Crypto Market Resurgence: Exchange Tokens Outperforming BTC

The crypto market’s August resurgence appeared to continue on Monday, August 23, when the value of bitcoin breached the $50,000 mark for the time since April 2021. The leading crypto’s renaissance now seems to be in full swing as evidenced by the surge in trading volume as well as the slight rise in bitcoin’s market dominance.

The BNB Surge

However, just like in the last bull cycle, some centralized exchange coins (or tokens that are issued by cryptocurrency exchanges) again appear to be performing better than bitcoin. This bitcoin-beating performance by exchange tokens is epitomized by Binance’s BNB coin, which at the time of writing has gained 20% in just seven days.

As data indicates, the price of the BNB coin briefly went above $500 on August 23 before settling back down a bit, then rising up again to hover above and around $500. The token’s rise above the $500 mark — which is the first time this has happened since May 18, 2021 — followed BNB’s jump of over 10% in just 24 hours.

At this price, the BNB token’s market capitalization of over $77 billion is enough to see the exchange token being ranked as the fourth largest crypto asset. This valuation makes the BNB token, which is already up by 1200% in 2021, the biggest exchange token by far.

The next best-ranked centralized exchange token, the FTX token — whose market capitalization stood at $4.77 billion at the time of writing — had a gain of around 4% in under 24 hours and over 7% in seven days. However, just like BNB, the FTX token’s 2021 gains of over 700% dwarf bitcoin’s 67% year-to-date gains.

In fact, out of the 13 centralized exchange tokens that are listed, only the Qash, Bibox, and QTF tokens have had yearly gains that are below 100%. On the other hand, from the 13, only two centralized exchange coins, WRX (2,328%) and Kucoin’s KCS (1,934%), have outperformed the BNB token.

Rise of Centralized Exchange Tokens

Remarking on why centralized exchange tokens are outperforming some of the popular cryptos, Kucoin CEO Johnny Lyu told Bitcoin.com News that this may have something to do with traders’ shifting perceptions. Lyu noted:

　Traders are increasingly choosing centralized exchange tokens because these now look more attractive. The financial performance of the crypto exchanges themselves, new products as well as the listing of new tokens all adds to the growing popularity of exchange tokens.

However, in the case of the KCS token, Lyu asserts that his firm’s practice of using profits to buy back the tokens from the secondary market is also partly responsible for the crypto asset’s phenomenal price rise.

Now, with many crypto analysts — including the S2F creator — predicting that BTC will hit another new all-time high, others like Lyu insist that centralized exchange tokens will continue to perform better than bitcoin.