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WiserIn5! — Cryptocurrencies Explained!
The top 10 of cryptos, what they are and why Ethereum is important (and different to Bitcoin)
As I put this article to bed (April 2nd, 2021), the market capitalisation of all the cryptocurrencies in existence is about $1.88 trillion. That puts the value of all of the digital currencies in the world as somewhere between the size of Brazil and Italy! ( Strictly speaking I’m not comparing apples with apples, but hopefully you get my point…
The point being that there is a significant amount of the world’s digital wealth tied up in cryptocurrencies already.
A better comparison would be with gold, which has a market cap in the region of $8 trillion, roughly 4 and a bit times the size of the crypto market.
Fun fact
Back in March 2017, the price of a Bitcoin reached parity with gold when they both hit $1,239 at the same time. However, Bitcoin has continued to rise and was trading at around $59k, compared to the price of gold at $1.7k at time of writing.