From Bitcoin to thousands of tokens, stablecoins and exchange-traded funds. Here are the key steps in the crypto market's development.
After Bitcoin came a series of alternative cryptocurrencies, called altcoins. Many tried to improve something, such as speed, cost or privacy.
Some had lasting impact, such as Litecoin and XRP. Others disappeared, and many were more speculation than technology.
Ethereum arrived in 2015 and made the blockchain programmable. Smart contracts are programs that run on the blockchain and carry out agreements automatically.
That opened the way for decentralized finance, where lending and trading happen without a bank, and for tokens representing everything from fund units to art.
Stablecoins are tokens that track the value of an ordinary currency, most often the US dollar. They have become the most used cryptocurrency in payments and trading.
Issuers such as Tether and Circle are behind the largest ones. In Europe, stablecoins must now follow their own rules under the EU's MiCA regulation.
Growth has come in cycles with sharp falls. The crypto exchange Mt. Gox collapsed in 2014, and the boom in new token sales in 2017 ended with many people losing money.
The collapse of the crypto exchange FTX in 2022 was the biggest crisis. It led to stricter requirements for exchanges and for how customer funds are held.
In recent years, traditional finance has come in in earnest. Large companies have bought bitcoin, and in 2024 the US got exchange-traded bitcoin funds.
In Europe, MiCA has created common rules for crypto services. Cryptocurrency has thus gone from an experiment to a regulated part of the financial system.