The research continues, this time analyzing the crypto market capitalization in 2016.
Taking data from CoinMetrics as a reference, here is how the crypto market looked in 2016 in terms of capitalization:
The beginning of the year was fairly stable, although towards the end of January there was an increase for some cryptocurrencies such as VTC, Doge and Ethereum (ETH).
As noted also for 2015, halfway through the year there was an increase for almost all cryptocurrencies with ETH in second place overtaking Ripple (XRP).
In the meantime, the fight between LTC and XLM continued for the fourth place, while XEM was the crypto that in that period increased dramatically, reaching the fifth position for capitalization.
A separate mention should be made for Ethereum who in July saw its first fork following The DAO hack.
In the fall of 2016, there’s the remarkable increase of the Monero (XMR) crypto which arrives in sixth position for market capitalization, while in November Zcash (ZEC) appears, with its feature to choose whether to make transactions private or not. The following month Waves (WAVE) emerges.
At this point, at the end of 2016, the ranking changes with these new cryptocurrencies:’
- Bitcoin, which doubles its capitalization from the previous year to $15.5 billion;
- Ethereum with $710 million, a 10x increase from the previous year;
- Ripple (XRP) with $652 million;
- Stellar (XLM) with $252 million;
- Litecoin (LTC) with $213 million;
- Monero (XMR) with $189 million, an increase of 4625% from the previous year;
- Ethereum Classic (ETC) with $124 million;
- Dash with $79 million;
- NEM (XEM) with $33 million;
- Dogecoin (DOGE) with $24 million: a figure that doubled compared to the previous year.