Ether (ETH) emerged as the best-performing digital asset in July, returning a 57% gain and leaving a significant margin against other cryptocurrencies.
ETH wrapped up the month with a market capitalization of $205 billion after its price climbed 57% to $1,680.
This is even as volatility across cryptocurrency markets worsened in July, which were further slipping away from the high levels reached in May.
These are the findings by CryptoCompare, a global cryptocurrency market data provider, which studied five major cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin (BTC), ETH, XRP, SOL and ADA.
Monthly/3-Month Returns
According to CryptoCompare, SOL trails far behind ETH in monthly gain as the digital asset returned 25.6%.
This is followed by Bitcoin (17.1%), XRP (14.2%) and ADA (12.2%).
“Market sentiment shifted in July, however, with both traditional and digital asset markets rebounding. Ethereum was the best performing high-profile asset by a considerable margin, returning 57% month-on-month as anticipation for the merge continues to build,” CryptoCompare explained.
However, when the digital assets are compared in terms of market activities between May and July 2022, ADA becomes the best-performing digital asset.
Within the last three months, ADA returned the least negative return of -31.7%.
In the order of least negative returns, other cryptocurrencies returned thus: BTC (-38.1%), ETH (-38.4%), XRP (-35.2%) and SOL (-49.9%).
When calculated on a year-to-date (YTD) or January-July 2022 basis, BTC returned the least negative return with -49.5% with ETH and XRP tying the knot with -54.3%.
ADA (-60.5%) and SOL (-75.1%) followed in YTD negative returns in that ascending order.
“Over the last three months, all covered digital assets lost approximately a third of their value as the cryptocurrency space continued to be marred by high-profile contagion events,” the market data provider explained.
Crypto Volatility
According to CryptoCompare, ETH and SOL were the most volatile digital assets in July.
ETH marked a volatility level of 108% “given its significant price movement upwards.” This was followed by SOL with a 107% volatility level.
On the contrary, XRP and BTC were the least volatile. They saw 61.8 and 62.1% volatility levels, respectively, in the past month.
In terms of volume, total USDT volumes across the five assets jumped by 22.7% to $319 billion, CryptoCompare said. However, the data provider pointed out that USDT volumes increased for just BTC and ETH.
This, it explained, suggests that participants "are tilting towards the two digital assets which are deemed safer within the crypto landscape.”
Meanwhile, as a result of the recent Solana wallets hack, the price of SOL dropped by 11.6% from $42.43 to $37.48, CryptoCompare said.
