Utility Tokens and Popular Tokens: The Dominators of Future Markets

From April 2024 to early January 2025, the crypto market experienced a frenzy of popular tokens. However, as the price of a certain well-known political figure's related token plummeted, investors began to reassess the investment value of utility tokens.

Utility tokens are often used as payment tools for fees in protocols or blockchains. Many projects also reflect their fundamentals by repurchasing or burning tokens. So, in the context of changing market sentiment, can utility tokens bring higher returns?

Centralized exchange tokens perform more stably

After the launch of a popular token related to a certain political figure, the entire popular token sector skyrocketed, but just a month later, it began to cool down, and by February 1, the returns had already reversed.

During the subsequent decline, the prices of popular Tokens continued to fall. Other sectors such as public chains, DeFi, and infrastructure Tokens also experienced similar trends.

However, during the same period, Bitcoin and centralized exchange tokens remained stable, with the latter even experiencing a price increase.

Centralized Exchange Token Analysis

In-depth observation reveals: Among the 8 major centralized exchange tokens this year, 7 have outperformed Bitcoin, of which 6 have achieved positive returns.

A certain exchange platform's token saw a significant increase in the early stages, while another exchange's token achieved the highest annual growth.

So, why do centralized exchange tokens perform more stably?

Centralized Exchange Token Revenue Analysis

One possible reason is that the income from centralized exchange tokens is higher (, with the income referring to the amount for token burn or buyback ).

In the past year, the average income-to-market cap ratio of centralized exchange tokens was 0.12, more than double that of DeFi projects.

The Relationship Between Centralized Exchange Token Revenue and Returns

As mentioned earlier, among these centralized exchange tokens, the token of a certain exchange showed the most stable performance, reflecting the significant correlation between its price returns from January 1 to March 18, 2025, and last year's revenue to market capitalization ratio. However, not all tokens follow the same trend. For example, the token of a certain trading platform is located in the lower right corner of the chart, as it had a very high return rate in 2024, but this return could not be sustained into 2025.

It is worth noting that some exchanges did not disclose any token burn or buyback records last year.

Conclusion

During market downturns, the prices of centralized exchanges may remain stable due to expectations of revenue. However, there are still many other factors that affect the changes in token prices when evaluating various exchanges.

Research Methodology

Selected 57 tokens from the top 100 projects by market capitalization, including:

• Confirm the tokens with income or expense data
• Confirm that there are no income Tokens ( such as popular Tokens )

Not including:

• Wrapped Token
• Cross-chain Bridge Token
• Bitcoin
• Bitcoin Hard Fork Coin