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- Insights
- Cryptocurrencies
- Stocks
- White Papers
- Industry
- Geography
Over the years, cryptocurrencies leaped from being a small concept to a reality with the creation of Bitcoin in 2009. While Bitcoin attracted growth in the subsequent years, it captured significant investor and media attention as well in April 2013, as its price value surged 10-fold in the following two months. The increase in its price value also sparked a raging price rally in other cryptos. The crypto market has changed exponentially in the last four years. Some economic analysts believe that there are even big changes forthcoming as institutional money will enter the market. In this article, we have analysed the market developments of the top 5 cryptocurrencies from 2017 to 2021 to get a futuristic outlook based on their current performances.
Bitcoin has a volatile history. The coin was launched in 2008 by an investor who remains anonymous to date. In its early years, BTC was a fairly small project launched by a small group of IT professionals who wanted to improve the global finance system and began using BTC. In 2013, the coin's price briefly crossed the US$1000 mark for the first time, and then dived again. In 2017, BTC reached the mark of US$20,000. Between the period of May and September of 2017, the crypto reached all new highs as its prices pushed past all its previous milestones.
Fast-forwarding to 2021, bitcoin is now a legal currency of a nation, alongside the US dollar, and is adopted by several financial institutions as legal modes of payments. This year, the crypto also crossed the US$65,000 mark, which promoted price rallies in other cryptos. Experts believe that in the coming years, BTC will cross the US$100,000 mark, despite all the existing market volatilities.
Sentiments about Ethereum were much different back in 2017 than it is now. Only those with an enormous risk appetite were investing in ETH. Ethereum's rise from the single digits in January to pushing four digits in December 2017 was surprising for those who forgot how unstable ether was during its inception. In the initial years, the crypto was a work in progress and suffered from several bugs, which kept the companies from wanting to build a new smart contract infrastructure. Regardless of its drawbacks, ether implemented smart contracts for several companies. This resulted an increase in its price value and ended the year strongly.
In 2021, ether is considered one of the strongest competitors of Bitcoin. The company is also introducing several new changes with the Ethereum 2.0, which aims to move away from the process of mining cryptos to a more energy-saving process called staking.
After launching in 2017, the token mostly remained under the radar of the investors until the end of November. Since then, the crypto has grown by 1,520%. Cardano was billed as the third generation blockchain followed by Bitcoin and Ethereum. The crypto aimed to compete directly with ether and other decentralized platforms. In August 2021, the value of the ADA token skyrocketed to 150%, making it the third-largest crypto in the market, but its triumph was short-lived. The 'Japanese Ethereum' could not retain its position. But market analysts believe that its potential growth in the market is confirmed.
While 2017 was a big year for cryptocurrencies, investors thought that XRP seemed to have fallen under the radar. But reports reveal that in this breakout year for cryptocurrency trading, ripple was one of the best performing cryptos. It was touted as a new kind of payment system for banks, along with others like NEM and dash. The crypto's prices took off in December 2017, breaking the US$1 token price barrier within December 21.
For the year 2020, XRP's performance in the first ten months of this year was rather disappointing. The coin has risen only by 24% while its peers like BTC and ETH soared by 92% and 195% respectively. However, in November, its value soared again. Even in 2021, XRP's price surged, but yet has not reached the height from late 2017.
In 2017, Litecoin was one of the top cryptocurrencies. Even though it was launched in 2011 as a result of a Bitcoin fork, the crypto hit a record high and rallied nearly 5,800%, beating its biggest rival Bitcoin's rise. One of the major reasons for this price rally was the growing awareness about digital currencies and the increasing number of users trading.
In 2021, LTC experienced its fair share of volatility, falling by 74% from record highs. The altcoin saw a solid recovery, and since then it has been surging by 92%. Experts believe that the crypto will keep doing well over the next year and will follow the path of the other major cryptos like Bitcoin and Ethereum.
