The 2022 financial year can essentially be broken down into two distinct periods for cryptos.
The first period ran for some five months, from July through to November.
The second period took over in December and ran straight through to 30 June.
The biggest differentiator between the two halves was the outlook for interest rates.
Heading into November, central banks were signalling investors could expect historically low rates well into 2024 to support the global economic recovery from the pandemic. But the pace of that recovery surprised to the upside, and along with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, inflation numbers rapidly exceeded central banks' target ranges.
You know what happened next.
Interest rates across much of the world began to rise sharply, with more rate hikes flagged in future months.
This knocked the stuffing out of most cryptos and most other risk assets. Indeed, the tech-heavy NASDAQ lost 31% from mid-November through to the end of FY22. And Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) tumbled 55% over the full 12 months.
Hence, we end the financial year with only 14 tokens significantly in the green.
With that said, these were the five best cryptos to have bought and held during the course of the financial year.
(Note, the best performers don't include tiny altcoins. We focused solely on the list of top 100 tokens by market cap.)
Image source: Getty Images
FY22's fourth and fifth best performing digital tokens
The fifth best crypto to have held in FY22 is UNUS SED LEO (CRYPTO: LEO)
Launched in May 2019, Leo kicked off the financial year trading for US$2.43. By the time we turned the calendar over to July, it was worth US$5.91, up 143% over the 12 months.
If you're unfamiliar with Leo, CoinMarketCap tells us it's "a utility token that's used across the iFinex ecosystem… The cryptocurrency allows Bitfinex users to save money on trading fees. The extent of the discount depends on how much LEO that the customer has in their account."
Leo hit all-time highs of $8.04 on 8 February, well after most cryptos peaked in November.
At the time of writing, Leo is trading for US$5.74. That gives it a market cap of US$5.5 billion and places the crypto at number 17 in terms of size.
Moving on to the fourth best crypto performer of FY22 we have Axie Infinity (CRYPTO: AXS).
Created in 2019, Axie was worth US$5.39 on 1 July 2021 and traded for US$13.34 on 30 June 2022, a gain of 148%.
Readers with some gaming experience may already be familiar with the crypto, as Axie is a "trading and battling game that is partially owned and operated by its players… [allowing] players to collect, breed, raise, battle and trade token-based creatures known as Axies".
Like many leading cryptos, Axie hit record highs in November, peaking at US$165 on 6 November.
Axie is currently trading for $15.34, making it the number 43 crypto with a total market valuation of US$1.4 billion.
These were the second and third best performing altcoins
The third top crypto performer for FY22 is Kadena (CRYPTO: KDA).
Founded in 2016, Kadena was worth 38.7 US cents at the commencement of FY22 and ended the 12 months trading for US$1.52 cents, up 292%.
The total supply of the crypto is limited to one billion tokens.
According to CoinMarketCap, "Kadena is a proof-of-work blockchain that combines the proof-of-work consensus mechanism from Bitcoin with directed acyclic graph (DAG) principles to offer a scalable version of Bitcoin."
Kadena also hit its record high on 11 November, trading for US$28.25.
At the current price of $1.65, its market cap stands at US$305 million, barely sneaking onto our list as the number 98 token in virtual circulation.
Coming in as the second best crypto to have bought and held during FY22 we have The Sandbox (CRYPTO: SAND), another gaming based token.
Launched in 2011, Sand uses blockchain technology to provide a virtual world that enables users to "create, build, buy and sell digital assets in the form of a game".
Sand was trading for 24.7 US cents on 1 July 2021 and was worth 97.5 US cents on 30 June, a 12-month gain of 295%.
Any guesses when Sand hit record highs?
Yep, on 25 November the token peaked at $8.44.
At the current price of $1.28, The Sandbox has a market cap of US$1.6 billion, coming in as the 34th biggest crypto in virtual circulation.
Which brings us to…
The best performing crypto of the 2022 financial year
And the top crypto to have held in FY22 – drum roll please – is Gala (CRYPTO: GALA).
Like two of the other top FY22 crypto performers, Gala also functions in the gaming world. According to CoinMarketCap, "Players can own non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and influence the governance of games within the Gala Games ecosystem."
Gala started FY22 trading for 0.87 US cents and closed the financial year worth 5.2 US cents for a gain of 498%.
Gala hit record highs of 83.6 US cents on, that's right, 26 November.
At the current price of 5.7 cents, Gala comes in at number 84 on the top crypto list, with a market cap of US$396 million.
