I was looking at historical charts and it occurred to me: how many cryptocurrencies are there today? Insane. We went from 7 coins in 2013 to over 17,000. In just a decade, the landscape has literally exploded.

I still remember when Bitcoin was the only one that mattered, with a market cap almost 20 times larger than any other. It was 2013, everything was simple. Then Litecoin, Peercoin arrived, and people started experimenting. By 2014, there were already 513 different cryptocurrencies — a crazy growth considering they started from zero.

But the interesting thing is how things really changed after 2015. Ethereum appeared from the lower ranks with a market cap of $66 million and started climbing. In 2016, Bitcoin hit nearly $900 (a three-year high), while Ethereum exploded with an 8-fold increase in market capitalization. Ethereum Classic, Monero, Dash — all new faces gaining space.

Then 2017 arrived, and things heated up. Ethereum gained +1000% in four months, XRP went from $232 million to nearly $2 billion. How many cryptocurrencies existed at that point? 789 by mid-year. The number kept rising because anyone could create a coin. By 2018, we were already at 2,073.

Now the number is even more absurd — how many cryptocurrencies are actually in circulation? Over 17,000. The total market cap is $1.32 trillion. Bitcoin maintains dominance with $650 billion, about 3 times Ethereum. What strikes me is that 95% of people who know about crypto know Bitcoin, but most don’t even know how many cryptocurrencies actually exist. Asia has 4 times more users than the rest of the continents combined — India, China, the United States leading. An interesting market dynamic.