CoinGecko noted that MYX Finance (MYX) is now by “far” the top crypto gainer this year, achieving the highest YTD price returns of 3,358.15% among the largest market cap crypto assets. The BNB Chain-native derivatives protocol launched its token at “around $0.097 on May 6 this year.” CoinGecko added that $MYX experienced “strong price gains on the back of its airdrop program, as well as the popularity of the perpetuals narrative and BNB Chain ecosystem.”
CoinGecko also mentioned in a research report that MYX Finance had faced significant criticisms about its token airdrop recipients and “allegations of insider trading when $MYX spiked to an all-time high price of $19.03 on Sept 11.”
While the low float token has since corrected below “$3.00 at the time of the study, it is still up significantly compared to its launch price.”
Despite this, market participants are likely watching “to see if the derivatives DEX’s fundamentals will be able to match up to its price outperformance.”
As noted in the research report, Zcash (ZEC) has emerged “as the second highest crypto gainer in 2025, after securing 573.72% in price returns YTD.”
$ZEC started to rally in late September amid “renewed interest in the privacy narrative, and reached $120.62 on Oct 2, reclaiming price levels last seen in May 2022.”
In contrast to the somewhat gradual decline of the total crypto market capitalization during that period, the $ZEC breakout had “strong momentum that peaked at $698.87 on November 17.”
Meanwhile, other major privacy-focused projects “have benefited from this comeback and managed to rank among the top 10 gainers: Monero (XMR) which has been on an uptrend since mid-August and recorded returns of 115.96% YTD to rank 6th, and Midnight Network (NIGHT) which recently launched its token on Dec 9 and is up by 58.39% since.”
CoinGecko also stated that the top crypto gainers ranking “was dominated by meme coins in 2024, none made it in this year.”
Instead, the top gainers ranking has seen “a more diversified representation” from numerous narratives:
- Prediction market Rain Protocol (RAIN) which recorded the third highest gains of 184.83%; payments and RWA platform Zebec Network (ZBCN) followed close behind with returns of 164.08%;
- SocialFi layer 2 Zora (ZORA) which is up 138.13%; centralized exchange OKX’s OKB which gained 115.21% as investors sought similar plays after BNB’s rally. It remains to be seen if this will finally mark the crypto market’s shift away from purely speculative tokens, to projects with fundamentals.
The only meme coin-adjacent top gainer in 2025 “is Alchemist AI (ACH), which launched on and graduated from Pump.fun but has since established itself as an AI crypto application.”
In line with the AI narrative gaining mindshare and “maintaining its position as the second most popular crypto narrative this year, $ACH has gained 89.21% YTD after recovering twice from price corrections.”
Unlike the top gainers among large capitalization crypto, Bitcoin and Ethereum seem to be “ending with YTD losses, despite reaching new all-time highs this year.”
Bitcoin (BTC) is sitting “at -7.96% YTD, with price having dropped to $86,065 as of Dec 18, after starting the year at $93,508.”
And Ethereum (ETH) is seeing “twice as large a loss of 15.25% YTD, with price having decreased from $3,337 to $2,828 over the same period.”
Unless BTC and ETH manage to recover in the concluding weeks of 2025, this will end the “previous two-year streak in which the largest cryptocurrencies have posted gains YTD.”
The research study examined price returns of “the 300 biggest crypto assets by market capitalization on CoinGecko on Dec 18, 2025 compared to Jan 1, 2025 or the earliest date with available data.”
Previous years’ rankings were reportedly determined by “examining the 150 biggest crypto assets on Dec 25, 2024 compared to Jan 1, 2024 or the earliest date with available data; the 100 biggest crypto assets on December 23, 2023 compared to Jan 1, 2023.”
CoinGecko clarified that for the purpose of the research study, stablecoins, wrapped, pegged, staked, restaked, tokenized and low organic activity assets “were excluded.”