Out of the thousand cryptocurrencies existing today, only six coins account for 70% of the total market volume, according to an analysis conducted by diar.
The report revealed that more than half of the trading volume of over 1,600 cryptocurrency markets was produced by the pairings of just five virtual currencies – BTC, XRP, ETH, BCH, and LTC, citing data from Coinmarketcap recorded on the 18th of June, 2018.
diar asserted that “liquidity [is] near non-existent on [the] majority of traded tokens,” as the entire market “remain pinned to the peaks and valleys of Bitcoin.”
According to the report, BTC pairings represented approximately 33% of the total market volume (approx. $12 billion) as at the time of publication on June 18, 2018. ETH pairings made up 12% of the total volume, followed by BCH with 3%, and XRP and LTC with 2% each.
The pairings of the USD-pegged cryptocurrency Tether were also found to represent 17% of the total trade volume of the cryptocurrency markets, while the combined volume of all other altcoin markets listed on Coinmarketcap constituted just 31% of trade volume.
The report further revealed that near 50% of all tokens produced less than $10,000 in a 24-hour trade volume: 49.3% posted less than $10,000, 33.3% posted less than $1000 and 19.2% produced less than $100.
Just 15.3% cryptocurrencies generated a volume of $1 million or higher and only 6.3% of markets produced $5 million or more in 24-hour trade volume.