Coingecko ranks cryptocurrencies according to their market cap. The market cap is calculated by multiplying the price of one coin, by the total amount of circulating coins. Today we will look at the top 5 most expensive coins among the top 100 coins by market cap.
5. Bitcoin Cash 302 $
Bitcoin Cash is the first and most successful hard fork of Bitcoin. The fork happened in mid-2017. The original protocol kept the BTC ticker, while the new one known as Bitcoin Cash, uses the ticker BCH. At block number 478,599, everyone with a certain BTC balance obtained the same equivalent balance of BCH. The two cryptocurrencies share the same history up until this block, after which they went separate ways.
The reason behind the fork was the longstanding disagreement within the community over how to scale the chain. For the BTC community, Lightning-Network was the solution. BCH however, sees the solution in allowing for bigger block sizes.
As far as value goes, BCH has been losing value against BTC for most of its existence. BCH was additionally forked later, this time giving birth to BSV (Bitcoin Satoshi Vision). This fork further cost BCH value. Time will show which community will be the most successful at scaling.
4. Ethereum 394 $
Ethereum ist the first blockchain allowing smart contracts. Users can implement code on the Ethereum blockchain, which can be accessed to execute transactions. The Ethereum language is Turing complete, meaning it can be used to solve any reasonable computational problem one can imagine.
Ethereum garnered a lot of attention right upon its mainnet launch. The price saw a fast rise until it reached the second spot behind Bitcoin in total market capitalization. Ethereum also went through a fork. In 2016, a hacker was able to steal millions of US$ worth of ETH, by exploiting a mistake in a smart contract. The community largely agreed on canceling the incident by turning the blockchain back to right before the hack happened. Some people disagreed, and the Ethereum Classic fork was created.
Ethereum is until this day the number 1 platform for smart contracts. Profiting from the network effect, it has given a hard time for competitors to catch up. Ethereum’s main challenge at the moment is with scaling. The solution to this, Ethereum 2.0, has seen its launching date postponed several times already. Ethereum 2.0 is now in its final testnet phase. The price of ETH is currently booming, in part fueled by the rise of DeFi.
3. Maker 627 $
MakerDAO is one of the earliest projects on Ethereum. It allows the issuance of a decentralized stablecoin pegged to the US-Dollar. To do this, ETH or ERC-20 tokens are deposited, backing the price of the stablecoin. The concept was first developed by Bitshares, and later perfected by Maker.
The Dollar-pegged stablecoin is the DAI and is used by many other projects. MakerDAO experienced a lot of pressure during the crypto-crash in March 2020. The crash caused the crypto backed stablecoin to fail, resulting in about $5 Million of damages. However, this hasn’t caused the project to give up yet, as it remains one of the leading DeFi applications. The project currently leads the DeFi scene, with approximately $1.5 Billion in total value locked (TVL).
2. yearn.finance 5.851 $
yearn.finance is the youngest project on our list. the project specializes on “yield farming”. Through a smart contract, it chooses the most lucrative Ethereum DeFi protocols at a given moment. yearn.finance then lends out the staked assets of its users in a way to maximize their interest rates.
In the last few weeks, yearn.finance’s token YFI has seen an incredible increase in valuation. The project is developed by South Africa native Andre Cronje, who recently complained about the toxicity in the DeFi scene. YFI was listed on Binance yesterday. One of the reasons behind its high price is also its low supply: 30.000 YFI in total. Not bad for a “completely valueless” governance token.
Andre Cronje recently announced a new governance token called https://t.co/zeZNs791ae $YFI: "We have released YFI, a completely valueless 0 supply token."#YFI is now trading at ~$1,450, peaking at ~$2,100.https://t.co/AcREbKUeWn@iearnfinance pic.twitter.com/5xdn2wsNC7
1. Bitcoin 11.900 $
Bitcoin, the mother of all cryptocurrencies, not only has the highest market cap, but also the highest coin prices of all the Top 100 coins. The currency was created in 2009 and has since been the uncontested market cap leader. The technical fundamentals in Satoshi Nakamoto’s whitepaper were behind the creation of the entire crypto-ecosytem with all of its facets.
Bitcoin still counts as the most secure of all blockchains, seeing as it is backed by the highest computing power. Time will tell whether or not Bitcoin will remain on top of market. What started as “Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” has slowly morphed into the new “digital gold”.
