Kraken, a leading crypto exchange, has released a report which shows that crypto coins such as STEPN, AXS and SAND have exploded in the last year and are up between 400% and 750%, crushing the performance of the rest of the crypto and digital asset market.
In Kraken Intelligence’s new May 2022 market recap and outlook, the exchange giant finds coins such as Decentraland (MANA), The Sandbox (SAND), Axie Infinity (AXS), ApeCoin (APE), and STEPN (GMT) are outperforming the rest of the crypto markets.
“When looking at 1Y performance, the Metaverse sector has significantly outperformed the market YoY with a return of +395%. This includes assets such as Decentraland (MANA), Sandbox (SAND), Axie Infinity (AXS), Apecoin (APE), and STEPN (GMT).”
Despite outperforming the rest of the markets over the last year, metaverse tokens suffered some of the largest losses on the market in May.
“All sectors posted negative performance in the month of May.
Layer-1, Metaverse, and Meme Coin sectors led the month with the biggest losses at -43%, -42%, and -39% returns, respectively.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin and Privacy coins performed the best on a relative basis, returning -17% and -19%, respectively.”
Kraken, itself named after a large sea monster, also reports on whale activity in the month of May to gauge market sentiment. Kraken defines whales as wallets holding more than 1,000 Bitcoin (BTC) or 10,000 Ethereum (ETH). While May was a quiet month for BTC whales, ETH whales saw some unusual activity.
“It was a relatively quiet month for BTC whale activity. The amount of BTC held by whales decreased slightly from 8.07 million to 8.04 million [month-over-month], and the number of BTC whales decreased from 2,280 to 2,212.
On Ethereum, changes in whale activity notably spiked on May 10th, when the amount of ETH held by whales hit a high of 81.8 million before falling sharply to end the month at 81.6 million. Similarly, the number of ETH whales started off at 1,302 and spiked mid-month, but closed at 1,308, remaining largely unchanged from the beginning of the month.”
