The market cap of Solana, a cryptocurrency connected with Decentralized Finance or DeFi, grew by *** percent in the summer of 2021. Originally launched only in **********, the rapid growth in 2021 made the digital coin one of the biggest in the world in terms of market capitalization. The altcoin's move into the spotlight coincided with the growing interest in NFTs and especially DeFi, as Solana is one of the biggest blockchains in this world. It is seen as a direct competitor to Ethereum, in that it can power decentralized applications, but in a more efficient way. Solana is said, for instance, to reach transaction speeds that are similar to a VISA transaction whilst using far less energy than Bitcoin miners.

The dominance of Solana (SOL) almost tripled between July and August 2021, and continued to grow in the following months. 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 - for instance, it shows how strong Bitcoin is compared to all the other cryptocurrencies that are not BTC, called "altcoins". In the case of Solana, the dominance somewhat reveals how often it is used for smart contracts and whether it is a popular blockchain for Decentralized Finance (DeFi) applications.

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 176.4 U.S. dollars for SOL on August 20, 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 to avoid bankruptcy. The Solana protocol is similar to Ethereum in that it can allow for non-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.

Based on 24 hour trading volume, stablecoin Bitcoin outpaced Ethereum and, more importantly, Tether in May 2025, accounting for most crypto trades. This is unusual as stablecoin Tether often tends to be most traded - due to its use in purchasing other cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin's leading role is underlined in a market cap league table of more than 100 cryptocurrencies — including ones for DeFi, NFT and stablecoins. Bitcoin and Ethereum are typically the only ones to reach over 100 billion U.S. dollars, with Ethereum usually following by around one half this amount. Does this mean that Bitcoin gets traded more than Ethereum? Not necessarily, as the daily transactions of Ethereum tend to be significantly higher than that of Bitcoin.

By July 2024, over *** million Solana tokens were issued and in active circulation - but new coins arrive slowly. Although the cryptocurrency has an unlimited supply - unlike Bitcoin, of which there can only be ** million tokens and not a single more - the Solana blockchain only issues a set amount of new tokens at the beginning of each year. This issuance is based off the year-to-year inflation rate, and can therefore vary. When SOL first launched, there was a maximum supply of around *** million, but the blockchain burned (erased from the blockchain) ** million of them. By December 2021, the maximum supply was around *** million SOL.

This dataset contains historical price data for the top global cryptocurrencies, sourced from Yahoo Finance. The data spans the following time frames for each cryptocurrency:

BTC-USD (Bitcoin): From 2014 to December 2024 ETH-USD (Ethereum): From 2017 to December 2024 XRP-USD (Ripple): From 2017 to December 2024 USDT-USD (Tether): From 2017 to December 2024 SOL-USD (Solana): From 2020 to December 2024 BNB-USD (Binance Coin): From 2017 to December 2024 DOGE-USD (Dogecoin): From 2017 to December 2024 USDC-USD (USD Coin): From 2018 to December 2024 ADA-USD (Cardano): From 2017 to December 2024 STETH-USD (Staked Ethereum): From 2020 to December 2024

Key Features:

Date: The date of the record. Open: The opening price of the cryptocurrency on that day. High: The highest price during the day. Low: The lowest price during the day. Close: The closing price of the cryptocurrency on that day. Adj Close: The adjusted closing price, factoring in stock splits or dividends (for stablecoins like USDT and USDC, this value should be the same as the closing price). Volume: The trading volume for that day.

Data Source:

The dataset is sourced from Yahoo Finance and spans daily data from 2014 to December 2024, offering a rich set of data points for cryptocurrency analysis.

Use Cases:

Market Analysis: Analyze price trends and historical market behavior of leading cryptocurrencies. Price Prediction: Use the data to build predictive models, such as time-series forecasting for future price movements. Backtesting: Test trading strategies and financial models on historical data. Volatility Analysis: Assess the volatility of top cryptocurrencies to gauge market risk. Overview of the Cryptocurrencies in the Dataset: Bitcoin (BTC): The pioneer cryptocurrency, often referred to as digital gold and used as a store of value. Ethereum (ETH): A decentralized platform for building smart contracts and decentralized applications (DApps). Ripple (XRP): A payment protocol focused on enabling fast and low-cost international transfers. Tether (USDT): A popular stablecoin pegged to the US Dollar, providing price stability for trading and transactions. Solana (SOL): A high-speed blockchain known for low transaction fees and scalability, often seen as a competitor to Ethereum. Binance Coin (BNB): The native token of Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, used for various purposes within the Binance ecosystem. Dogecoin (DOGE): Initially a meme-inspired coin, Dogecoin has gained a strong community and mainstream popularity. USD Coin (USDC): A fully-backed stablecoin pegged to the US Dollar, commonly used in decentralized finance (DeFi) applications. Cardano (ADA): A proof-of-stake blockchain focused on scalability, sustainability, and security. Staked Ethereum (STETH): A token representing Ethereum staked in the Ethereum 2.0 network, earning staking rewards.

This dataset provides a comprehensive overview of key cryptocurrencies that have shaped and continue to influence the digital asset market. Whether you're conducting research, building prediction models, or analyzing trends, this dataset is an essential resource for understanding the evolution of cryptocurrencies from 2014 to December 2024.

Cryptocurrency historical datasets from January 2012 (if available) to October 2021 were obtained and integrated from various sources and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) including Yahoo Finance, Cryptodownload, CoinMarketCap, various Kaggle datasets, and multiple APIs. While these datasets used various formats of time (e.g., minutes, hours, days), in order to integrate the datasets days format was used for in this research study. The integrated cryptocurrency historical datasets for 80 cryptocurrencies including but not limited to Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Binance Coin (BNB), Cardano (ADA), Tether (USDT), Ripple (XRP), Solana (SOL), Polkadot (DOT), USD Coin (USDC), Dogecoin (DOGE), Tron (TRX), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Litecoin (LTC), EOS (EOS), Cosmos (ATOM), Stellar (XLM), Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), Uniswap (UNI), Terra (LUNA), SHIBA INU (SHIB), and 60 more cryptocurrencies were uploaded in this online Mendeley data repository. Although the primary attribute of including the mentioned cryptocurrencies was the Market Capitalization, a subject matter expert i.e., a professional trader has also guided the initial selection of the cryptocurrencies by analyzing various indicators such as Relative Strength Index (RSI), Moving Average Convergence/Divergence (MACD), MYC Signals, Bollinger Bands, Fibonacci Retracement, Stochastic Oscillator and Ichimoku Cloud. The primary features of this dataset that were used as the decision-making criteria of the CLUS-MCDA II approach are Timestamps, Open, High, Low, Closed, Volume (Currency), % Change (7 days and 24 hours), Market Cap and Weighted Price values. The available excel and CSV files in this data set are just part of the integrated data and other databases, datasets and API References that was used in this study are as follows: [1] https://finance.yahoo.com/ [2] https://coinmarketcap.com/historical/ [3] https://cryptodatadownload.com/ [4] https://kaggle.com/philmohun/cryptocurrency-financial-data [5] https://kaggle.com/deepshah16/meme-cryptocurrency-historical-data [6] https://kaggle.com/sudalairajkumar/cryptocurrencypricehistory [7] https://min-api.cryptocompare.com/data/price?fsym=BTC&tsyms=USD [8] https://min-api.cryptocompare.com/ [9] https://p.nomics.com/cryptocurrency-bitcoin-api [10] https://www.coinapi.io/ [11] https://www.coingecko.com/en/api [12] https://cryptowat.ch/ [13] https://www.alphavantage.co/

This dataset is part of the CLUS-MCDA (Cluster analysis for improving Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis) and CLUS-MCDAII Project: https://aimaghsoodi.github.io/CLUSMCDA-R-Package/ https://github.com/Aimaghsoodi/CLUS-MCDA-II https://github.com/azadkavian/CLUS-MCDA

The market cap of cryptocurrency Algorand nearly tripled between August and September 2021, and initially continued to grow in November 2021. The rise of the ALGO coin in September was noticeable, as it came in a time when the market cap of Bitcoin and other digital coins was declining. The Algorand coin is similar to Ethereum, Cardano, Solana and Polkadot in that is powers its own layer 1 blockchain, an environment for smart contracts and essential for setting up Decentralized Finance or DeFi projects. The market cap increase in September likely reflects a sentiment that Algorand has the potential to become a new Solana.

Key statistics: total pre-market volume, users, tokens settled, supported blockchains. 262M+ total pre-market volume, 34M+ users, 168 tokens settled, 24 blockchains supported.

Bitcoin's role within the overall cryptocurrency market picked up in 2024, whilst Ethereum lost terrain to currencies like Solana. This according to a metric that compares a coin's market cap relative to the overall crypto market called "dominance". This ratio shows how strong, for example, Bitcoin is compared to all the other cryptocurrencies. A comparison between Bitcoin and multiple other coins reveals that the shape of the crypto market has changed dramatically over time. Bitcoin typically has a dominance of over ** percent, so the interest for analysts lies more in whether Bitcoin's market share has gone up or down when compared to altcoins.

Transactions in NFTs were significantly lower in 2024 than during the summer of 2021 when several tokens gained popularity. Most of these transactions were likely related to play-to-earn Vietnamese video game Axie Infinity, which became the world's most valuable NFT collection in August 2021 - although its sales volume did decline since. The gaming segment reported the highest sales volume of the non-fungible token (NFT) market in 2020, with over *** times the sales in sports projects. The overall market cap of NFTs in 2024, however, was noticeably smaller. NFT in 2024: Searching for legitimacy While cryptocurrency and Bitcoin saw their interest surge in early 2024 after the acceptance of Bitcoin ETFs in the United States, the NFT market has been struggling. For the larger audience, non-fungible tokens still seemed to be confusing what they are supposed to do, whereas crypto increasingly found legitimacy. The slowdown in the NFT market led one of the world's largest NFT marketplaces, OpenSea, to lay off large parts of its staff in October 2023. Solana to pave the way for NFTs? One of the blockchain networks that is closely affiliated with NFTs in 2024 is that of Solana. The monthly sales volume of this blockchain outperformed that of Ethereum in ************, causing Solana's market share in the overall crypto market to reach its highest value ever. Solana's position comes from relatively low costs but especially high transaction speeds and the sizable airdrops from multiple projects. This attracted significant amounts of capital, further fuelling the network. Solana's growth may provide the framework for the NFT market as a whole, as it slowly seeks to take over Ethereum's position in this part of the decentralized digital asset world.

The staking values of both Solana and Cardano made up around ** percent of their circulating supply, a percentage significantly higher than for Ethereum. This difference stems from how the cryptocurrencies are created. Ethereum 1.0, similar to Bitcoin, relies on a mechanism called "Proof-of-Work" or PoW, and is similar to mining: Lots of processing power is used to verify transactions on the blockchain and those who do all that verification work — the "miners" — get rewarded with a predetermined amount of crypto. As this process became more energy-consuming and too complicated for individuals to perform — alongside the rapid growth of decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols that demanded even more verifications — another mechanism appeared: "Proof-of-Stake" or POS. Here, people — or "validators" — commit — or "stake" — their own cryptocurrency in an automated system — often a wallet, where people will simply hold their crypto — which at certain times will randomly pick a person who gets to validate a batch of blockchain transactions. Same as before, validation leads to new cryptocurrency as a reward — essentially acting as interest after initial investment. As the amount of crypto needed can be considerable, there are also so-called "staking pools" where groups of people gather the coins needed for — or "delegate" to — an external validator, and still get the rewards. Cardano and Solana only use proof of stake, whereas the relatively new Ethereum 2.0 is also relying on it.

The price of the native coin from BNB Chain (formerly BSC) grew by 50 percent in late 2021 but was much lower in 2022. On August 20, 2025, for example, a single BNB coin was worth more than 823.46 U.S. dollars - a value that is very different from the all-time high of 823.46 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 to its own years later.BNB's history: From a 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.

The estimated time with which Kraken would confirm a deposit of certain cryptocurrencies varied from between near-instantaneous to up to several hours. Bitcoin, for instance, could take around ** minutes - depending on the fees involved - whereas tokens like Cardano or Solana could be handled almost immediately. The transaction speed matters as it indicates which cryptocurrency is more efficient. A higher efficiency means that the blockchain underneath the coin is more capable of transferring data from one party to the other and confirm transactions. Transaction speed can be influenced by various factors, including block time, block size, transaction fees, and network traffic.