Analysis of the Top 15 Global Digital Money Market Capitalization Rankings in September 2025

As of September 2025, the global Digital Money market landscape continues to evolve amid regulatory iterations and technological innovations. Below are the top 15 Digital Money market capitalization rankings based on the latest snapshot from CoinMarketCap, a cryptocurrency data analysis platform, and industry trends (Note: Cryptocurrency prices are highly volatile, and rankings may change with market dynamics):

1. Core mainstream cryptocurrencies (market capitalization Top 5)

1. Bitcoin (BTC)
Market capitalization: approximately 680 billion USD
Core positioning: The world's first cryptocurrency, decentralized digital gold
2025 Dynamic: The third hard fork after completing the Taproot protocol upgrade enhances smart contract compatibility, with institutional holdings rising to 23%, becoming an alternative asset for foreign exchange reserves of multiple central banks.
Ethereum (ETH)
Market capitalization: approximately 320 billion USD
Core positioning: Smart contract platform, the cornerstone of DeFi and NFT ecosystems.
Technical Progress: Achieved complete sharding scaling, Gas fees reduced by 70%, staking amount exceeded 40 million ETH, total number of ecological projects exceeded 120,000.
Tether (USDT)
Market capitalization: approximately 161 billion USD
Core positioning: Stablecoin pegged to the US dollar
Regulatory Update: Although it still holds 60% of the stablecoin market share, it has been classified as a "high-risk stablecoin" under the EU MICA regulation due to controversies over reserve transparency, limiting its use in the European banking system.
US Dollar coin (USDC)
Market capitalization: approximately 65 billion USD
Core Positioning: Compliant and Transparent Fiat Stablecoin
Advantages: Publicly audited by Circle every month, recognized by the Federal Reserve as a cross-border payment pilot tool, with a penetration rate in enterprise-level applications exceeding that of USDT.
Binance Coin (BNB)
Market capitalization: approximately 58 billion USD
Core Positioning: Binance Ecosystem Coin
Ecosystem Expansion: The BNB Chain's smart contract trading volume supporting cross-chain transactions has surpassed Ethereum for the first time, and the burn mechanism has reduced circulation by 35% compared to 2023.
2. Layer2 and New Forces of Public Chains (Ranked 6-10)

6. Polygon (MATIC)
Market capitalization: approximately 42 billion USD
Core advantage: Ethereum Layer 2 solution rebounded 300% after the plunge in May, becoming the main settlement network for NFT transactions, with a total locked value (TVL) exceeding 8 billion USD.
Solana (SOL)
Market capitalization: approximately 39 billion USD
Technical Features: High throughput public chain, achieving a peak of 500,000 TPS by 2025, attracting traditional payment giants like PayPal to integrate stablecoin settlement.
Cardano (ADA)
Market capitalization: approximately 31 billion USD
Ecosystem Progress: Completed the "Voltaire" phase upgrade, achieving on-chain governance decentralization, and reached digital money settlement cooperation with 5 African countries.
Avalanche (AVAX)
Market capitalization: approximately 28 billion USD
Differentiated Advantage: Subnet technology supports enterprise-level customized blockchains and is used by JPMorgan for inter-institutional asset settlement pilots.
Trump Dollar (USD1)
Market capitalization: approximately 25 billion USD
Special background: Issued by World Liberty Financial, which is controlled by the Trump family, 75% of sales revenue goes to the Trump family, rapidly penetrating the North American retail payment scene due to celebrity effect, but has been listed as a "regulatory watchlist" by the EU due to political connections.
3. Ecological Application Tokens (Ranked 11-15)

11. Ethereum Classic (ETC)
Market capitalization: approximately 22 billion USD
Positioning: Ethereum original chain, adhering to the Proof of Work (PoW) mechanism, attracting a miner community with an extreme demand for decentralization.
Dogecoin (DOGE)
Market capitalization: approximately 19 billion USD
Features: meme coin leader, SpaceX under Elon Musk accepts it as payment for Mars tourism deposits, circulation exceeds 140 billion coins.
** dai（DAI）**
Market capitalization: approximately 17 billion USD
Mechanism: Decentralized stablecoin generated by multi-asset collateral, accounting for 35% in DeFi lending, with the collateral rate increased to 180% due to the Federal Reserve's interest rate hike cycle.
Polygon zkEVM (POL)
Market capitalization: approximately 15 billion USD
Technical Highlights: Zero-Knowledge Proof Layer 2 solutions, fully compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine, becoming the cross-chain preferred choice for blue-chip NFT projects.
Litecoin (LTC)
Market capitalization: approximately 14 billion USD
Positioning: "Digital Silver", the block reward after halving is reduced to 6.25 LTC, maintaining a 15% market share in the cross-border remittance sector.
2. Core Market Trends in 2025

Regulatory divergence: The U.S. "GENIUS Act" categorizes stablecoins into "federal licensed" and "state licensed". The proportion of USDT has decreased due to offshore issuance evading regulation, while compliant stablecoins USDC and PYUSD (issued by PayPal) are accelerating their penetration in traditional financial scenarios.
Layer 2 Explosion: The total market capitalization of Ethereum Layer 2 networks represented by MATIC and POL has exceeded 200 billion yuan, becoming the core solution to alleviate mainnet congestion. Its market capitalization growth is similar to the logic of bank asset securitization — reducing the pressure on underlying assets through "risk layering."
The Rise of Political Tokens: Cryptocurrencies like USD1 with political connections have emerged, raising regulatory concerns about "power capitalization," and the European Union has proposed restrictions on the issuance scale of tokens associated with political figures.
3. Risk Warning

Cryptocurrency still faces high volatility and regulatory uncertainty: for example, although the market capitalization of USD1 has soared in the short term, there is a potential related party transaction risk due to the inclusion of 15% of Trump family business bonds in its reserve assets; moreover, the valuation of Layer2 tokens such as MATIC highly depends on the continued prosperity of the Ethereum ecosystem. Investors need to dynamically assess by combining real-time data and risk models.