The Goldman Sachs report reports that since the end of 2019, exchange tokens and assets based on the Proof-of-Stake algorithm have shown higher profitability than the rest of the cryptocurrency market
"As the cryptocurrency market matures, monitoring its segments can help determine which network functions bring investors the greatest profit, as well as see the prospects for practical application of technologies," said Goldman's head of currency strategy Zach Pandl and analyst Isabella Rosenberg
Exchange tokens are digital tokens issued by cryptocurrency exchanges, for example, Binance Coin. Currency-like assets are represented by BTC. In the report, Chainlink (LINK) is classified as a token used in other applications, and Monero (XMR) is classified as an anonymous coin.
The report notes that in November last year, assets related to money transfers (for example, XRP) outperformed the rest of the cryptocurrency market in terms of profitability, and DeFi assets (for example, Uniswap) gained momentum in January and early February.
It is noteworthy that since the end of 2019, assets based on the Proof-of-Stake algorithm have shown higher profitability than assets based on Proof-of-Work. The profitability of PoS assets was more than 1000%, while that of PoW assets was only about 500%.
The dominance of a pair of assets is particularly highlighted, which significantly distinguishes cryptocurrencies from other asset classes. According to the firm, BTC accounts for 46% of the cryptocurrency market, and ETH-20%. For comparison, the top two stocks in the S&P 500 index account for about 12% of the market capitalization.