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 119,833.67 as of July 15, 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.

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.

By 2025, the Bitcoin market cap had grown to over ***** 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 *** 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 ** percent. Maximum supply and scarcity Bitcoin is unusual from other cryptocurrencies in that its maximum supply is getting closer. By 2025, well over ** 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 May 4, 2025, Ethereum was worth 1,808.59 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 recently, with other examples including smart contractor Uniswap, Maker (responsible for stablecoin DAI), moneylender 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 Ethereum NFTs 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.

The price of the cryptocurrency based on the famous internet meme broke its price decline in early November 2022 - as people started buying the coin after FTX's collapse. This rally only lasted for a few days, however, as a Dogecoin was worth roughly 0.2 U.S. dollars on July 15, 2025. This is a different development than in 2021 - when the crypto became very popular in a short amount of time. Between January 28 and January 29, 2021, Dogecoin's value grew by around 216 percent to 0.023535 U.S. dollars after comments from Tesla CEO Elon Musk. The digital coin quickly grew to become the most talked-about cryptocurrency available: not necessarily for its price - the prices of Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Ripple (XRP) and several other virtual currencies were much higher than that of DOGE - but for its growth.

Following NFT hype and growing demand in the DeFi community, the price of cryptocurrency Solana or SOL more than tripled during the summer of 2021. This had all but evaporated by the end of 2022, as a price of 162.28 U.S. dollars for SOL on July 15, 2025 was similar to the price of Solana in early 2021. The collapse of crypto trader FTX in 2022 especially impacted the cryptocurrency, as FTX and its sister firm Alameda Research sold a large amount of the coin in order to avoid bankruptcy. The Solana protocol is similar to Ethereum in that can allow for nun-fungible tokens to be created ('minted') or traded. Solana, however, uses a technology called 'PoH' or Proof of History, which allows it to reach high transaction speeds. The Solana Foundation - the creators of the protocol, based in Switzerland - claims they could reach up to 65,000 transactions per second compared to 16 for Ethereum. Additionally, Solano had no transaction fees or 'gas', unlike Ethereum, which had growing transaction costs. These two reasons combined - Solana being deemed cheaper and faster than Ethereum - turned this relatively young protocol into a breeding ground for NFT projects in August 2021.

In May 2022, the value of a single LUNA (version 1.0) declined by over 50 percent per day, as prices fell significantly from one day to the next. This is a significant difference from earlier in the year, when the price of the Luna token within the Terra (Classic) network grew by roughly 100 percent between January and March 2022. This popularity was reflected in a ranking covering the world's most traded cryptocurrencies - where the relatively young crypto first showed in the top 10. The popularity of Terra and its cryptocurrencies LUNA and UST (TerraUSD) - from May 2025 referred to as Terra Classic - comes from its role in crypto lending and the interest rates promised by lending platform Anchor Protocol, a platform built off the Terra network.

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 July 15, 2025, one Bitcoin Cash token was worth 504.88 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.

Bitcoin's circulating supply has grown steadily since its inception in 2009, reaching over ** million coins by early 2025. This gradual increase reflects the cryptocurrency's design, which put a limit of ** 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 ** 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.

Memecoin Shiba Inu saw its price grow by more than 300 percent within one and the same month, marking a trading fury reminiscent of Dogecoin in early 2021. Indeed, the SHIB coin ranked as one of the biggest crypto in the world based on 24h trading volume in October 2021 - with trading activity being almost as high as that of Ethereum. Originally starting out as a fun token based on the famous Japanese dog breed, the digital currency grabbed mainstream attention in 2021 probably due to its low barrier of entry: Even after its price spikes, Shiba Inu was one of the cheapest coins available, especially when compared to the price of 99 other cryptocurrencies. Combine this with survey information that most consumers in the U.S. and the UK invest in crypto either for growth or fun, and Shiba Inu is probably seen by many as a relatively simple, "quick win" investment. As of May 19, 2025, the price of one million Shiba Inu is 14.08.

The Litecoin cryptocurrency peaked in both 2017 and 2020 - reaching prices worth around 250 dollars - but did not reach this by 2022. As of May 4, 2025, one Litecoin token was worth 85.02 U.S. dollars. Litecoin's price was relatively volatile recently, revealing high price swings between months. What is a cryptocurrency? Cryptocurrencies are digital currencies that do not have a centralized regulating authority. The first of these, Bitcoin, introduced a technology called blockchain, in which a distributed ledger records every transaction on every bitcoin in circulation to prevent fraud. Litecoin also uses this technology. To accommodate the demands of constant ledger updates, users sell computational power in exchange for an amount of Litecoin, a process known as mining. More about Litecoin Cryptocurrencies are still an emerging technology, and few are using them for transactions. As such, most users are speculators who look at the value of all coins in circulation as the market capitalization rather than money supply. Still, the average number of Litecoin transactions ranges in the tens of thousands, meaning that the cryptocurrency has a substantial financial footprint.

Ripple - or XRP - prices surged in 2021, but went down significantly as 2022 progressed. As of July 15, 2025, one XRP token was worth 2.95 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.

Crypto 24h trading volume declined as 2023 progressed, with figures being ********* lower than in 2022. The decline follows Binance - one of the biggest crypto exchanges in the world - received lawsuits in the United States. Observations are also that the crypto market was quiet after April, citing a lack of a "strong overarching narrative". This contrasts with 2021 and 2022 when cryptocurrency dominated the news and many people sought fortune in the digital currency. Bitcoin developments Bitcoin's trade volume slowed in the second quarter of 2023, after hitting a noticeable growth at the beginning of the year. The coin outperformed most of the market. Some attribute this to the announcement in June 2023 that BlackRock filed for a Bitcoin ETF. This iShares Bitcoin Trust was to use Coinbase Custody as its custodian. Regulators in the United States had not yet approved any applications for spot ETFs on Bitcoin. Changes in Ethereum staking in 2023 Ethereum's trade volume changed in 2023 due to the rollout of the Shapella (Shanghai and Cappella) upgrade. The update allowed investors to withdraw (unstake) Ethereum deposited into the network. Staking can be somewhat compared to depositing money at a bank, where one would submit money to be held and gains interest as time goes by. Lido has the highest staking pool (a platform that allows for staking) in Ethereum, higher than major crypto exchanges Coinbase and Kraken. As of May 26, 2025, the 24h trading volume stands at *****.

Bitcoin is edging closer to reaching its finite, maximum supply, pushing its price up and making it harder to mine. As a rule of thumb, the fewer coins available to the general audience, the higher the value of the cryptocurrency becomes. No more mining is possible when a cryptocurrency reaches its maximum supply. The market price then reflects supply and demand. Bitcoin has a set limit of 21 million coins, the last of which is to be mined around the year 2140 according to a 2017 forecast - with the assumption that the rate of Bitcoin mining halves every 4 years. Why are there so many differences in crypto supply? Cryptocurrency developers can determine whether a coin should have a fixed limit, depending on the blockchain it utilizes or monetary strategies. Ethereum has no maximum supply, meaning miners can create and indefinitely extract this cryptocurrency. This is called an inflationary cryptocurrency, one that continuously inflates the supply. The idea is that the number of tokens in circulation keeps outpacing demand, decreasing overall value. Some coins limit the release of their (indefinite) supply or even destroy (burn) tokens. Such deflationary events took place with LUNA in 2022. The appeal of low-supply cryptocurrency for investors Crypto investors tend to be on the lookout for crypto with limited supply, ideally with low levels. After a token reaches maximum supply, the argument goes, the coin's supply becomes static - miners can no longer create new coins. The demand should continue to grow. A maximum cap, they hope, guarantees value gains. Not many such coins exist. DeFi platform AAVE is an example of a cryptocurrency with a max supply smaller than *** million.

The price of the native coin from BNB Chain (formerly BSC) grew by 50 percent in late 2021 but was much lower in 2022. In July 15, 2025, for example, a single BNB coin was worth more than 689.32 U.S. dollars - a value that very different to the all-time high of 600 U.S. dollars in November 2021. Regardless, Binance Coin ranked in the top 10 most expensive cryptocurrencies in 2022. Noticeable is that the price increase of BNB in November 2021 coincides with a similar price change for Ethereum (ETH) - a cryptocurrency where BNB initially originated in 2017 before coming on its own years later.BNB's history: From reward token in 2017 to an ecosystem after 2019As the name suggests, Binance Coin or BNB originally started as an extension of the Binance.com trading platform - the most used cryptocurrency exchange in the world. It initially functioned on the Ethereum blockchain network as an ERC-20 token, offering incentives to owners like reduced trading fees, affiliate rewards, or a lottery ticket system ('Launchpad') that let users invest in new, Binance-selected crypto projects. In 2019, however, BNB moved away from the Ethereum network and migrated to Binance's self-developed blockchain: Binance Smart Chain or BSC (called BNB Chain since February 2022). Here, BNB started to support a chain that initially did not focus on hosting decentralized apps but focused on high transaction speed and being able to handle large amounts of traffic.DeFi and GameFi: the main segments for BNBBSC, however, made significant strides in 2021 partly due to traffic overload and high gas prices on Ethereum as well as the growing interest in both Decentralized Finance (DeFI) and NFTs. Much like Cardano, Solana, and Terra, Binance Smart Chain consequently became a valid alternative to Ethereum: The total value locked (TVL) of BNBs blockchain within DeFi, for example, ranked only behind that of Terra and Ethereum in early 2022. Another area where Binance's blockchain and token play a significant role is that of GameFi - or 'play-to-earn' blockchain games that are powered by cryptocurrencies. Some of the more well-known and most popular NFT games like Alien Worlds and Axie Infinity run on the blockchain behind BNB.

Decentralized Finance users reached a peak of **** million unique users in 2024, whereas figures in 2025 are considerably lower. This according to a network crawling code that tries to measure the number of unique user addresses involved in buying or selling specific projects associated with DeFi. For example, the code lists data fetching commands associated with Uniswap and Aave — two DeFi protocols with a market cap that was higher than one billion U.S. dollars in March 2022. As Decentralized Finance — much like cryptocurrencies or NFTs — are not being tracked by an official government, these procedures try to measure "network activity". Such activity on the Ethereum blockchain/network, the most used blockchain for DeFi, or elsewhere — tend to be the only source of information on the market size of these topics. However, the source does acknowledge the numbers shown are not without their potential flaws. DeFi in 2025 is relatively small-scale Often remarked as a potential breakthrough trend for 2024, the TVL (total value locked) of DeFi in 2025 reveals a market that is much smaller than in 2021. The amount of money stored in Decentralized Finance was worth about ** billion U.S. dollars by May 2025, compared to *** billion U.S. dollars at the end of 2021. Two reasons can be named for this decline. First, the overall cryptocurrency markets had witnessed several dramatic moments. Prices declined after the crash of stablecoin LUNA, and the sudden collapse of crypto exchange FTX in 2022. In 2023, the United States government handed out one of its largest ever corporates fines to Binance — the world's largest crypto exchange. Second, analysts believe the high yield on U.S. Treasury bonds in 2025 when compared to DeFi yields negatively impacted the young industry — as these bonds pose lower risk than DeFi. DeFi use cases: Supporting crypto investments Decentralized Finance hopes to offer different digital financial services, which are run by a community in a so-called decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) away from banks or governments. These services can include asset management, money lending, or trading, potentially making it possible to offer services that traditional finance cannot do. By May 2025, however, DeFi focused on two main use cases: Liquid staking and money lending. These processes are there to support crypto investors, specifically. The market size of insurance within Decentralized Finance, for example, was much smaller in comparison.

In April 2021, the Ethereum market cap reached new heights and grew to over *** billion U.S. dollars - the first time this cryptocurrency achieved that feat. The market capitalization in August 2020 was half this amount. Market capitalization is calculated by multiplying the total number of Ethereum in circulation by the Ethereum price. Compared to the Bitcoin market capitalization, however, Ethereum was not yet as popular.

The market size of decentralized finance market size declined to less than ** billion U.S. dollars come April 2023. This is a significant change from 2021, when the size of the decentralized finance market reached heights it had not reached before. The DeFi market was especially impacted by the crash for Terra (LUNA) and its stablecoin TerraUSD (UST) in May 2022 - with uncertainty still being present in June 2022 when coins such USDD lost their peg to the U.S. dollar. Moreover, a declining crypto market also impact DeFi. As Ethereum is the main blockchain powering transactions for decentralized finance, price developments of this particular cryptocurrency can have a big impact.

The decentralized finance (DeFi) market size in May 2021, as measured by the amount of cryptocurrency locked, decreased by over 25 billion USD within a single week. Partially, this could have been caused by significant changes in the price of nearly 100 different cryptocurrencies which may have led to investors pulling out. Another factor are growing gas prices (transaction fees) of Ethereum, the main cryptocurrency of use within DeFi. Analysts observe that during drops of the crypto market, a need arises for alternative blockchain networks that do not run on Ethereum. One multichain alternative of note is Polkadot, as its price development attracted growing interest from crypto fund managers in early 2021.

Ethereum, Solana, and Tron together made up a large majority of the DeFi industry's total value locked (TVL) in 2025. TVL is the closest metric within the DeFi world to an overall market size. The volatile nature of developments in this new market can also be seen in the transaction volume of NFT for various segments. As Ethereum is the main blockchain powering transactions for decentralized finance, price developments of this particular cryptocurrency can have a big impact on DeFi: On September 10, 2021, Ethereum's TVL decreased by over ** billion U.S. dollars due to an overnight price drop.