More than a decade ago, Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin, paving the way for other cryptocurrencies to be born. Over the years different currencies have been among the top 3, this article was written to remind you how volatile this market can be, as some currencies that were among the biggest before, today are not even in the top 100.
Everything written here has been based on historical data provided by coinmarketcap.com if the reader notices an error or wants to add something, feel free to comment.
The ‘~’ is used to indicate that it is an approximate rather than an exact value.
01 May 2013
Going back more than 8 years in the time when the cryptocurrency market was still in its infancy and most of the coins that are among the favorites today had not been created yet and the game GTA V had not been released.
source: https://coinmarketcap.com/historical/20130501/
Bitcoin, the king of all cryptos had $1.3 billion of marketcap, meaning you could buy a whole Bitcoin for less than $120. As of the date I write Bitcoin(1 BTC = $32000) has accumulated a gain of 30000%.
Second is Litecoin, which for a time was known as the "silver to gold of Bitcoin", with a humble market capitalization of $65 million and a cost of $3.80 per coin. This accumulated a gain of ~4000%.
The bronze medal goes to Namecoin, this coin is currently ranked #663 according to CoinMarketCap and #664 according to CoinGecko. Despite not being among the biggest currencies, it has not lost value if you not consider the inflation, in 2013 it cost $1.21 and today the price is $1.52 per coin.
It is worth mentioning that Litecoin, Namecoin and Terracoin are forks of Bitcoin, as well as almost all coins created at that time. If you bought or mined Bitcoin and Litecoin around this time, let us know how big your mansion is in the comments.
01 May 2014
2014 was the year that Germany won the world cup, and as a Brazilian it was unforgettable, but what about the cryptos, what happened from May 2013 to May 2014? See the headline of some news from the time:
Did you witness these events? If so, let us know if you panicked and sold everything or bought more. Now let's go to this year's numbers:
It goes without saying that in the first place we have Bitcoin, which after a year is worth approximately 4x more.
Litecoin maintained its position and continued to prove itself to be digital silver. Litecoin also saw its price rise from $3.80 to $11.10.
Peercoin ousted Namecoin by taking third place on the podium, being traded at $2.22, an increase of 550%. On this date Namecoin occupied the 8th position with the price of $2.24 per coin, meaning it had an increase of 80% which was not enough to stay in the top 3.
01 May 2015
source: https://coinmarketcap.com/historical/20150501/
In the previous year's data we saw that Bitcoin more than doubled its price, in this new image we see it being quoted at practically half the value of the previous year. A 50% drop can you imagine how many people sold out of fear of losing everything, or how many people bought the dip? For that I have no answers.
We see XRP in second place, outperforming Litecoin, trading for less than a penny.
It wasn't just Bitcoin that went through a correction, Litecoin too. Litecoin's correction was more brutal from $11.10 to $1.41, that is, a drop of more than 80%.
It's also worth mentioning Peercoin and Namecoin that increasingly make their way to irrelevance. In this 12 month interval Peercoin lost ~90% of value and Namecoin lost 85%.
All images do not show the minimum or maximum price for each year, simply the difference in value from one year to another.
One thing is for sure the future is unpredictable, but cryptocurrencies have proven to be resilient and growing over time, will this growth continue? I hope so, thanks for reading to the end.
