Top 5 Cryptocurrencies Closest to Breaking Their All-Time High

The cryptocurrency industry has experienced a considerable uptick since the beginning of 2024 as the broader market capitalization exceeds $2 trillion for the first time in a long while.

Many analysts and industry experts are calling for even better times ahead, pinpointing that the upcoming Bitcoin halving in April has historically been a precursor to major bull runs.

With that in mind, we decided to take a look at the top 5 cryptocurrencies (by market cap), which are the closest to breaking their all-time high values. Let’s have a look.

Before we dive deeper, if you are interested in finding out some experts’ take on the top 5 altcoins to watch right now, check out our recent video:

Bitcoin (BTC)

Bitcoin has had a phenomenal year, as well as an extraordinary run in the last quarter of 2023. The price is currently trading above $52K, increasing by a whopping 17% in the past week alone.

In the past 30 days, BTC is up by more than 22%, while its yearly gains stand at a massive 136%. The reasons for this are likely multifold. First, earlier in January, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission approved the listing of a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) – something that many companies have been trying to get passed for over seven years now.

Apart from that, 2024 will also see the coveted Bitcoin halving happen in April. This will effectively decrease Bitcoin’s supply available to sell by miners by 50% and halve its inflation. Halvings have always been a precursor to bull runs.

These two reasons also seem to be why Bitcoin’s price is up so much in the past few days.

Data from CoinGoLive shows that BTC needs to increase by 32.10% to reach the previous high achieved on November 10th, 2021.

Bittensor (TAO)

TAO is the next cryptocurrency that’s particularly close to its all-time high, trading at less than 2% below it, at the time of this writing.

Bittensor is the protocol that underpins the TAO token, and it focuses on improving the development of machine-learning platforms. The goal is to decentralize the process and create a P2P market for ML applications.

In any case, trading at $622, TAO is currently standing 1.23% away from its all-time high.

Stacks (STX)

Next in line, we have the veteran layer two for Bitcoin – Stacks. Its native cryptocurrency is called STX and it currently trades at $2.71.

Its all-time high sits at $3.39, putting it approximately 25% away.

STX has been a strong performer throughout the past months. This is because Bitcoin’s network has seen an influx of activity, largely spurred by the capabilities made possible and recently pushed to prominence by the Taproot upgrade.

Optimism (OP)

Optimism is an Ethereum layer two scaling solution, and its native token is called OP. It currently trades at $3.91, whereas its ATH is at $4.23. This puts it slightly more than 8% away from it.

ETH has had a stellar performance throughout 2024, and it is absolutely no wonder that its broader ecosystem is also doing well. The surge seems to have been propelled by increased re-staking activity, as well as the anticipation of approval for a spot ETH exchange-traded fund.

Kaspa (KAS)

Kaspa is a network that combines proof-of-work – the popular consensus mechanism behind Bitcoin – with blockDAG architecture. DAG stands for Directed Acyclic Graph. Without getting into too many details, the goal is to accelerate the speed of block processing and implement minimal confirmation durations.

KAS is its native token, and it’s currently trading at $0.14 – 8.8%, away from its all-time high of slightly more than $0.15, achieved on November 19th, 2023.