One thousand nine hundred and sixteen
...an absolutely dizzying number considering that's how many cryptocurrencies were listed on coinmarketcap.com at the time of this writing. It may be tempting to believe there were always nearly 2,000 coins to keep track of, but before February 2014, there were actually less than 100. 2014 also sparked the first big spike in coin listings, having climbed to nearly 500 by the end of the year. After two years of steady, but slower growth, the ecosystem then went through another growth explosion adding nearly 1,000 additional coins to reach the 1,500 mark. From there, growth has only accelerated.
Staring at the graph above, you may have noticed it isn't "monotonically increasing". That's just a super fancy way of saying, it doesn't go up constantly, but may decrease at times. This drop from one month to the next is a result of Coinmarketcap actually de-listing coins that no longer meet its requirements. The graph underneath shows a monthly tracking of coin de-listings on the site. To further filter out the noise, CMC has accelerated the number of de-listings over the last year, averaging about 40 a month.
De-listings are only half of the story, however. There is growth and that means there are many more new coins being listed than removed. The final chart below highlights what we've all noticed, a steady increase in new listings every month.
With so many mindless forks and scams, all growth isn't good growth, but we can agree that as the blockchain eco-system grows there will be newer, interesting technologies introduced. Some of which will definitely stand the test of time.
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