All 10 of the top cryptocurrencies by market capitalization saw lower prices in August, making it a challenging month for the crypto market. However, as September progressed, some coins began to post green numbers which was a slight improvement from the prior month. The last month in Q3 brought a mixed bag of results, with a few coins seeing strong gains while most others experienced a decline.
September is over and fall is here, and the crypto market looks like it’s preparing for a long winter. As always when we enter a new month, we take a look back to see how things have gone over the past month, and this time also the past quarter.
As a reminder, August was also a difficult month to navigate in the crypto markets, with all of the top 10 coins by market capitalization seeing lower prices for the month. In September, however, things did improve slightly, with some coins now seeing green numbers for the month.
Top 10 coins in September
Among the top 10 coins by market capitalization, the picture was mixed in September, with a few coins seeing strong gains but most other coins seeing lower prices.
Best among these major coins was the XRP token, which has seen excitement build as Ripple is set to wrap up a legal battle with the SEC in the US, possibly on favorable terms for the company. Over the course of the month, XRP rose by a respectable 35% to $0.4458.
On the other side of the spectrum, the worst performer in the group was Ethereum (ETH), with a fall of more than 19% for the month to $1,302. ETH has been selling off after its highly anticipated Merge event in September, possibly due to a “sell the news” type effect.
The number one cryptocurrency by market cap, bitcoin (BTC), saw a small drop in price of around 4.3% for the month to $19,225.
Top 10 coins in Q3
Looking at the same 10 coins over the course of the entire quarter, we can see that XRP again stands out as the winner, with a 39.5% gain for the quarter.
XRP was followed by BNB, Binance’s exchange token and the native token of the BNB Chain, which rose 28.5% for the quarter to $286.23. Meanwhile, the third best performer was ETH – the loser from September – which over the quarter as a whole, managed to secure a gain of 18.5%.
The worst performer among the top 10 coins in Q3 was the meme coin Dogecoin (DOGE), which dropped 10.4% to $0.06.
Best from the top 50 in September
Looking at the top 50 coins by market cap in September, it’s clear that even though we’re still in the bear market, good investments can be found.
The best coin among these 50 largest coins was Quant (QNT), which surged by 42.3% in September to $134. The coin was followed by Terra Classic (LUNC), the token that still exists on Do Kwon’s original Terra chain. The token was up an impressive 36.4% to $0.00034 and remains the 31st largest cryptoasset by market cap, despite the collapse earlier this year of the entire Terra ecosystem.
Worst from the top 50 in September
Moving over to the worst coins from the top 50 in September, we can see that losing money can also be incredibly easy if bets are placed on the wrong coins.
Worst among these was bitDAO (BIT), falling 26.8% to $0.476. The coin was closely followed by Bitfinex’s exchange token LEO, with a fall of 23.4% to $4.14, and Ethereum competitor EOS, with a fall of 22.6% to $1.179.
Best from the top 50 in Q3
In the 3rd quarter, Terra’s original LUNC token once again stood out as the big winner, this time with a gain of 177.8% for the three months.
Terra’s LUNC was followed by QNT with a gain of 133.6%, and Chiliz (CHZ), which rose 119.6% to $0.217. This means that all three of the top performing coins from the top 50 in the quarter saw gains of more than 100%.
Worst from the top 50 in Q3
On the negative side, a number of coins saw double-digit percentage losses, with some falling almost as much as 30%.
Worst among the top 50 coins in the 3rd quarter was the already-mentioned exchange token LEO, which came in with a quarterly loss of 28.3%. The coin was closely followed by the three metaverse and play-to-earn tokens The Sandbox (SAND), Decentraland (MANA) and Axie Infinity (AXS), which lost 25.7%, 19.4%, and 13.7%, respectively.
Best & worst from the top 100 in September and Q3
Looking now at all of the top 100 coins by market cap in September, Reserve Rights (RSR) stood out as the best overall performer last month with a 55.8% monthly gain to $0.0097. Meanwhile, on a quarterly basis, Lido DAO token (LDO), the token issued by the Ethereum staking service Lido, secured the top spot with its 181.5% rally to $1.47 after Ethereum’s Merge was successfully completed.
Among the losers, Defichain (DFI) came in as the absolute worst investment for September, with a fall of 34.2% to $0.68. On a quarterly basis, the worst coin to hold turned out to be Helium (HNT), which fell 45% to $4.95.
