The cryptocurrency markets saw rapid growth in May with quite a few outshining the largest by market capitalization, bitcoin.
The leading cryptocurrency drew most of the attention, rising 67 percent from $5,265 on May 1st to $8,900 by month’s end. A considerable amount of the gains happened in the lead up to the New York Blockchain event, that took place during the second week of May.
For instance, sharp rallies in bitcoin’s price on May 11 and May 13 pushed its price tag above $7,000 and then $8,000 for the first time in over a year.
Despite logging its best monthly gain since 2017 however, BTC ranks tenth on the list of May’s best-performing cryptocurrencies, according to Messari.io data.
Names like Chainlink (LINK), Dent (DENT), bitcoin SV (BSV), Holochain (HOT) and bitcoin gold (BTG) took a clear lead, each rising between 65 and 256 percent against their respective trading pairs with the U.S dollar.
The total capitalization of the broader market excluding bitcoin reflected the growth by rising to $125.6 billion on May 30th– its highest value in nearly 10 months.
Bitcoin pairings
The performance of individual altcoins when paired against BTC fared much worse, however.
Ether’s pairing with BTC, for example, found itself still unable to scale its 200-day moving average for much of the month, and at the time of writing has only increased roughly 2 percent since May 1 whereas its USD pair is currently up over 60 percent in the same time span.
Such a discrepancy between the performance of both pairs can be attributed to bitcoin’s price rally inflating the USD value of most altcoins while devaluing in BTC terms.
That said, a number of cryptocurrencies were able to flash strong performances in both categories, case in point being the top five performers for the month of May seen below.
Top 5 Monthly Performers In May
BSV | Price: $197 | MCAP: $3.5 billion | Percent Change: +231 percent
The crypto project aptly named ‘Satoshi’s Vision’ claims to be the “original bitcoin,” by restoring BTC’s first protocol while stating that it can massively scale with increased stability.
Bitcoin SV had a remarkable run during May and was the clear leader during the second half of the month after prices broke out on May 21, bringing it back above the elusive $100 price tag.
Prices peaked at $252 according to data from Bittrex after landing itself in overbought territory and triggering a pullback, as shown by the daily relative strength index (RSI) exceeding a value of 70.
BSV/USD remains bullishly bid above a technical resistance level of $148, but a strong close below could re-expose the $90 support in the coming weeks.
Read more here: https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-sv-was-the-best-performing-cryptocurrency-in-may-and-it-wasnt-close