Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Solana, Cardano, Litecoin… Any average crypto enthusiast can immediately recall a dozen or two cryptocurrencies. But how many of them are there really?
In 2009 we only had Bitcoin. In 2011, Namecoin and Litecoin appeared — the first forks of Bitcoin. There were still few coins and they were easy to count. In 2015, Vitalik Buterin launched Ethereum. From this moment on, an era of rapid growth of the cryptocurrency population began.
Nowadays, on numerous blockchains, new coins appear and die every day, and it is extremely difficult to keep track of this motley and moving variety—let alone count them all.
The exact number of “live” cryptocurrencies is unknown. But by comparing information from different sources, you can get a general idea.
How many cryptocurrencies are there — at least approximately?
According to TokenSniffer, a service for tracking fraudulent coins, there are more than 3 million tokens in the world. However, some of them are already dead, some are just spam, and some are fraudulent projects that want to steal your money. TokenSniffer counted 410,027 of them.
Source: TokenSniffer
Cryptocurrency price trackers, such as CoinMarketCap and CoinGeko, only include in their indices those coins that have passed basic anti-spam and anti-scam filters and checks for “signs of life”. According to CoinMarketCap there are 8835 of them, according to CoinGeko — 10992. ChatGPT counted 10,748, but it’s better not to take his word for it.
Such a large scatter in the data is explained by the different approaches of trackers to information processing. When checking the relevance of coins, CoinGecko independently scans various blockchains and crypto exchanges. The lists are then manually checked. On CoinMarketCap, users independently submit applications for coin registration. The service checks them according to various parameters before including them in the listing.
Where do so many cryptocurrencies come from?
Creating your own token is not difficult. To do this, you don’t even need to be well versed in programming, write code or understand the basic mechanics of blockchains. All you need is about an hour of time, a browser-based crypto wallet like MetaMask and some money in it. The new token can be registered on decentralized exchanges, for example, SushiSwap and UniSwap, and offered to everyone.
How to create your own cryptocurrency without a single line of code — BeInCrypto instructions
Such services attract not only those who want to experiment with tokens, but also scammers. This is why it is so important to be extremely vigilant and always do your own research before investing in any coin, especially a little-known one.
Let's sum it up
There are a lot of cryptocurrencies in the world, and their number is increasing every day.. However, most of them are useless at best and dangerous at worst.. The crypto industry is going through a “teenage period” of rapid growth. It takes time for the ecosystem to stabilize, cleanse itself and create natural self-cleaning mechanisms from debris.