Exploring the market capitalization of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

"The idea behind Bitcoin was introduced to the world on Oct. 31, 2008, at the depth of the financial crisis by a pseudonymous person called Satoshi Nakamoto"

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are considered by people as an alternative to fiat currencies and as a mode to transfer money across boundaries and as a form of investment.

From humble beginnings in 2008 to its 2017 price peak, Bitcoin has taken investors and the world for quite the ride. Since the launch of Bitcoin in 2008, hundreds of similar projects based on the blockchain technology have emerged. We call these cryptocurrencies, some are extremely valuable nowadays, and others may have the potential to become extremely valuable in the future. In fact, on the 6th of December of 2017, Bitcoin has a market capitalization above $200 billion.

In this study, we look at the market capitalization of various cryptocurrencies and compare it with Bitcoin.

Data

A CSV we conveniently downloaded on the 6th of December of 2017 using the coinmarketcap API (NOTE: The public API went private in 2020 and is no longer available)

Visualization Tool: Python plotting – Matplotlib

Comparing Bitcoin with the rest of the cryptocurrencies