The 10 richest cryptocurrencies of 2021

They are loved by many, hated by as many. Cryptocurrencies divide.

Those looking for easy earnings see them as an opportunity to get rich for the price of a few nights spent studying charts. Those in need of confidentiality - for example, embargoed territories or citizens living in the shadow of authoritarian regimes - use them to circumvent bans.

Not to mention organized crime and international money laundering professionals, who have found a vehicle to prevent illicit proceeds from passing under the prying eyes of controllers. Governments understandably don’t like them. Whatever you think of it, in an increasingly digitalized and monitored world, it is digital itself that offers a solution. Decentralized, with no rules other than those of mathematics. Based on total distrust, and for this very reason reliable. Bitcoin (over $ 890 billion) The first cryptocurrency, and by far the most capitalized.

The idea dates back to 2008, when Satoshi Nakamoto (whose identity is unknown, but more than one person may be hiding behind the pseudonym) publishes a white paper describing it. In the course of 2021 it exceeded one trillion dollars in capitalization, and then settled down to around eight hundred. THE The first bitcoin payment was made on May 22, 2010 by the programmer Laszlo Hanyecz, who bought two pizzas using ten thousand: today that dinner would be worth about 470 million dollars. A peculiarity: the maximum number of bitcoins that can be created (in jargon the operation is called ‘mining’) is twenty-one million.