Crypto Market Shifts: Only 41 Original Top 100 Projects Remain

The crypto market has undergone significant changes since 2021, and a recent analysis by CryptoRank shows just how much. The top 100 cryptocurrencies from July 2021 have been reevaluated, and only 41 of those projects remain in the top 100 today.

Of the original top 100, 46 tokens have dropped out but are still trading, with a median market-cap drop of about 93%. The remaining 13 projects from the list have delisted or died. Among the failed projects were Terra (LUNA), which collapsed in an algorithmic-stablecoin death spiral, and FTX Token (FTT), which was lost when the FTX exchange went down.

The biggest shift in the market is the rise of stablecoins. In 2021, there were only eight stablecoins in the top 100, but now there are 16. Stablecoins have become a core use case for cryptocurrencies, with on-chain settlement becoming increasingly popular.

The newcomers to the top 100 include Hyperliquid, a perpetuals exchange that entered at #9. Other new entrants include Sui and Aptos, two newer-generation blockchains. The majority of projects that fell out of the top 100 were Layer-1 and Layer-2 blockchains, which failed to compete with the newer generation.