The top 20 cryptocurrencies looked very different in 2017, will your favorite projects still be relevant in 4 years?
2 min readThe popular YouTuber crypto Lark Davies tweeted about the ecosystem in 2017 and pointed out that most of the top 20 tokens have fallen since then. He added that people need to be aware of the rapid changes in the crypto market and plan accordingly.
“This is the top 20 crypto coins 4 years ago. It provides a pretty solid perspective. If you don’t think that 4 years from today your coins will still be here, or at least in the top 100, then you should have an escape plan! “
But with the growth of solid projects and development since 2017, can the ecosystem in 2025 look similar to today?
Top 20 in 2025
The view of 2017 is very different compared to the present. Yes, BTC and ETH remain in first and second place. And XRP, Litecoin and Tether are there too, but everything else has changed. This suggests that investors in cryptocurrencies are volatile.
However, when we return to the record of April 23, 2013 on CoinMarketCap, the only constant is BTC in the first place. Critics say BTC lacks programmability and has not changed much since its inception. Nevertheless, it did not affect his status as the primary cryptocurrency.
Compared to the second and third generation blockchains, BTC is a dinosaur that has been surpassed many times on a technological level. This is evident when looking at low throughput and sometimes long acknowledgment times. Nevertheless, it remains the leading cryptocurrency with a market capitalization far superior to others.
The only conclusion that can be drawn is that the market values credibility. And as the most trusted brand, BTC is one step ahead of everyone else, despite having an anonymous founder.
Alex Lashkow, co-creator of Linguix, an AI writing tool, compared the top 10 cryptocurrencies in 2013 with 2018. He points out that many of the leading projects in 2013 lacked quality.
“Although most of the top 10 cryptocurrencies in 2013 caused a lot of hype, unfortunately many of them were not of sufficient quality to reach the top 10 in 2018.”
A similar argument can be made for the best projects of 2017. But what to compare in 2021 to 2025? The current top 10 are BTC, ETH, Cardano, Tether, Binance Coin, XRP, Solana, Polkadot, USD Coin and Dogecoin.
With the exception of Tether, due to regulatory uncertainty and controversy over its cash reserves, and Dogecoin, due to its lack of a clear use case, every other project has strong fundamentals to consolidate its position in the top 10.
Given that there are so many major projects, we may see that most of them will still be highly valued after four years.
