The year 2021 was unprecedented for crypto, with Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) gaining 60.58% and 408.5% throughout the year, respectively. For the latter, the explosion of decentralized finance (DeFi), nonfungible tokens (NFTs), decentralized applications (DApps) and decentralized exchanges (DEXs) built on its blockchain created a whole new digital currency cyberspace encompassing all corners of the world.
But, the year was also an auspicious one for altcoins, whose performance far outweighed that of BTC and ETH during the same time period. So, without further ado, let's look at five cryptocurrencies that went from zero to hero in 2021.