New DataLight study vividly shows how the top 10 biggest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization changed throughout the years. Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin (LTC), and XRP (XRP) are the only cryptocurrencies that stood the test of time and didn’t cede ground to competitors.
Bitcoin and XRP remain at the top
Five years ago, as expected, Bitcoin was the king with a market capitalization of around $7.5 bln. On Feb. 24, 2014, its market dominance was at a whopping 88 percent. Litecoin (LTC), the early Bitcoin spin-off, was only the second biggest currency while XRP was only vying to dethrone it.
Dogecoin (DOGE), the very first memecoin, was in the top 5, and it occupies 27th place at the time of writing. BitShares (BTS), another top 10 entry, also managed to stay in the top 50 after five years.
Crypto fads of 2014
While the aforementioned coins sound familiar, newbies might be surprised to see Peercoin (PPC) in fourth place since it’s currently not even in the top 200 biggest cryptocurrencies. Nxt (NXT), Namecoin (NMC) are also outside of the top 200.
Omni (OMNI), the seventh coin, is sitting at 655th spot on CMC. Meanwhile, Quark (QRK), which was the tenth biggest cryptocurrency five years ago, has a tiny market cap of $1.2 mln, staying at 1249th place. The project looks pretty much dead at this point.
Vladislav Sopov
Dan Burgin