Glossary · Crypto
Cryptocurrency
A cryptocurrency is digital money recorded on a shared public ledger that thousands of computers keep, with no bank or government in charge of it.
Also called: crypto, digital currency, crypto asset, virtual currency, coin
Estimated market value, November 11, 2026. Bitcoin’s share: 65%.
Closing price, November 11, 2026.
Closing price, November 11, 2026.
In plain words
When you pay a friend with a banking app, the bank changes two numbers in its own records: yours goes down, theirs goes up. You trust the bank to keep that record honest. A cryptocurrency does the same job without the bank. The record of who owns what is a public ledger, the blockchain, and thousands of computers around the world keep identical copies of it.
Nobody can change the ledger alone. New payments are checked by the network and added in batches called blocks, following rules written into the software, including how many coins will ever exist. To send coins you prove they are yours with a secret number, a private key, kept in a wallet.
The first and biggest is bitcoin, launched in 2009. Thousands more followed (altcoins), from Ethereum, which runs programs, to stablecoins built to stay at $1. The 17 coins tracked on this site were worth about $2.27T together on November 11, 2026.
Example
What happens when you send 0.01 bitcoin
Pressing Send in a crypto wallet sets off four steps.
- Your wallet writes a message, “move 0.01 BTC from my address to my friend’s address”, and signs it with your private key. The signature proves the coins are yours without revealing the key.
- The message goes out to the network. Each computer checks the signature, and checks that your address really holds the coins.
- A miner puts your payment into the next block, along with a few thousand others. On bitcoin a new block comes about every 10 minutes.
- Every computer adds the block to its copy of the ledger, and your friend’s wallet shows the coins: 0.01 BTC, about $738 at the close of November 11, 2026.
No bank approved anything, and nobody can reverse the payment: coins sent to a wrong address are gone.
One level deeper
Two inventions make a ledger without an owner work. Public-key cryptography, the “crypto” in the name, lets anyone check that a payment was signed by the owner of the coins without knowing their secret key. A consensus rule decides which version of the ledger everyone accepts: bitcoin uses proof of work, where computers compete to add each block, and Ethereum uses proof of stake, where holders put up their own coins as a deposit.
Is it money? Economists ask three things of money: a way to pay, a unit to price things in, and a store of value. Cryptocurrencies do the first for some people and rarely the second, and the third is disputed, because their prices swing far more than any major currency. Since 2013, bitcoin’s price has fallen 70% or more from a record close 4 times.
Value is concentrated in a few coins. On November 11, 2026, bitcoin made up 65% of the combined value of the coins on this site, ether 11% and the two big dollar stablecoins 11%.
The market value of crypto since 2019
The estimated market value of the 17 coins on this site added together, and bitcoin’s part of it. The total peaked at $3.96T on October 6, 2025. The latest total is 43% below that peak.
The numbers behind the chart
| Date | All coins tracked here | Bitcoin |
|---|---|---|
| Jul 2019 | $261B | $190B |
| Dec 2019 | $173B | $131B |
| Dec 2020 | $565B | $409B |
| Dec 2021 | $1.89T | $933B |
| Dec 2022 | $702B | $326B |
| Dec 2023 | $1.42T | $833B |
| Dec 2024 | $3.1T | $1.94T |
| Dec 2025 | $2.83T | $1.77T |
| Nov 2026 | $2.36T | $1.53T |
Why it matters
Crypto has become a large market in its own right: the coins on this site alone were worth about $2.27T on November 11, 2026, and stock exchanges now list funds that hold bitcoin and ether (bitcoin ETFs).
It is a live experiment in money without a central bank: the supply is set by code, not by monetary policy.
It carries risks that bank money does not: prices that can halve within months, payments that cannot be reversed, and coins lost for good when a key is lost or an exchange fails.
A common mistake
Myth: Crypto is anonymous, so payments cannot be traced.
In fact: Most blockchains are public: every payment between addresses is visible to anyone, forever. Addresses are not names, but exchanges collect IDs and analysts link addresses to people. Bitcoin is pseudonymous, not anonymous; only a few coins, such as Monero, are designed to hide the details.
Questions people ask
How many cryptocurrencies are there?
Many thousands are traded, and millions of small tokens have been created, but the value sits in a few. On November 11, 2026, bitcoin alone made up 65% of the combined value of the 17 coins on this site.
Why do crypto prices swing so much?
There are no profits or interest payments to anchor the price, so it rests on what buyers expect others to pay, and much of the trading uses borrowed money, which forces sales when prices drop. Since 2013 bitcoin has lost 70% or more from a record close 4 times; smaller coins have often fallen further.
Is cryptocurrency legal?
In most countries it is legal to own and trade, under tax rules and licences for exchanges; a few, including China, ban crypto trading. Rules change often and differ from country to country.
Read more on BigCapital
About the numbers
- The numbers on this page are recalculated from the data every night; the sources are listed at the end of the page.
- Cardano market capitalization: Coin Metrics Community Network Data, metric CapMrktEstUSD. License: CC BY-NC 4.0.
- Avalanche market capitalization: Coin Metrics Community Network Data, metric CapMrktEstUSD. License: CC BY-NC 4.0.
- Bitcoin Cash market capitalization: Coin Metrics Community Network Data, metric CapMrktEstUSD. License: CC BY-NC 4.0.
- BNB market capitalization: Coin Metrics Community Network Data, metric CapMrktEstUSD. License: CC BY-NC 4.0.
- Bitcoin market capitalization: Coin Metrics Community Network Data, metric CapMrktEstUSD. License: CC BY-NC 4.0.
- Bitcoin price: Coin Metrics Community Network Data, metric PriceUSD. License: CC BY-NC 4.0.
- Dogecoin market capitalization: Coin Metrics Community Network Data, metric CapMrktEstUSD. License: CC BY-NC 4.0.
- Polkadot market capitalization: Coin Metrics Community Network Data, metric CapMrktEstUSD. License: CC BY-NC 4.0.
- Ethereum market capitalization: Coin Metrics Community Network Data, metric CapMrktEstUSD. License: CC BY-NC 4.0.
- Ethereum price: Coin Metrics Community Network Data, metric PriceUSD. License: CC BY-NC 4.0.
- Chainlink market capitalization: Coin Metrics Community Network Data, metric CapMrktEstUSD. License: CC BY-NC 4.0.
- Litecoin market capitalization: Coin Metrics Community Network Data, metric CapMrktEstUSD. License: CC BY-NC 4.0.
- Solana market capitalization: Coin Metrics Community Network Data, metric CapMrktEstUSD. License: CC BY-NC 4.0.
- TRON market capitalization: Coin Metrics Community Network Data, metric CapMrktEstUSD. License: CC BY-NC 4.0.
- USD Coin (USDC) market capitalization: Coin Metrics Community Network Data, metric CapMrktEstUSD. License: CC BY-NC 4.0.
- Tether (USDT) market capitalization: Coin Metrics Community Network Data, metric CapMrktEstUSD. License: CC BY-NC 4.0.
- Stellar market capitalization: Coin Metrics Community Network Data, metric CapMrktEstUSD. License: CC BY-NC 4.0.
- Monero market capitalization: Coin Metrics Community Network Data, metric CapMrktEstUSD. License: CC BY-NC 4.0.
- XRP market capitalization: Coin Metrics Community Network Data, metric CapMrktEstUSD. License: CC BY-NC 4.0.
- Market values are Coin Metrics’ estimates (price × the estimated supply in circulation); other data providers estimate the circulating supply differently. The site tracks the largest coins, not the whole market.
- Crypto data: Coin Metrics Community Network Data, used under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license.
- This page explains a term. It is not investment advice.