The Most Expensive Cryptocurrencies

News of digital currencies has been crowding the financial press for several years, yet getting a grip on what exactly “cryptocurrency” means and how to measure its success or failure is a real challenge. One way to gauge these virtual monies is to look at their face value — which varies with supply, demand and public sentiment. Here’s a list of the most expensive digital currencies, measured by their market price.  

Bitcoin (BTC)

Bitcoin, the original digital currency, reached a price of $47,882.49 on March 29. Bitcoin has been leading the pack throughout the short history of cryptocurrency, and it’s also the largest by far in terms of market cap. Derivatives of BTC, such as wrapped bitcoin, which is an Ethereum-compatible token pegged to the value of original bitcoin, have also hit the market.

Yearn.Finance (YFI)

Yearn.finance held second place on March 29, with a token price reaching $22,983.23. Although total market capitalization rank is way down the ladder at No. 96, yearn.finance has a low maximum supply of coins, at 36,666, 36,637.72 of which are currently circulating. By contrast, the maximum number of bitcoins in circulation is set at 21 million. The price of yearn.finance rises relative to most other cryptocurrencies because its supply limit has, for all intents and purposes, already been reached.

Ethereum (ETH)

Ethereum’s price as of March 29, at $3,435.20, makes it the third most expensive distinct cryptocurrency. The Canadian-Russian programmer Vitalik Buterin was the first to envision a new, more practical cryptocurrency, which he presented in a white paper published in 2013. His ethereum coin started out at a price of $0.31 on the day of its initial offering, meaning ethereum’s value has grown 1,108,029% since it first began trading less than 10 years ago.

Maker (MKR)

The maker coin has reached a price of $2,116.84, with a total market capitalization of about $2.069 billion. Like the other cryptocurrency, maker is available for trading on a number of exchanges — including Binance, UniSwap, OKEx and Coinbase Pro. One of the youngest digital currencies, maker was launched in 2017. An interesting feature is that it works somewhat like the shares of a company in that each holder has the right to vote on the development of the coin, which is meant for use on decentralized finance platforms.

Gnosis (GNO)

At $504.14, gnosis is the fifth-highest-priced coin as of March 29. Gnosis was founded in 2015 to build a prediction market platform and went on to build the infrastructure that supports the platform on the Ethereum ecosystem. The token is No. 90 in terms of market cap, and just 19% of its maximum supply of 10,000,000 coins is currently in circulation, according to CoinMarketCap.

What To Consider Before Investing In Cryptocurrency

While the price of a digital coin varies, sometimes drastically, from one day to the next, it’s important to also take into account market capitalization, trading volume and accessibility on the various coin exchanges when evaluating these new, digital forms of money.

Digital currency is volatile and unpredictable, and wise investors will commit only funds they can afford to lose while dabbling in this market.

Daria Uhlig contributed to the reporting for this article.

Information is accurate as of March 29, 2022.

This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: The Most Expensive Cryptocurrencies