The number of known cryptocurrencies surged from 6,000 in July 2021 to 10,400 in February 2022 before dropping to around 10,000 by August. Only five cryptocurrencies currently account for over 75% of the entire crypto industry market capitalization.
A Thousand Cryptocurrencies Added Every Month
According to the data from Augusta Free Press, the number of known cryptocurrencies went up from 6,000 in July 2021 to around 10,400 by February 2022. However, this number had dropped to around 10,000 by August 2022, the data revealed.
Before surging past the 10,000 mark, the number of cryptocurrencies — according to a study by Statista and Investing.com — had grown from 60 in 2013 to over 4,500 by 2020. As shown by the data, in the period between 2021 and 2022, the number of cryptocurrencies has doubled.
Remarking on this phenomenal growth in the number of cryptocurrencies added, the Augusta Free Press report said:
In the first half of 2021 only, 1,500 new digital coins entered the market, with their number rising to over 6,000 in July. At the end of last year[2021], the market was adding about 1,000 new cryptocurrencies each month, with their total number reaching 9,900 in January 2022.
Five Cryptos Account for Over 75 of Market Cap
Despite this surge in the number of cryptocurrencies, just five cryptocurrencies account for over 75% of the crypto industry’s total market capitalization. At the time of writing, bitcoin, which came close to reaching $70,000 in November 2021, was trading at just below $20,000 and had a market capitalization of over $377 billion. With this market capitalization bitcoin accounts for 40% of the entire crypto market cap.
Ethereum, the next top-ranked cryptocurrency by market capitalization, accounts for 20% of the total market cap. Completing the top five ranked cryptocurrencies are the stablecoins tether and USDC as well as BNB. This means that the rest of approximately 10,000 cryptocurrencies only account for just 24% of the total market capitalization.
Even though the Augusta Free Press report appears to suggest that the number of cryptocurrencies only went past the 10,000 mark in 2022, the crypto market cap aggregator coinmarketcap.com has 20,797 listed coins, while the platform coingecko.com has 12,892.
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