Just rewatching 2021's crypto market and it's wild how much has changed. That whole year was basically summed up in one phrase - to the moon. Bitcoin and Ethereum both hit new ATHs after their 2020 momentum carried over, and the entire sector ballooned from under $800B in January to $2.2 trillion by December.

But here's what's interesting when you look back at which crypto to buy in 2021 - it wasn't the obvious picks that dominated. Most major digital assets posted triple-digit returns, easily crushing Bitcoin's 66% gain. The real action was in tokens most people had never heard of before that year.

Three clear themes emerged that shaped what crypto to buy back then. First was the metaverse craze. The Sandbox's SAND token went absolutely parabolic with a 162-fold increase, taking the #1 spot. Axie Infinity's AXS followed right behind at 161-fold gains as play-to-earn gaming exploded, especially in countries like Philippines and Venezuela where people were using these games for actual income during the pandemic. Decentraland's MANA also crushed it with a 40-fold surge. Brands like Adidas and Under Armour jumping into these virtual worlds definitely fueled the speculation.

Then you had the Ethereum killers narrative. Everyone was complaining about gas fees on Ethereum, so capital flooded into alternative layer-1 blockchains. Polygon gained 145x, Terra's LUNA exploded 140x as it became the second-largest DeFi ecosystem, Fantom jumped 138x, Solana climbed 94x, and Avalanche added 28x. These were the tokens that if you caught them early in 2021, you were looking at life-changing returns.

And let's not forget the meme coin madness. Dogecoin rallied nearly 3,000% before hitting its $0.74 all-time high, with Elon Musk's Twitter basically acting as a promotional megaphone. Then as DOGE cooled off, Shiba Inu took the baton and gained 1,608% to round out the top 10.

Ether itself had a solid year too with 418% gains - six times Bitcoin's return. So when people ask which crypto to buy for 2021 performance, those were the winners. Though looking at where these tokens are now, it's a good reminder that past performance definitely doesn't guarantee future results. Interesting to see how the narrative has evolved since then.