In March 2024 Bitcoin BTC reached a new all-time high with prices exceeding 73000 USD marking a milestone for the cryptocurrency market This surge was due to the approval of Bitcoin exchange-traded funds ETFs in the United States allowing investors to access Bitcoin without directly holding it This development increased Bitcoin’s credibility and brought fresh demand from institutional investors echoing previous price surges in 2021 when Tesla announced its 15 billion investment in Bitcoin and Coinbase was listed on the Nasdaq By the end of 2022 Bitcoin prices dropped sharply to 15000 USD following the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX and its bankruptcy which caused a loss of confidence in the market By August 2024 Bitcoin rebounded to approximately 64178 USD but remained volatile due to inflation and interest rate hikes Unlike fiat currency like the US dollar Bitcoin’s supply is finite with 21 million coins as its maximum supply By September 2024 over 92 percent of Bitcoin had been mined Bitcoin’s value is tied to its scarcity and its mining process is regulated through halving events which cut the reward for mining every four years making it harder and more energy-intensive to mine The next halving event in 2024 will reduce the reward to 3125 BTC from its current 625 BTC The final Bitcoin is expected to be mined around 2140 The energy required to mine Bitcoin has led to criticisms about its environmental impact with estimates in 2021 suggesting that one Bitcoin transaction used as much energy as Argentina Bitcoin’s future price is difficult to predict due to the influence of large holders known as whales who own about 92 percent of all Bitcoin These whales can cause dramatic market swings by making large trades and many retail investors still dominate the market While institutional interest has grown it remains a small fraction compared to retail Bitcoin is vulnerable to external factors like regulatory changes and economic crises leading some to believe it is in a speculative bubble However others argue that Bitcoin is still in its early stages of adoption and will grow further as more institutions and governments recognize its potential as a hedge against inflation and a store of value 2024 has also seen the rise of Bitcoin Layer 2 technologies like the Lightning Network which improve scalability by enabling faster and cheaper transactions These innovations are crucial for Bitcoin’s wider adoption especially for day-to-day use and cross-border remittances At the same time central bank digital currencies CBDCs are gaining traction as several governments including China and the European Union have accelerated the development of their own state-controlled digital currencies while Bitcoin remains decentralized offering financial sovereignty for those who prefer independence from government control The rise of CBDCs is expected to increase interest in Bitcoin as a hedge against these centralized currencies Bitcoin’s journey in 2024 highlights its growing institutional acceptance alongside its inherent market volatility While the approval of Bitcoin ETFs has significantly boosted interest the market remains sensitive to events like exchange collapses and regulatory decisions With the limited supply of Bitcoin and improvements in its transaction efficiency it is expected to remain a key player in the financial world for years to come Whether Bitcoin is currently in a speculative bubble or on a sustainable path to greater adoption will ultimately be revealed over time.

Bitcoin (BTC) price again reached an all-time high in 2024, as values exceeded over 73,000 USD in March 2024. That particular price hike was connected to the approval of Bitcoin ETFs in the United States, whilst previous hikes in 2021 were due to events involving Tesla and Coinbase, respectively. Tesla's announcement in March 2021 that it had acquired 1.5 billion U.S. dollars' worth of the digital coin, for example, as well as the IPO of the U.S.' biggest crypto exchange fueled mass interest. The market was noticably different by the end of 2022, however, with Bitcoin prices reaching roughly 87,471.70 as of March 25, 2025 after another crypto exchange, FTX, filed for bankruptcy.Is the world running out of Bitcoin?Unlike fiat currency like the U.S. dollar - as the Federal Reserve can simply decide to print more banknotes - Bitcoin's supply is finite: BTC has a maximum supply embedded in its design, of which roughly 89 percent had been reached in April 2021. It is believed that Bitcoin will run out by 2040, despite more powerful mining equipment. This is because mining becomes exponentially more difficult and power-hungry every four years, a part of Bitcoin's original design. Because of this, a Bitcoin mining transaction could equal the energy consumption of a small country in 2021.Bitcoin's price outlook: a potential bubble?Cryptocurrencies have few metrices available that allow for forecasting, if only because it is rumored that only few cryptocurrency holders own a large portion of available supply. These large holders - referred to as 'whales' - are said to make up of two percent of anonymous ownership accounts, whilst owning roughly 92 percent of BTC. On top of this, most people who use cryptocurrency-related services worldwide are retail clients rather than institutional investors. This means outlooks on whether Bitcoin prices will fall or grow are difficult to measure, as movements from one large whale already having a significant impact on this market.

Prices for USCBTC USD Coin Bitcoin including live quotes, historical charts and news. USCBTC USD Coin Bitcoin was last updated by Trading Economics this March 27 of 2025.

By 2025, the Bitcoin market cap had grown to over 2,000 billion USD as the cryptocurrency kept growing. Market capitalization is calculated by multiplying the total number of Bitcoins in circulation by the Bitcoin price. The Bitcoin market capitalization increased from approximately one billion U.S. dollars in 2013 to several times this amount since its surge in popularity. Dominance The Bitcoin market cap takes up a significant portion of the overall cryptocurrency market cap. This is referred to as "dominance". Within the crypto world, this so-called "dominance" ratio is one of the oldest and most investigated metrics available. It measures the coin's market cap relative to the overall crypto market — effectively showing how strong Bitcoin compared to all the other cryptocurrencies that are not BTC, called "altcoins". The Bitcoin dominance was above 50 percent. Maximum supply and scarcity Bitcoin is unusual from other cryptocurrencies in that its maximum supply is getting closer. By 2025, well over 19 million out of all 21 million possible Bitcoin had been created. Bitcoin's supply is expected to reach its maximum around the year 2140, likely making mining more energy-intensive.

Ethereum's price history suggests that that crypto was worth significantly less in 2022 than during late 2021, although nowhere near the lowest price recorded. Much like Bitcoin (BTC), the price of ETH went up in 2021 but for different reasons altogether: Ethereum, for instance, hit the news when a digital art piece was sold as the world's most expensive NFT for over 38,000 ETH - or 69.3 million U.S. dollars. Unlike Bitcoin - of which the price growth was fueled by the IPO of the U.S.' biggest crypto trader Coinbase - the rally on Ethereum came from technological developments that caused much excitement among traders. First, the so-called 'Berlin update' rolled out on the Ethereum network in April 2021, an update which would eventually lead to the Ethereum Merge in 2022 and reduced ETH gas prices - or reduced transaction fees. The collapse of FTX in late 2022, however, changed much for the cryptocurrency. As of March 25, 2025, Ethereum was worth 2,067.76 U.S. dollars - significantly less than the 4,400 U.S. dollars by the end of 2021.Ethereum's future and the DeFi industry Price developments on Ethereum are difficult to predict, but cannot be seen without the world of DeFi - or Decentralized Finance. This industry used technology to remove intermediaries between parties in a financial transaction. One example includes crypto wallets such as Coinbase Wallet that grew in popularity in recent years, with other examples including smart contractor Uniswap, Maker (responsible for stablecoin DAI), money lender Dharma and market protocol Compound. Ethereum's future developments are tied with this industry: Unlike Bitcoin and Ripple, Ethereum is technically not a currency but an open-source software platform for blockchain applications - with Ether being the cryptocurrency that is used inside the Ethereum network. Essentially, Ethereum facilitates DeFi - meaning that if DeFi does well, so does Ethereum.NFTs: the most well-known application of EthereumNFTs or non-fungible tokens grew nearly ten-fold between 2018 and 2020, as can be seen in the market cap of NFTs worldwide. These digital blockchain assets can essentially function as a unique code connected to a digital file, allowing to distinguish the original file from any potential copies. This application is especially prominent in crypto art, although there are other applications: gaming, sports and collectibles are other segments where NFT sales occur.

It is estimated that the cumulative market cap of cryptocurrencies increased in early 2023 after the downfall in November 2022 due to FTX. That value declined in the summer of 2023, however, as international uncertainty grew over a potential recession. Bitcoin's market cap made up the majority of the overall market capitalization.

What is market cap?

Market capitalization is a financial measure typically used for publicly traded firms, computed by multiplying the share price by the number of outstanding shares. However, cryptocurrency analysts calculate it as the price of the virtual currencies times the number of coins in the market. This gives cryptocurrency investors an idea of the overall market size, and watching the evolution of the measure tells how much money is flowing in or out of each cryptocurrency.

Cryptocurrency as an investment

The price of Bitcoin has been erratic, and most other cryptocurrencies follow its larger price swings. This volatility attracts investors who hope to buy when the price is low and sell at its peak, turning a profit. However, this does little for price stability. As such, few firms accept payment in cryptocurrencies.

Dataset Construction This dataset captures the temporal network of Bitcoin (BTC) flow exchanged between entities at the finest time resolution in UNIX timestamp. Its construction is based on the blockchain covering the period from January, 3rd of 2009 to January the 25th of 2021. The blockchain extraction has been made using bitcoin-etl (https://github.com/blockchain-etl/bitcoin-etl) Python package. The entity-entity network is built by aggregating Bitcoin addresses using the common-input heuristic [1] as well as popular Bitcoin users' addresses provided by https://www.walletexplorer.com/ [1] M. Harrigan and C. Fretter, "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Address Clustering," 2016 Intl IEEE Conferences on Ubiquitous Intelligence & Computing, Advanced and Trusted Computing, Scalable Computing and Communications, Cloud and Big Data Computing, Internet of People, and Smart World Congress (UIC/ATC/ScalCom/CBDCom/IoP/SmartWorld), Toulouse, France, 2016, pp. 368-373, doi: 10.1109/UIC-ATC-ScalCom-CBDCom-IoP-SmartWorld.2016.0071.keywords: {Online banking;Merging;Protocols;Upper bound;Bipartite graph;Electronic mail;Size measurement;bitcoin;cryptocurrency;blockchain}, Dataset Description Bitcoin Activity Temporal Coverage: From 03 January 2009 to 25 January 2021 Overview: This dataset provides a comprehensive representation of Bitcoin exchanges between entities over a significant temporal span, spanning from the inception of Bitcoin to recent years. It encompasses various temporal resolutions and representations to facilitate Bitcoin transaction network analysis in the context of temporal graphs. Every dates have been retrieved from bloc UNIX timestamp and GMT timezone. Contents: The dataset is distributed across three compressed archives: All data are stored in the Apache Parquet file format, a columnar storage format optimized for analytical queries. It can be used with pyspark Python package. orbitaal-stream_graph.tar.gz: The root directory is STREAM_GRAPH/ Contains a stream graph representation of Bitcoin exchanges at the finest temporal scale, corresponding to the validation time of each block (averaging approximately 10 minutes). The stream graph is divided into 13 files, one for each year Files format is parquet Name format is orbitaal-stream_graph-date-[YYYY]-file-id-[ID].snappy.parquet, where [YYYY] stands for the corresponding year and [ID] is an integer from 1 to N (number of files here) such as sorting in increasing [ID] ordering is similar to sort by increasing year ordering These files are in the subdirectory STREAM_GRAPH/EDGES/ orbitaal-snapshot-all.tar.gz: The root directory is SNAPSHOT/ Contains the snapshot network representing all transactions aggregated over the whole dataset period (from Jan. 2009 to Jan. 2021). Files format is parquet Name format is orbitaal-snapshot-all.snappy.parquet. These files are in the subdirectory SNAPSHOT/EDGES/ALL/ orbitaal-snapshot-year.tar.gz: The root directory is SNAPSHOT/ Contains the yearly resolution of snapshot networks Files format is parquet Name format is orbitaal-snapshot-date-[YYYY]-file-id-[ID].snappy.parquet, where [YYYY] stands for the corresponding year and [ID] is an integer from 1 to N (number of files here) such as sorting in increasing [ID] ordering is similar to sort by increasing year ordering These files are in the subdirectory SNAPSHOT/EDGES/year/ orbitaal-snapshot-month.tar.gz: The root directory is SNAPSHOT/ Contains the monthly resoluted snapshot networks Files format is parquet Name format is orbitaal-snapshot-date-[YYYY]-[MM]-file-id-[ID].snappy.parquet, where [YYYY] and [MM] stands for the corresponding year and month, and [ID] is an integer from 1 to N (number of files here) such as sorting in increasing [ID] ordering is similar to sort by increasing year and month ordering These files are in the subdirectory SNAPSHOT/EDGES/month/ orbitaal-snapshot-day.tar.gz: The root directory is SNAPSHOT/ Contains the daily resoluted snapshot networks Files format is parquet Name format is orbitaal-snapshot-date-[YYYY]-[MM]-[DD]-file-id-[ID].snappy.parquet, where [YYYY], [MM], and [DD] stand for the corresponding year, month, and day, and [ID] is an integer from 1 to N (number of files here) such as sorting in increasing [ID] ordering is similar to sort by increasing year, month, and day ordering These files are in the subdirectory SNAPSHOT/EDGES/day/ orbitaal-snapshot-hour.tar.gz: The root directory is SNAPSHOT/ Contains the hourly resoluted snapshot networks Files format is parquet Name format is orbitaal-snapshot-date-[YYYY]-[MM]-[DD]-[hh]-file-id-[ID].snappy.parquet, where [YYYY], [MM], [DD], and [hh] stand for the corresponding year, month, day, and hour, and [ID] is an integer from 1 to N (number of files here) such as sorting in increasing [ID] ordering is similar to sort by increasing year, month, day and hour ordering These files are in the subdirectory SNAPSHOT/EDGES/hour/ orbitaal-nodetable.tar.gz: The root directory is NODE_TABLE/ Contains two files in parquet format, the first one gives information related to nodes present in stream graphs and snapshots such as period of activity and associated global Bitcoin balance, and the other one contains the list of all associated Bitcoin addresses. Small samples in CSV format orbitaal-stream_graph-2016_07_08.csv and orbitaal-stream_graph-2016_07_09.csv These two CSV files are related to stream graph representations of an halvening happening in 2016.

Bitcoin's circulating supply has grown steadily since its inception in 2009, reaching over 19 million coins by early 2025. This gradual increase reflects the cryptocurrency's design, which put a limit of 21 million on the total number of bitcoins that can ever exist. This impacts the Bitcoin price somewhat, as its scarcity can lead to volatility on the market. Maximum supply and scarcity Bitcoin is unusual from other cryptocurrencies in that its maximum supply is getting closer. By 2025, more than 90 percent of all possible Bitcoin had been created. That said, Bitcoin's circulating supply is expected to reach its maximum around the year 2140. Meanwhile, mining becomes exponentially more difficult and energy-intensive. Institutional investors In 2025, countries like the United States openly started discussion the possibility of buying bitcoins to hold in reserve. By the time of writing, it was unclear whether this would happen. Nevertheless, institutional investors displayed more interest in the cryptocurrency than before. Certain companies owned several thousands of Bitcoin tokens in 2025, for example. This and the limited number of Bitcoin may further fuel price volatility.

Graph and download economic data for Coinbase Bitcoin (CBBTCUSD) from 2014-12-01 to 2025-03-25 about cryptocurrency and USA.

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Cryptocurrency Market Size 2025-2029

The cryptocurrency market size is forecast to increase by USD 39.75 billion at a CAGR of 16.7% between 2024 and 2029.

The market continues to evolve at an unprecedented pace, driven by increasing investment in digital assets and growing acceptance by retailers as a legitimate form of currency. According to recent reports, global investment in cryptocurrencies reached an all-time high in 2020, with institutional investors leading the charge. This trend is expected to continue, as more financial institutions explore the benefits of cryptocurrencies for portfolio diversification and transaction settlement. However, the market's volatility remains a significant challenge for both investors and businesses. The value of cryptocurrencies can fluctuate dramatically in a short period, making it difficult to predict future trends and assess risk. Despite this, many companies are finding ways to capitalize on the opportunities presented by the market. For instance, some retailers have begun accepting Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as payment, while others are exploring blockchain technology to streamline transactions and enhance security. To navigate this complex and dynamic market, companies must stay informed about the latest trends and developments. This includes keeping abreast of regulatory changes, technological advancements, and market sentiment. By doing so, they can position themselves to take advantage of emerging opportunities and mitigate potential risks. Overall, the market offers significant potential for growth and innovation, but also presents unique challenges that require careful planning and strategic foresight.

What will be the Size of the Cryptocurrency Market during the forecast period?

Request Free SampleThe market, driven by the underlying technology of blockchain, represents a decentralized currency system that has gained significant global adoption as a digital alternative to traditional fiat currencies. With a total market capitalization surpassing USD2 trillion, this dynamic market is characterized by price volatility, presenting both opportunities and risks for investors. Theft and security concerns, regulatory outlook, and energy consumption with environmental effects are among the challenges faced by this industry. Skilled developers and financial services institutions are increasingly embracing this digital revolution, leveraging blockchain technology to create innovative consumer protection solutions and ensure financial stability. Meanwhile, the rise of decentralized systems and public ledgers has given way to the proliferation of digital assets, leading to an influx of fraudulent investments. Renewable energy sources and blockchain talent are becoming essential components of the cryptocurrency ecosystem as the industry strives to address concerns related to energy consumption and environmental effects.

How is this Cryptocurrency Industry segmented?

The cryptocurrency industry research report provides comprehensive data (region-wise segment analysis), with forecasts and estimates in 'USD billion' for the period 2025-2029, as well as historical data from 2019-2023 for the following segments. TypeBitcoinEthereumOthersRippleBitcoin CashCardanoComponentHardwareSoftwareProcessMiningTransactionMiningTransactionEnd-UseTradingE-commerce and RetailPeer-to-Peer PaymentRemittanceTradingE-commerce and RetailPeer-to-Peer PaymentRemittanceGeographyNorth AmericaUSCanadaEuropeGermanyItalySwitzerlandThe NetherlandsUKAPACChinaJapanSouth AmericaBrazilMiddle East and Africa

By Type Insights

The bitcoin segment is estimated to witness significant growth during the forecast period.Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, is a decentralized digital currency valued at over USD470 billion. It operates on a peer-to-peer (P2P) system without central authorities. The top four stablecoins, Tether, USD Coin, Binance USD, and DAI, are directly pegged to the US dollar and collectively hold a significant market share. In the US, approximately 8% of the population engages in cryptocurrency trading. Bitcoin, as a digital asset, is created, stored, processed, and transferred using blockchain technology – a decentralized system. Other cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, Ripple, and Litecoin also follow this model. The market is evolving, with financial services increasingly adopting digital assets for transactions, investments, and consumer protection. Blockchain technology powers digital wallets, crypto exchanges, and smart contracts, enabling decentralized finance, token offerings, and decentralized applications. The market is subject to price volatility and theft risk, necessitating wallet security and regulatory compliance. Energy consumption and environmental effects are areas of concern, with renewable energy solutions emerging. Skilled developers are in high demand for cre

Prices for BTCNZD Bitcoin New Zealand Dollar including live quotes, historical charts and news. BTCNZD Bitcoin New Zealand Dollar was last updated by Trading Economics this March 26 of 2025.

Description

This dataset contains the Pagerank values and rankings of Bitcoin addresses and transaction IDs (TXID). It contains a total of 1.608.748.675 addresses or TXIDs.

Part 2 is available at https://zenodo.org/deposit/6077428

File format

The dataset is compressed with bzip2. It can be uncompressed using the command bunzip2. The dataset is divided into multiple files since it was large. The files are space-delimited plain text files and have the following five fields:

Label: A alphanumeric Bitcoin address (e.g. 1DzTCMmWABEDM1rYFL1RgdLyE59jXMzEHV) or a 64 character hexadecimal transaction ID (e.g. 000000000fdf0c619cd8e0d512c7e2c0da5a5808e60f12f1e0d01522d2986a51) Type: String

Label type: It's value is 0 if the label is transaction ID and 1 if the label is a Bitcoin address. Type: Integer

Rank: Unique Pagerank rank where the ties (addresses having the same Pagerank value) are resolved by sorting the addresses. Type: Integer

Rank with ties: Pagerank rank where the ties (addresses having the same Pagerank value) have the same rank. Type: Integer

Pagerank value: Pagerank of the address and transaction IDs calculated using Pagerank algorithm. Type: Floating-point number

Sample lines:

000000000fdf0c619cd8e0d512c7e2c0da5a5808e60f12f1e0d01522d2986a51 0 427225664 266976712 0.979246
1DzTCMmWABEDM1rYFL1RgdLyE59jXMzEHV 1 1114666798 508037940 0.877961

"head.txt" contains the first 10 lines of each file. "tail.txt" contains the last 10 lines of each file.

Dataset Generation

The Bitcoin transactions between blocks 0 (mined on 03.01.2009) and 713.999 (mined on 13.12.2021) are extracted. A transaction graph is constructed, where Bitcoin addresses and transaction IDs are nodes of the graph and the transaction inputs and outputs are edges of the graph. Pagerank is applied on this transaction graph. This computation is performed using the system presented in the paper 'Parallel analysis of Ethereum blockchain transaction data using cluster computing'.

Note

If you use our dataset in your research, please cite our paper: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10586-021-03511-0

@article{kilic2022parallel, 
 title={Parallel Analysis of Ethereum Blockchain Transaction Data using Cluster Computing}, 
 journal={Cluster Computing},
 author={K{\i}l{\i}{\c{c}}, Baran and {\"O}zturan, Can and Sen, Alper},
 year={2022},
 month={Jan} 
}

Other Datasets

If you are interested, please also check out our Pagerank Dataset for Ethereum Blockchain.

Prices for BTCPHP Bitcoin Philippine Peso including live quotes, historical charts and news. BTCPHP Bitcoin Philippine Peso was last updated by Trading Economics this March 26 of 2025.

Full results are available in the S1 Appendix as Table 2e.

The global user base of cryptocurrencies increased by nearly 190 percent between 2018 and 2020, only to accelerate further in 2022. This is according to calculations from various sources, based on information from trading platforms and on-chain wallets. Increasing demographics might initially be attributed to a rise in the number of accounts and improvements in identification. In 2021, however, crypto adoption continued as companies like Tesla and Mastercard announced their interest in cryptocurrency. Consumers in Africa, Asia, and South America were most likely to be an owner of cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, in 2022.

How many of these users have Bitcoin?

User figures for individual cryptocurrencies are unavailable. Bitcoin, for instance, was created not to be tracked by banks and governments. What comes closest is the trading volume of Bitcoin against domestic fiat currencies. The source assumed, however, that UK residents were the most likely to make Bitcoin transactions with British pounds. This assumption might not be accurate for popular fiat currencies worldwide. On top of that, coins such as Tether or Binance Coin - referred to as "stablecoins" - are often used to buy and sell Bitcoin. Those coins were not included in that particular statistic.

Wallet usage declined

Total crypto wallet downloads were significantly lower in 2022 than in 2021. The number of downloads of Coinbase, Blockchain.com, and MetaMask, among others, declined as the market hit a "crypto winter" over the year. The crypto market also suffered bad press when FTX - one of the largest crypto exchanges based on market share - collapsed in November 2022. Binance, on the other hand, regained some of the market share it had lost between September and October 2022, growing by 0.8 percentage points in November.

Dataset retrieved with an Ethereum client, and used by the code hosted here for this paper published in the Proceedings of the Web Conference 2021 (WWW ’21)

Abstract:

Cryptoassets such as cryptocurrencies and tokens are increasingly traded on decentralized exchanges. The advantage for users is that the funds are not in custody of a centralized external entity. However, these exchanges are prone to manipulative behavior. In this paper, we illustrate how wash trading activity can be identified on two of the first popular limit order book-based decentralized exchanges on the Ethereum blockchain, IDEX and EtherDelta. We identify a lower bound of accounts and trading structures that meet the legal definitions of wash trading, discovering that they are responsible for a wash trading volume in equivalent of 159 million U.S. Dollars. While self-trades and two-account structures are predominant, complex forms also occur. We quantify these activities, finding that on both exchanges, more than 30% of all traded tokens have been subject to wash trading activity. On EtherDelta, 10% of the tokens have almost exclusively been wash traded. All data is made available for future research. Our findings underpin the need for countermeasures that are applicable in decentralized systems.

Mining Bitcoin made increasingly more money at the end of 2020, but profit growth seemingly stopped during March 2021. During the mining of cryptocurrencies, a computer is trying to solve complicated logic puzzles to verify transactions in the blockchain. When this process is completed, the miner receives cryptocurrency as a block reward. The underlying development is that machines with more computing power - or hashrate - are likely to solve more puzzles, and therefore mine more cryptocurrencies. Whether a miner can make money with this depends on various costs such as electricity consumption during this process, transaction fees or whether the hardware used is efficient or not.

A league table of the 120 cryptocurrencies with the highest market cap reveals how diverse each crypto is and potentially how much risk is involved when investing in one. Bitcoin (BTC), for instance, had a so-called "high cap" - a market cap worth more than 10 billion U.S. dollars - indicating this crypto project has a certain track record or, at the very least, is considered a major player in the cryptocurrency space. This is different in Decentralize Finance (DeFi), where Bitcoin is only a relatively new player. A concentrated market The number of existing cryptocurrencies is several thousands, even if most have a limited significance. Indeed, Bitcoin and Ethereum account for nearly 75 percent of the entire crypto market capitalization. As crypto is relatively easy to create, the range of projects varies significantly - from improving payments to solving real-world issues, but also meme coins and more speculative investments. Crypto is not considered a payment method While often talked about as an investment vehicle, cryptocurrencies have not yet established a clear use case in day-to-day life. Central bankers found that usefulness of crypto in domestic payments or remittances to be negligible. A forecast for the world's main online payment methods took a similar stance: It predicts that cryptocurrency would only take up 0.2 percent of total transaction value by 2027.

Ripple - or XRP - prices surged in 2021, but went down significantly as 2022 progressed. As of March 26, 2025, one XRP token was worth 2.35 U.S. dollars. Ethereum's price, for example, kept on reaching new all-time highs, a feat not performed by XRP. Indeed, XRP's more price spikes followed relatively late - only occurring in early 2021, against late 2020 for most other cryptos - after the US SEC filed a legal complaint against Ripple in November 2020. This legal action caused the XRP price to plummet from around 0.70 U.S. dollars to 0.20 U.S. dollars.Ripple versus XRP: two become oneTechnically speaking, Ripple is not a cryptocurrency. Renamed from a protocol called OpenCoin in 2013, Ripple facilitates open-source payments. XRP, on the other hand, is the cryptocurrency that runs on this network. In that sense, Ripple and XRP have a similar symbiosis to each other like the Ethereum network and its cryptocurrency Ether. Unlike Ethereum - whose price changes are connected to the world of Decentralized Finance or DeFI - Ripple/XRP mostly looks at developments on cross-border payments for companies. In 2020, companies worldwide began to favor fintech solutions for future B2B solutions and, in a way, Ripple is an extension of that.What affects the price of Ripple?Ripple is mostly active in Southeast Asia - a region with a splintered payment landscape and that heavily investigates its own types of state-issued cryptocurrency to make cross-border payments a lot easier. Price spikes tend to follow after news on this topic in this specific region. In 2019, for example, the XRP price grew after Japan and South Korea began testing to reduce time and costs for transferring international funds between the two countries. In March 2021, Ripple announced that it had agreed to acquire 40 percent of Malaysian cross-border payments firm Tranglo to meet growing demand in Southeast Asia.

The average price of one Bitcoin Cash reached its all-time high in 2017, although the price since then never came close to that position. As of March 25, 2025, one Bitcoin Cash token was worth 335.67 U.S. dollars, as opposed to the nearly 2,500 USD from the peak in 2017. Bitcoin Cash - abbreviated as BCH - is a variant of the much more known Bitcoin - or BTC -, and is traded separately on online exchanges. That the two cryptocurrencies are different from each other already shows when looking at the price of a 'regular' Bitcoin: this was over 40,000 U.S. dollars during the same time frame.