Crypto Barrels Toward 2022 After Adding $1.5 Trillion in Value

Bitcoin, up more than 60% this year, absorbed much of the attention but had to share more of the limelight with the likes of Ether and Binance Coin as well as meme tokens such as Dogecoin and Shiba Inu.

In fact, Bitcoin’s share of the crypto market shrank dramatically over 2021 as other tokens rocketed, a sign of how investor interest in digital assets broadened out despite — or perhaps because of — enormous volatility.

The decline in Bitcoin’s dominance will likely continue next year “given the explosion of assets in the crypto space and the various use cases,” said Vijay Ayyar, head of Asia Pacific with crypto exchange Luno in Singapore.

The overall market value of cryptocurrencies climbed by about $1.5 trillion in 2021 to some $2.3 trillion as of Dec. 17, according to tracker CoinGecko, which counts almost 12,000 tokens.

Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, began the year with a 70% share of the market. That has fallen to less than 40%, in part as Ether’s popularity increased. But money has flowed into other tokens too, and for some that trend could be a sign of potentially destabilizing speculative froth.