There is a wide and wonderful world of cryptocurrencies out there and even those who have a reasonable working knowledge of cryptocurrency may be shocked at just how crazy it can get out there. For most of us, our knowledge of cryptocurrency is how well many of them are as an investment and that’s what we will keep our focus on today. For those with no knowledge, you can read the explainer in this article. Having just finished the first quarter of 2021 I thought we could look at the top 10 performing cryptocurrencies on a year to date basis. So we are measuring the return on investment from the close of business on 31 December 2020 to the date of writing, 15th April 2021. Information has been retrieved from Coindesk.com. Of course, Zimbabweans are not currently permitted to deal in cryptocurrencies but it is still worthwhile for us to keep abreast with developments in the world of cryptocurrency.

Bit Torrent Token (BTT 2721.24%)

BitTorrent (BTT) is a token that was launched on the Tron blockchain in early 2019 by the BitTorrent Foundation, which was created after BitTorrent Inc. was acquired by Tron founder Justin Sun. BitTorrent Inc. developed the popular peer-to-peer file-sharing software of the same name. In July 2019, BitTorrent introduced BitTorrent Speed, which incentivizes users to seed (make available) their files by rewarding them with BTT for seeding and bandwidth, and thus enables faster downloading speed.

Dogecoin (DOGE 2584.17%)

Dogecoin emerged in 2013 as a joke. It was created by Jackson Palmer and Billy Markus to satirize the growth of altcoins by making the doge internet meme into a cryptocurrency. While it was birthed as a joke, it actually led to some practicality as its large supply and low price facilitated efficient micro-tipping content on social media. It is a derivative of Luckycoin which forked from Litecoin. Dogecoin has 1-minute block intervals making it faster than other blockchains. There is no cap to the supply of coins and thus the coin can inflate infinitely.

Decentraland (MANA 1326.14%)

Decentraland is an Ethereum-based blockchain platform where users can purchase, build and monetize virtual reality applications. Users can purchase virtual land in the platform’s world, giving them ownership and control over the environment and applications they create within their land. It is divided into a limited number of parcels known as LAND (represented by a non-fungible token), which can be purchased with MANA. Each parcel of LAND owners are provided full creative freedom within their parcels and receive all income generated by their creations.

Bitcoin Gold (BTG 1177.83%)

Bitcoin Gold is the result of a hard fork of Bitcoin on October 24th 2017 to reform the mining process to reduce centralization of large businesses by changing the mining algorithm. The result reduces the advantage of large holders of capital and specialized technology in favour of smaller miners and common technology. Bitcoin Gold’s currency took on the ticker of BTG.

Fetchcoin (FET 1093.28%)

Fetch.ai (FET) is a blockchain-based artificial intelligence project that is currently in the stages of completing an ICO crowd-sale. More specifically, Fetch is trying to automate many different markets that currently only operate with immense manual work.

Siacoin (SC 893.31%)

Siacoin is the currency of the Sia network. Renters pay hosts in Siacoin to utilize their hard drive space, and hosts are paid out only after they’ve proven they are storing the file in question. Before files are uploaded and distributed to hosts, Sia breaks them into 30 pieces, each of which is encrypted. Sometimes branded as an “Airbnb for hard drives,” Sia is similar to cloud storage solutions like those offered by tech giants Amazon or Google, only rather than trusting a company to manage and store their data, its users rely on software and a distributed network of global computers.

Cardano (ADA 714.09%)

Cardano has been pioneered by a team of academics and engineers and is offering a unique approach to scaling and securing a blockchain network. Cardano is a non-profit platform with three separate bodies responsible for maintaining and developing the platform. The cryptocurrency which operated in the Cardano network is called ADA and it, like others, can be used for direct value transfer. Furthermore, the network will soon be able to handle smart contracts.

Storj ( STORJ 705.57%)

Storj (STORJ) is an Ethereum token that powers a decentralized cloud storage network called Tardigrade. After a user uploads a file to Tardigrade, pieces of each file are distributed to a global network of independent nodes. When someone requests the file, it is then recompiled securely and made available for download.

Civic Coin (CVC 696.98%)

The Civic coin or Civic token (CVC) is the currency associated with Civic, which thrives on the Ethereum blockchain, primarily exchanged during the identity verification process. Its secure identity verification shows immense promise, and predictions are that the value will go up exponentially in the next few years, especially in an age increasingly concerned about fake news and fake identities.

Basic Attention Token (BAT 651.47%)

Basic Attention Token (BAT) is an Ethereum-based token integrated into the privacy-focused web browser, Brave. The company, founded in 2015 by Brian Bondy and Mozilla co-founder and JavaScript creator, Brendan Eich, launched Basic Attention Token in 2017 to remedy several problems it saw with digital advertising: the privacy violations of users, the declining revenues of traditional publishers and the inability of advertisers to assess the effectiveness of their ads. BAT measures users’ attention while they browse sites and rewards publishers accordingly. The browser includes an opt-in feature, Brave Rewards, which allows users to anonymously donate BAT to sites that they visit, such as YouTube. Brave claims that more than 150 publishers take part in Brave Rewards, including Wikihow, Archive.org and Smashing Magazine. Brave has capped the BAT supply at 1.5 billion tokens.

Were you as shocked as I was to realise that big names such as BitCoin, Etherium, Ripple and Stelar didn’t make the list?