The total market capitalisation of cryptocurrencies has increased by more than a half for the year to date. The growth is mostly due to altcoins’ rather than bitcoin’s performance.

According to CoinMarketCap, since the beginning of 2017, the overall market cap of 699 cryptocurrencies has risen by 53%, from $17.7 billion to $27.144 billion. Comparing with the last year’s figures, the growth is more than threefold, from $8.184 billion as of 5 April 2016.

Altcoins demonstrated the most aggressive year-to-date growth with total market capitalisation having jumped 4 times, from $2.188 billion to $8.785 billion. This dynamic is unique for 2017, whereas from April to December 2016 altcoins’ total cap rose only by one-third.

In 2017, Ethereum exchange rate has risen almost six times from $7.98 to $46.65 per token. Ripple’s price has also jumped nearly six times, from $0.006523 to $0.037736. Dash has grown 621%, from $11.18 to $69.39, while litecoin added almost 100%, from $4.33 to $8.39.

Meanwhile, bitcoin share in the world’s cryptocurrency capitalisation has been going down. As of now, the cryptocurrency accounts for 67.64% of the total capitalisation, comparing to 87.56% in January 2017.

In general, five cryptocurrencies account for more than 91% of the total market cap: bitcoin, ether, ripple, dash and litecoin, with only three of them (bitcoin, ether and ripple) having capitalisation higher than $1 billion.

Elena Platonova

Images via Flickr