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Here’s What Driven Q2’s Top Performers BRETT, TON, KAS; And What the Future Holds for Bitcoin and Crypto Investors
In the second quarter, three tokens (BRETT) – Ton Network’s TON and Kaspa’s KAS – emerged as shining stars, while the pioneer of the cryptocurrency market, Bitcoin (BTC), lost value, dragging down most of the major digital assets, including Ether (ETH).
BRETT, a Base Chain native memecoin inspired by the character Brett from the Boys’ Club comic book series, has more than doubled to 15 cents, becoming the best-performing digital asset among the top 100 coins by market value, according to data tracked by TradingView and CoinMarketCap.
Toncholine (TONNE)The Open Network’s (TON) native cryptocurrency, a layer-1 decentralized network commonly known as the TON blockchain, surged 42% to $7.65, and Kaspa blockchain’s KAS jumped over 35%. Meanwhile, the total cryptocurrency market cap fell 13.8% to $2.2 trillion.
Here’s what may have helped these coins stand out from the general market malaise.
BRETT’s surge was not an isolated event, but part of a broader uptrend in meme coins. Dune-based analytics platform DYOR cryptographic narrative relative strength The tracker shows that the meme coin subsector has grown by more than 45% in three months, while others have seen losses.
The cultural currency mog (MOG) has emerged as another hot asset, driven by positive sentiment and a near-cult following on social platforms like X. MOG’s market cap has soared from $220 million in early April to over $700 million, briefly ranking among the top 100 tokens by that measure.
The performance is typical of a bull cycle in which investors rotate profits from larger coins like bitcoin into smaller tokens like meme coins, fueling price increases and retail investors’ fear of missing out (FOMO). In other words, the fate of meme coins is tied to investors’ risk appetite and credit availability.
BRETT began its meteoric rise in May, after Bitcoin began consolidating at record highs near $70,000 and, at one point, saw its market cap approach the $2 billion mark.
“The $2.0 billion mark is the liquidity wall that many of the established meme coins have reached before profits and sideways volatility kick in. Obviously, for every additional $1 billion from there, it will take a lot of momentum and risk-taking by retail investors (aka Apes) to get these meme coins to DOGE and SHIB levels. Let’s see what the Degens can do later in this bull market cycle,” Kenny Hearn, chief investment officer at SwissOne Capital, told CoinDesk in an interview.
Hearn added that SwissOne’s Top 50 Smart Passive Index Fund holds six of the largest meme coins in its portfolio after this quarter’s rebalancing.
TON’s rise is due to its involvement in the cloud-based mobile and desktop messaging app Telegram, which boasts 1.56 billion users worldwide and 800 million active users.
“A toncoin (TON)-based economy is starting to take root in the Telegram messaging app,” TON’s chief investment officer said Justin Hyun told CoinDesk in April.
Several catalysts have boosted TON adoption, including Telegram’s decision to switch to TON payments for ads and the Open League rewards program. TON’s network activity has also received a boost from tether integration (USDT)the world’s largest dollar-pegged stablecoin, and the debut of the digital token of the Telegram-based Notcoin game.
TON’s daily active addresses rose to nearly 600,000 in June, surpassing Ethereum, the world’s largest smart contract blockchain, which hosts several billion dollars’ worth of major DeFi projects.
“During the second quarter, daily active users (DAU) per TON saw a significant surge, even surpassing Ethereum. This growth was attributed to the introduction of mini apps, which are decentralized apps integrated into the Telegram messaging app. Notcoin, one such app, gained significant traction as users could ‘mine’ Notcoins by simply pressing a button within Telegram,” Katie Talati, head of research at Arca, said in an email to CoinDesk.
“Other significant catalysts include the launch of USDT on TON, with approximately 550 million USDT currently on the network, positioning it for payments, a key feature of WeChat,” Talati added, noting Pantera’s recent “largest ever investment” in TON.
According to Hearns, KAS’s parent proof-of-work (PoW) blockchain, Kaspa’s attempts to solve the blockchain trilemma have helped the token attract investor attention.
The blockchain trilemma refers to the trade-off between three key aspects of blockchain technology: scalability, decentralization, and security.
Kaspa’s GHOSDAG allows transactions to be processed more asynchronously and in parallel, unlike traditional blockchains, which rely on sequential processing. This helps improve performance and security, while maintaining the security of the PoW consensus mechanism.
“It appears this team is on a mission to solve the trilemma (scale, speed, security) through their DAG structure versus blockchain (supporting speed and scalability) while also utilizing the security benefits of POW (supporting security). What appears to be a solid hodler base meaning low float would appear the market is very supportive of this cutting edge technology. Again, fundamental support,” Hearn explained.
The third quarter was historically to have been the weakestwith bitcoin averaging just 5% gains over the past 13 years, compared to 60% in both the second and fourth quarters.
There is a risk that incumbent US President Joe Biden’s recent poor performance in the presidential debate could push Democrats to replace him with a strong candidate to compete against crypto-friendly rival Donald Trump.
This could keep animal spirits at bay until the November 4 election. In addition, the Fed and other central banks may be paying attention The BIS Council to avoid a premature easing of monetary policy.
However, cryptocurrency subsectors with strong fundamentals could continue to stand out.
“Long-term play is key for many projects that are quietly developing in the background and delivering real use cases,” Hearn added. “We see ONDO, JASMY, and ENS falling into this category of solid fundamentals, user growth.”
Arca’s Talati said that bitcoin mining, artificial intelligence, gaming, and DeFi could see growth.