How many cryptocurrencies are there?

There are thousands of cryptocurrencies available, and thousands more that are now defunct. According to CoinMarketCap, there were 13,669 cryptocurrencies as of late 2021. New tokens are constantly coming to market.

The reason there are so many cryptocurrencies is because it’s extremely easy to create one. Ethereum‘s (CRYPTO:ETH) blockchain allows users to write bits of code to the blockchain, essentially letting anyone launch a new token that uses the Ethereum network. So instead of having to build the whole thing from scratch, developers can just use the pre-existing infrastructure.