The cryptocurrencies that held up the best in 2022

Yahoo Finance’s David Hollerith joins the Live show to break down which digital currencies held up best in 2022, as well as the outlook for cryptocurrencies going into 2023.

Video transcript

BRIAN SOZZI: Cryptocurrencies have been under pressure throughout 2022, but some tokens have managed to remain resilient. Here for more on the tokens that held up best is Yahoo Finance's crypto reporter David Hollerith. David.

DAVID HOLLERITH: Brian, in a year where cryptocurrency prices have plunged, it's admittedly kind of tough to use the term best-performing crypto assets, but we can definitely look at the results to see what's held up best in 2022.

So for example, it's a little bit of a head scratcher. TRX, or Tron commonly known as, has held out better than the majority of assets with a 30% selloff. OKB and BNB, which are two tokens issued by cryptocurrency exchanges OKX and Binance, also held out better with a 15% and 54% loss, respectively. And down by 61% year to date and trading around $0.67, Dogecoin, the original meme coin, has beat out Bitcoin and Ether, two of the largest and most liquid cryptocurrencies. And this is due in part to a Q4 rally that was sparked around the time that Elon Musk purchased Twitter.

Now, of these results, Rich Rosenblum, cofounder and president of crypto market maker GSR, said while unexpected, the better-performing cryptocurrencies during the year were virtually all digital assets that appear to have been of smaller size, meaning they were probably less liquid. And Rosenblum went on to call a lot of the performance of these tokens market anomalies.

Outside of Bitcoin and Ether, he said that the firm, which is one of the most active traders algorithmically and by appointment, doesn't actually trade any of these or deal in any of these tokens. So, you know, in a year where cryptocurrencies have all sold off, the ones that have performed better turn out potentially not to be as much about, you know, what could be indicative of future performance but more so how liquid tokens are and what's more easily sellable during a time of a crash.

BRAD SMITH: David, a lot to continue to track within this crypto landscape amid this washout or winter or whatever W word people want to use today. David, we appreciate the continued coverage. Thanks so much.