Started at 1,000. Stablecoins and gold tokens excluded. Members are the ten largest coins at each update, and the divisor adjusts when they change so the line stays continuous.
Countdown
Bitcoin halving
Every 210,000 blocks, the reward for mining new Bitcoin is cut in half.
Calculators for prices, market caps, history and risk, using live data.
History
Past investment
What money put into a coin on a past date is worth today.
Your investmentSame money in BitcoinMoney put in
Steady buying
DCA simulator
Buying a fixed amount on a schedule, compared with putting it all in on day one.
Steady buyingAll on day oneMoney put in
Leverage
Leveraged ETF calculator
What a fund that resets its leverage every day would have returned, next to the coin itself.
Daily-reset fundThe coin itselfSimply 2x the return
Reality check
Price target
What a target price would mean for a coin's market cap.
Converter
Convert
Any coin to dollars or to another coin, at live prices.
Head to head
Compare coins
Side-by-side price, size, supply and performance.
Market cap comparison
What if
The price a coin would have with another coin's market cap.
Flippening watch
Closest races
Neighbours nearest to swapping rank (stablecoins excluded).
Dominance
Market share
Share of total crypto market cap.
Profit & loss
Return check
What a past buy is worth at today's price.
Risk
Position size
How much to buy so a stop-out loses only what you choose.
A stop-loss isn't guaranteed. Gaps and slippage can fill past your stop and make the loss bigger.
Supply
Dilution check
Circulating vs. maximum supply, and the cap if every coin existed.
Investing
Average cost
Your weighted average price across several buys.
Investing
Break-even
The selling price that gets your money back after fees.
Risk
Comeback
The gain needed to recover from a drop.
Start
After drop
Investing
Rebalancer
Trades needed to get back to your target mix.
Coin
Now
Target %
Trade
Today's crypto prices by market cap
What is cryptocurrency?
Cryptocurrency is digital money that runs on a shared public record instead of a bank's private ledger. Anyone can check the record, and no single company controls it.
A shared list instead of a private one
A bank keeps its own private record. A cryptocurrency keeps one shared record on many computers, and new entries need the network to agree. Free to reuse
A bank keeps its own private list of who owns what. A cryptocurrency keeps that list on thousands of computers around the world at once. This shared list is called a blockchain, and new entries are added only when the network agrees on them.
Ownership is controlled with cryptographic keys. Whoever holds the private key for an address can move the coins in it, which is why keeping that key safe matters so much.
Bitcoin, launched in 2009, was the first. Thousands of others have followed, from large networks like Ethereum to small tokens built for a single app.
What happens when you send a payment
Say you send 0.01 BTC to a friend. Your wallet builds a message that says which coins move and where, then signs it with your private key. The signature proves the coins are yours without revealing the key.
The message spreads to nodes around the world. Each one checks the signature and that the coins haven't been spent already. A miner then includes it in a block, and once that block is accepted, every copy of the ledger shows the new owner.
Why people use it, and what it doesn't do
Crypto lets value move between any two people with an internet connection, at any hour, without asking a bank. That matters most where banking is slow, expensive or unreliable, and for apps that need money to move automatically.
It doesn't make prices stable, make payments private by default or protect you from your own mistakes. If you send to the wrong address, there's usually no one to call.
Where new bitcoin comes from, and why it stops at 21 million
Every 210,000 blocks, about four years, the new bitcoin paid per block is cut in half. The schedule is written into the software, which is why the total can never pass 21 million. Free to reuse
No central bank decides how many bitcoins exist. The rule is in the software every node runs. Each new block pays the miner who found it a fixed reward of newly created coins, and that reward halves every 210,000 blocks, which works out to roughly every four years.
The first block was mined on January 3, 2009, with a reward of 50 BTC. It dropped to 25 BTC in November 2012, 12.5 BTC in July 2016, 6.25 BTC in May 2020 and 3.125 BTC in April 2024. At about 144 blocks a day, the current reward adds around 450 new bitcoins daily, compared with about 900 before the 2024 halving. Because each step cuts issuance in half, the total approaches 21 million and never passes it. The last fraction of a coin is expected to be issued around the year 2140.
Other coins pick different rules. Ethereum has no fixed cap, and its supply can rise or fall depending on how much of each fee is burned. Many newer tokens let a team create coins whenever it wants. When you look at any cryptocurrency, find out who or what decides how many new coins appear, because that rule matters as much as anything on the price chart.
Reading a transaction on a block explorer
A Bitcoin payment spends a whole earlier output. Here 0.05 BTC goes in, 0.01 BTC goes to the friend, 0.0398 BTC returns as change and the 0.0002 BTC difference is the fee. Free to reuse
A block explorer is a website that lets anyone search a blockchain. Paste in a transaction ID, an address or a block number and it shows what happened. For Bitcoin, mempool.space and blockstream.info are popular; for Ethereum, Etherscan is the standard. Nothing you see there needs a login, because the ledger is public.
Bitcoin transactions look odd the first time. Coins aren't stored as one balance. They sit in separate chunks, each received in an earlier payment, and a new transaction must spend whole chunks. Say you hold one chunk of 0.0500 BTC and want to pay a friend 0.0100 BTC. Your wallet spends the full 0.0500 BTC as the input and creates two outputs, 0.0100 BTC to your friend and 0.0398 BTC back to a new address you control, called change. The 0.0002 BTC that isn't assigned to any output is the fee, and the miner who includes the transaction keeps it.
On the explorer you will see the input, both outputs, the fee and a count of confirmations. That's also why strangers can often guess which output was the payment and which was change, and why a public ledger is less private than it first seems.
Key terms
Blockchain
The shared record of every transaction, copied across many computers.
Private key
The secret that lets you move coins from an address.
Address
A public identifier people send coins to, like an account number.
Node
A computer that keeps a copy of the blockchain and checks new entries.
Usefulness, control and privacy are separate questions
Whether a coin is useful. Being on a blockchain is easy. Anyone can create a token in minutes.
Who's really in control. Some coins have no company in charge; many newer tokens are run by a small team that can change the rules.
Whether it's private. Most blockchains are public, so every payment can be traced, even without names.
What people get wrong
Crypto isn't anonymous by default. Most blockchains are public, so every transaction can be seen, even if names aren't attached.
A coin being on a blockchain doesn't make it safe or valuable. Anyone can create a token in minutes.
Why it matters
Understanding what a coin actually is, and who controls it, is the starting point for judging everything else on KryptoKap.
Common questions
Who controls a cryptocurrency?
It depends on the coin. Bitcoin has no company in charge; changes need broad agreement from its users and miners. Many newer tokens are run by a team or foundation that can change the rules.
Is cryptocurrency legal?
In most countries, yes, though rules differ widely. Check the rules where you live.
Can I buy less than one bitcoin?
Yes. One bitcoin divides into 100 million units called satoshis, so you can buy a few dollars' worth. Most exchanges and wallets show fractional amounts like 0.0025 BTC. Ether and most other coins divide just as finely, so the price of one whole coin isn't a minimum purchase.
