Cryptocurrencies have gone by an uncertain part of finance to center-stage upon the last year. In 1 year span, bitcoin has blown up from trading at $8,166 on 8 March 2020 to smack an all-time rise of over $58,000 in February 2021.
There are hundreds of cryptocurrencies globally but the core class of 20 coins forms around 99% of the market by volume, as stated by crypto website CoinDesk.
As cryptocurrencies carry on with their rollercoaster rally into 2021 and striking record highs in February and March, Financial News has assembled a catalog of the 10 biggest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.
Table of Contents
Bitcoin
As of 19 March 2021, bitcoin was priced at $58,567, as stated by CoinDesk. Introduced in 2009, Bitcoin is recognized by its market ticker, is the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization at $1.01trillion.
The BTC spike has slightly been boosted after Elon Musk declared about his investments in the cryptocurrency of $1.5bn on 8 February.
Ethereum
Ethereum is the second-largest cryptocurrency globally with a total market capitalization of a whopping $208.2bn. It was first introduced in 2013 by developer Vitalik Buterin and started operating in July 2015. Ethereum depends on blockchain technology.
Binance Coin
Binance Coin was formerly an ERC-20 token that runs on the Ethereum blockchain. The network runs on a proof-of-stake consensus model. As of March 19, Binance has a market cap of $41.19 billion with a value of around $267.05.
Cardano
Cardano is a decentralized public blockchain and cryptocurrency design developed by a team of engineers and academics. The digital currency, ADA runs on the non-profit forum, was trading at $1.26 and has a market cap of $40.3bn, as of 19 March.
Tether
Tether, initially nicknamed Realcoin, was introduced in 2014 and is fixed to the US dollar – creating it one of the first cryptocurrencies to do so. It was trading at $1 on 19 March. The cryptocurrency is the biggest stable coin – more stable because it’s bound to a fiat currency – by market cap at $39.2bn, according to Coinmarketcap.
Polkadot
Polkadot was launched by Gavin Wood, another person of the core founders of the Ethereum project who had various opinions on the project’s future. As of January 2021, Polkadot has a market value of $33.54 billion and trades for $36.24.
XRP
XRP, a cryptocurrency that is famous with banks and other organizations, was trading at $0.48 on 19 March and has a market capitalization of $48bn. The cryptocurrency was introduced in 2012 by blockchain company Ripple Labs and operates on its private blockchain protocol called Ripple.
Uniswap
Another cryptocurrency on our list is Uniswap, widely recognized for its position in making ease in decentralized finance (Defi) tokens through automated trade. One UNI is traded at $30.58 with a market cap of $16.02 Billion.
Litecoin
Litecoin, which was founded in 2011 by previous Google and Coinbase engineer Charlie Lee, is a peer-to-peer digital currency that is at times known as the “digital silver” to Bitcoin’s “digital gold”. It was trading at $202.89 with a market value of $13.5bn on 19 March.
ChainLink
Introduced in 2017 by Sergey Nazarov, ChainLink is an ethereum-based token that has straightened the utilization of contracts that join payment systems. On 19 March, it was trading at $30 and had a market value of $12.47bn.