 April: 32%
Market cap: $35m
GAPS is a Korean project that plans to build an AI based on “collective intelligence”: users are asked to give predictions on events in exchange for a reward in tokens. It has recently released an Android wallet, but there has been hardly any coverage in the Western crypto media.
The price descent began in late March following a long period of stability, when the price oscillated around $6. Over the course of a month, the coin gradually lost 60% of its value. It's hard to say what caused the slump, since GAPS is virtually absent from the western media. Since the project doesn't seem to have strong enough fundamentals to ensure further growth, buying GAP is a very risky idea.
As the crypto market is preparing for the Bitcoin halving in May, the Covid-19 pandemic and the global crisis are taking a second stage. The halving can bring a lot of changes, so the list of the most volatile crypto coins is bound to be very different next month. Stay tuned for our updates!