From 10,000 to 20,000: The silent explosion of the crypto market that no one wants to acknowledge

Since Bitcoin took off seriously back in 2013, the crypto ecosystem has gone from being a geek curiosity to becoming a jungle of projects. And here comes the interesting part: no one agrees on how many there are.

According to Statista, by September 2024 we are hovering around 10,000. But wait, CoinMarketCap reports 9,916, while CoinGecko goes much further with 15,142. And if you listen to other sources, they talk about 20,000 cryptocurrencies floating around. The truth is that the number changes almost weekly because new tokens are being released all the time.

Why this chaos?

The reason is simple: creating a cryptocurrency now is easier than making a viral meme ( in fact, some already are ). Platforms like Ethereum allow anyone with basic coding knowledge to launch a token without building their own blockchain from scratch. Result: an explosion of projects, each promising to be “the next Bitcoin” or solve some specific problem.

But here is the drama…

Of those thousands, the majority are inactive, abandoned, or outright scams. Only a handful really matter:

• Bitcoin: It remains the king, the reference, what everyone recognizes.
• Ethereum: Smart contracts and DeFi live here.
• Solana, Binance Coin, etc: They have specific purposes and active communities.
• Meme coins (Dogecoin, Shiba Inu): Viral but with questionable durability.

The rest are experiments, games, niche projects, or simply attempts to make quick money.

The real question

Do we really need 10,000+ cryptocurrencies? Probably not. But as long as the barrier to entry is so low and FOMO is still alive, they will keep appearing. The technological innovation is there, but so is the noise. A lot of noise.