Yes, we thought this was pretty big news! The last total digital currency market high was in Dec 3, 2013, at $15,792,600,000. This last Dec 21, 2016, the total digital currency market high reached $15,858,937,393! This is a historic moment.



Dec 3, 2013: $15,792,600,000

Dec 21, 2016: $15,858,937,393

We’d like to compare a few of the just over 700 digital currencies out there, and give you a little historical background. All chart and stat images shown are courtesy of coinmarketcap.com.



The Broad Scope:

Let’s begin with a broad scope, a simple look at the top 15 and the bottom 15 cryptocurrencies by market volume to get a taste of what the market looks like. This should allow us to quickly see who’s helping to carry the market the most, and in general see what’s happening. When materials for this article were being prepared on Friday, 23rd of December 2016, there were 711 total cryptocurrencies indexed on coinmarketcap.com. THAT’S A LOT OF CRYPTOCURRENCIES! Let’s take a look at the top 15…



Top 15 Cryptocurrencies (as of the 23rd of December, 2016)



As we can see from the above chart, Bitcoin is beating all of the other digital currencies by magnitudes, in 1 day, 7 day, and 30 day market volumes.



For 1 day market volume: Bitcoin (BTC) had the lead at $233,973,000 | 2nd place Ethereum (ETH) had only $15,558,400 | 3rd place Monero dropped to a staggering $5,181,270 market volume | and anything below 3rd dropped below $5,000,000. The stories are similar for 7 day and 30 day market volumes, though the numbers are even more staggering.



Some popular newer currencies, such as Litecoin, Ripple, Dash, and Zcash were all below $3,500,000 in 1 day market volume. By the time we reach the top #15, Mind Gene, we’ve already dropped to $136,368 1 day market volume.

A number of factors will play into why this is, such as: which was developed first, how well did the company manage, advertise, and distribute it’s currency, and the use it has seen in public and with trades, etc. Of course there’s also the factors of novelty, innovativeness, and practicality. Bitcoin has an obvious advantage in the market today. It was the first of it’s kind in the market, and was the pioneer who everyone watched rise, fall, and rise again. Bitcoin was upgraded and optimized to deal with the cyber threats it found lurking at the door, and today it’s the strongest of all the Cryptocurrencies.

Having said that, Ethereum, is an extremely innovative blockchain technology, which was build to address issues the Bitcoin blockchain could not sufficiently provide, and they’ve created their blockchain in such a way as to allow other businesses to build more innovation on top of it – like DinarDirham has done with our gold backed crypto assets (DinarCoins are currently available in BETA, and the DinarDirham ICO will be in 2017). However, being #2 on our list, Ethereum’s digital currency, Ether, is still way behind Bitcoin, but it is also younger. Perhaps with time it will meet or exceed Bitcoin, but… only time will tell.

Now let’s take a quick look at the bottom 15 cryptocurrencies…



A discussion was posted on bitcointalk.org for CRTCoin (#711) on April 03, 2014… it goes to show that some digital currencies take off and do well, and others – many others – do not. That is not to say it’s future is settled by any means, but after two years, and $0.00 market volume… for 1, 7, and 30 days (as of the 23rd of December 2016)… let us assume it probably won’t take off, unless something drastic happens.

Next, let’s take a quick look at some of these digital currencies up close:

#1 – BTC:

To start off, let’s look at the first cryptocurrency, and still the highest running in market volume… Bitcoin. Although Bitcoin is generally believed to have been established in 2008 (and indeed it was), this was mostly preliminary stages: publishing the concept, registering the website, publishing the whitepaper, etc. The actual currency did not have an exchange rate until October 5, 2009, at which time the value was 1.00 USD = 1,309.03 BTC.

Bitcoin continued to grow in use, with a steadily increasing price, until early 2013. On July 17, 2010, the average price of Bitcoin was $0.05 USD; In November 28, 2012, Bitcoin hit it’s last return to $12.25 USD, after which the price exploded in growth. The price reached a historic high of $150.41 USD by April 24, 2013, and a record high of $1,075.16 USD on November 30, 2013. Today, December 26th, 2016, at 11:27am Perth | Singapore | Bali time, BTC is at $903.22 USD. This same day, it’s currently had a low of $858.98 USD, and this month (December 1st, 2016) of $742.63 USD. BTC has been on a long bullish run since the end of August 2015 to the time of this article.

Will it reach or exceed it’s historic high, or will it take a bearish turn downward? Only time will tell. But it seems safe to say with the current statistics, and Bitcoin’s growing use and popularity, that Bitcoin will continue to see good use well into the future. And is one reason why are Forex partners (Saba Capital, offering MT4 trading tools) will be accepting Bitcoins, along with DinarCoins for withdrawals and deposits in user’s accounts.

#2 – ETH:

As we can see below, Ethereum for almost the last 1 1/2 years has stayed between 0.00243990 BTC (about $2.19 USD today – it’s lowest – on August 10, 2015), and 0.03463330 BTC (about $31.15 USD today – at it’s highest on March 13th of this year). Still quite young, and we can see that as of December 23rd, 2016, last Friday, it’s price was 0.00827644 BTC (or $7.55 USD on that date). With Ethereum’s unique innovation in blockchain technology, it’s likely we will see Ether continue to grow. However, with other companies able to build their own projects on Ethereum’s blockchain, has it undermined Ether’s potential competitiveness in the marketplace? Will Ethereum see a bullish or bearish run in the future? Only time will tell.

For the next few digital currencies, we will not comment, but simply display each cryptocurrency’s chart and stats, like the ones shown above:

#4 – Litecoin (LTC)



#5 – Ripple (XRP)

#6 – Dash (DASH)

#14 – MaidSafeCoin (MAID)

#17 – Augur (REP)

#23 – Dogecoin (DOGE)

#54 – DigixDAO (DGD)

#194 – GoldCoin (GLD)

#505 – Paccoin (PAC)

#711 – CRTCoin (CRT)

The digital currency market is going strong. It appears to have a King, a Prince, and several Warriors fighting for their ranks. New cryptocurrencies are popping up quite often – and as we’ve seen – some will succeed, and others will fail. It’s certainly an exciting market to look into. And how will the DinarDirham ICO fair in 2017? … Only time will tell 🙂

The DinarDirham team