This article analyses the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalisation.
Beginning with the largest, the top 10 are currently Bitcoin ($BTC), Ethereum ($ETH), XRP ($XRP), Tether ($USDT), Bitcoin Cash ($BCH) , Litecoin ($LTC), EOS ($EOS), Binance Coin ($BNB), Bitcoin SV ($BSV) and Tezos ($XTZ).
There are approximately 5,392 cryptocurrencies being traded with a total market capitalisation of $201bn (as of April 22, 2020).
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As a starting point, here are a few facts about the top 10 cryptocurrencies and some latest news for each one.
In August 2008, the domain name bitcoin.org was registered. On October 31st 2008, a paper was published called “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”. This was authored by Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin. To date, no one knows who this person, or people, are.
The paper outlined a method of using a peer-to-peer network for electronic transactions without “relying on trust”. On January 3rd 2009, the Bitcoin network came into existence. Nakamoto mined block number “0” (or the “genesis block”), which had a reward of 50 Bitcoins.
Ethereum was launched by Vitalik Buterin on July 30th 2015. He was a researcher and programmer working on Bitcoin Magazine, and he initially wrote a white paper in 2013 describing Ethereum. Buterin had proposed that Bitcoin needed a scripting language. He decided to develop a new platform with a more general scripting language when he couldn’t get buy-in to his proposal.
The development was funded by an online crowdsale between July and August 2014. The system went live with 11.9 million coins already mined for the crowd sale (about 13% of the total supply in circulation). Following the collapse of The DAO project in 2016, Ethereum was split into two blockchains. The new version became Ethereum and the original blockchain continues as Ethereum Classic.
Ripple is a real-time gross settlement system (RTGS) developed by the Ripple company. It is also referred to as the Ripple Transaction Protocol (RTXP) or Ripple protocol. It can trace its roots to 2004 when a web developer called Ryan Fugger had the idea to create a monetary system that was decentralised and could effectively allow individuals to create their own money.
RipplePay.com was launched in 2005 to provide a secure payment system for members of an online community via a global network. Jed McCaleb began developing a digital currency system in 2011 in which transactions were verified by consensus among members of the network, rather than by the mining process used by Bitcoin which relies on blockchain ledgers. This new version of the Ripple system was designed to eliminate Bitcoin’s centralised exchanges, use less electricity than Bitcoin, and perform transactions much more quickly.
Ripple was launched in 2012 to facilitate secure, instant global transactions supporting tokens representing fiat currency, cryptocurrency or any unit of value.
The EOS.IO platform was developed by private company block.one and released as open-source software on June 2nd 2018. One billion tokens were distributed on the Ethereum blockchain by block.one. EOS is based on a white paper published in 2017.
Litecoin was released in October 2011 by Charlie Lee, a former Google employee. It was a fork of Bitcoin with the main difference being a smaller block generation time, increased maximum number of coins and a different script-based algorithm.
Bitcoin Cash was born out of the idea of making Bitcoin more practical for small, day-to-day payments. In May 2017, Bitcoin payments took about four days unless a fee was paid, which was proportionately too large for small transactions. A change to the code was implemented and Bitcoin Cash was born on 1st August 2017.
Tether was issued on the Bitcoin blockchain. In their own words “Tether converts cash into digital currency, to anchor or ‘tether’ the value of the coin to the price of national currencies”. So, the value is meant to mirror that of the US dollar and each unit of Tether is backed by $1 held in reserve.
One of the main uses of Tether is to facilitate trading between cryptocurrencies with a rate fixed to the US$ allowing traders to take advantage of trading opportunities.
Stellar was founded in 2014 by Jed McCaleb and Joyce Kim. At launch it was based on the Ripple protocol but the network eventually forked. Stellar is an open source protocol for exchanging money where servers use the internet to connect to and communicate with other Stellar servers, forming a global value exchange network.
The TRON Protocol is pitched as “one of the largest blockchain-based operating systems in the world, offering scalable, high availability and high throughput support that underlies all the decentralised applications in the TRON ecosystem”.
An ICO campaign took place in September 2017 and raised US$70 million. The coin is called the TRONix (TRX).
To kick the month off we’ve had an extra $19B enter the market allowing Bitcoin to break past the previous resistance we’ve seen in 2019 and see all new highs. Bitcoin now is trying to break through major resistance of $6,000 which held for many months during 2018. We’ve also seen a large premium on the exchange Bitfinex due to the news around Tether and reserve funds.
To kick the month off we’ve had an extra $16B enter the market allowing Bitcoin to break past the previous resistance we’ve seen in 2019. Tron ($TRX) has left the top ten leaderboard and has been replaced with Cardano ($ADA). Tether has dropped a few places this month as the sentiment is generally more bullish and people are taking cash out of Tether to buy back into the market.
This month we see a new entry in the top 10 as Binance Coin enters for the first time ever. Bitcoin SV drops out into the number 11 spot. The remaining top 10 are the same with some changes – Ripple and Ethereum have traded positions once again and TRON has dropped two places.
The value of cryptocurrencies has grown this month with the value of the top 10 pushing back over $100bn following last month’s drop to $97bn.
The top 10 remains unchanged from last month in terms of the cryptocurrencies present, but there has been extensive jockeying for positions. Apart from the ever-present Bitcoin in the number-one spot, all the other cryptos have moved. TRON improved by two positions in the rankings, Stellar Lumens moved down three, and the remaining coins have seen a slight move up or down.
There has been a prolonged bear market in crypto, and the story this month is that from a market cap of $187bn on November 7th, the top 10 cryptocurrencies now have a combined market cap of $97bn. That is a remarkable drop in value over three months.
TRON reenters the top 10 at the expense of Cardano. This month’s big story is Ethereum regaining the number two spot from Ripple. It was a big story when Ripple became the second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation during November:
Ethereum’s rally is due to the anticipation of a series of upcoming hard forks. Ethereum Classic Vision will be airdropped to Ethereum holders at a ratio of 3:1 on January 11th. The Ethereum Nowa fork, meanwhile, is planned on January 12th:
There has been some minor movement up and down for the remaining top 10.
This month has seen a dramatic fall in values, and there has been a lot of movement in the top 10. Bitcoin SV appears as a new currency and is a new entrant following the Bitcoin Cash fork. Ripple makes it into the number two slot at the expense of Ethereum as the flippening happens. The price crash of the last month has led to changes in the rest of the top 10 with various currencies moving position.
These last two weeks have seen the biggest change in the Top 10 this year. Bitcoin Cash drops out following the Bitcoin Cash fork. Ripple makes it into the number two slot at the expense of Ethereum as the flippening happens. Prices have crashed over the last two weeks. This has led to dramatic changes in the rest of the Top 10 with Tether gaining the most places. TRON makes it back into the Top 10. It has been in the Top 10 this year and is always close but the removal of BCH makes room for it to take the last spot in the Top 10. There is frequent movement in the top 10 as values fluctuate, so expect older currencies to drop out and re-enter the list regularly.
This month sees all the cryptocurrencies remaining fairly stable in terms of market capitalisation. The only currency that has changed significantly is Tether which sees its market cap fall by $1.04bn. This has dropped it from eight to ten in the rankings allowing Cardano and Monero to move up one place each.
This month sees all the cryptocurrencies remaining in the same position in the Top 10. Whilst there is no change in rankings to report, its interesting to note that Ripple actually gained approximately $10bn during the month. Every other currency (except Tether) lost value.
The total value of the top 10 cryptocurrencies (as of 3rd September 2018) is $200.79bn. This is a drop of $27bn compared to the previous month (August). This is a dramatic fall of $80bn since June where the total value stood at the $281bn mark.
This month sees Monero as a new entrant to the Top 10. Tether moves up to number eight whilst IOTA drops out of the Top 10 altogether. All the other cryptocurrencies are in the same spot as last month.
The Top 10 remained the same as July’s. Litecoin dropped from the number six spot to number seven; Stellar Lumens rose from the number eight spot to number six and Cardano dropped one place to number eight.
The market capitalisation of the Top 10 cryptocurrencies grew by $4.34bn in a month (August 2018 vs July 2018).
There were 2,041 cryptocurrencies with a total market capitalisation of $253bn.
TRON dropped out of the top 10 into the number 11 spot. It was replaced by Tether.
The market capitalisation of the Top 10 cryptocurrencies fell by $57 billion in a month (July 2018 analysis compared to the June 2018 analysis).
There were 1,894 cryptocurrencies with a total market capitalisation of US$275 bn.
Bitcoin SV came into existence following the Bitcoin Cash chain split on November the 15th 2018. The chain split was caused at two competing software implementation for the Bitcoin Cash blockchain (Bitcoin ABC and Bitcoin SV) broke away from consensus, and was subsequently supported by two different groups of miners. After the time of the fork, users could claim tokens on each side of the fork if they had previously held tokens on the old Bitcoin Cash chain.
Bitcoin Cash ABC is now being recognised by most exchanges as Bitcoin Cash (the name of the original pre fork currency) with a separate listing for Bitcoin Cash SV.
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