Since the launch of Bitcoin in 2009, countless other cryptocurrencies have been released and have taken the world by storm. These days, there are a wide array of cryptocurrencies on the market, which means that some are rarer than others. This is due to lower circulating supply as well as a lower market cap. The rarest cryptocurrencies include several governance tokens, which allow users to have a say in how the platform they’re from operates, and tokens that can be used on more than one blockchain.
Since the cryptocurrency market is always fluctuating, the information on this list is up-to-date only at the time this was written (May 6, 2021). However, for the most part, the information presented here should be close to whatever the current numbers are in real time.
- Balancer
- Compound
- Numeraire
- Gnosis
- Maker
- SORA
- Wrapped Bitcoin
- Bitcoin BEP2
- yearn.finance (YFI)
- renBTC
Max Supply: 100 Million
Current Market Cap: $445,887,584
Current Price: $64.22
photo source: CoinMarketCap
Did You Know?
Balancer is one of the cheapest places to trade stablecoins (cryptocurrencies backed by fiat money) because pool operators can set their own swap fees, which isn’t common on other automated market makers.
Max Supply: 10 Million
Current Market Cap: $3,569,917,754
Current Price: $703.35
photo source: CoinMarketCap
Compound is a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol that allows users to lend and borrow cryptocurrencies. Additionally, users can earn interest on their cryptocurrencies by depositing them into one of several pools supported by Compound. According to Compound, most cryptocurrencies sit idle in users’ wallets. Compound is looking to change this by allowing anybody who deposits supported Ethereum tokens to easily earn interest on their balance or take out a secured loan.
The platform’s governance token is COMP and they allow users to have a say in how the Compound protocol operates. Users can propose changes such as which cryptocurrencies to add support for, adjusting collateralization factors, and making changes to how COMP tokens are distributed.
Did You Know?
Users can obtain COMP tokens by buying them from third-party exchanges or earning them by interacting with the Compound protocol, like depositing assets or taking out a loan.
Max Supply: 11 Million
Current Market Cap: $324,865,465
Current Price: $66.14
photo source: CoinMarketCap
Numeraire (NMR) is the cryptocurrency used by Numerai, an AI-run crowd-sourced hedge fund. Like a lot of the other rare cryptocurrencies on this list, Numerai runs on Ethereum. The platform’s main goal is to bring decentralization to the data science field and allow developers to compete in creating effective machine learning prediction models. Every user on Numerai can stake their NMR tokens on their predictions. If the predictions are good, the user earns some money, but if the prediction is bad, their NMR is destroyed. This tournament is held weekly.
Did You Know?
Numerai was the first AI hedge fund to create its own cryptocurrency, Numeraire in 2018.
Max Supply: 10 Million
Current Market Cap: $380,202,078
Current Price: $252.43
photo source: CoinMarketCap
Gnosis is a prediction market platform that runs on the Ethereum network. A prediction market is an exchange-traded market created for the purpose of trading the outcome of events. Gnosis has three interoperable product lines allow users to create, trade, and hold digital assets on Ethereum. The aim of Gnosis is to decentralize the operation of prediction markets through cryptocurrencies because regular prediction markets are heavily regulated. Essentially, Gnosis allows users to trade cryptocurrencies that are representative of event outcomes on an open market. GNO (Gnosis tokens) gain or lose value depending on what was predicted by the user.
Did You Know?
In addition to GNO, Gnosis also uses the OWL cryptocurrency.
Max Supply: 1,005,577
Current Market Cap: $4,999,868,680
Current Price: $5,023.79
photo source: CoinMarketCap
Maker (MKR) is the governance token used by MakerDAO and the Maker Protocol. MakerDAO is a decentralized autonomous organization composed of the owners of its governance token, MKR, who may vote on changes to certain parameters in its smart contracts to ensure the stability of DAI stablecoin. DAI is a stablecoin cryptocurrency, which means its price is pegged to fiat money or to exchange-traded commodities (such as precious metals).
MKR tokens essentially give users a voting share in the organization that manages DAI.
Did You Know?
MakerDAO and DAI were the first examples of decentralized finance (DeFi) to receive significant adoption.
Max Supply: Not Available
Current Market Cap: $248,406,743
Current Price: $709,73
photo source: CoinMarketCap
Did You Know?
Supply of SORA’s XOR is capped at 350,000 tokens until its v2 launch.
Max Supply: Not Available
Current Market Cap: $9,525,610,154
Current Price: $55,866.14
photo source: CoinMarketCap
Like a few of the other tokens on this list, Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), is a newer cryptocurrency that aims to bridge the gap between Bitcoin and Ethereum, the two biggest and most commonly used cryptocurrencies in the world. Wrapped Bitcoin can be fully integrated into Ethereum’s ecosystem of decentralized exchanges, crypto lending services, prediction markets and other ERC-20-enabled decentralized finance (DeFi) applications. In short, Wrapped Bitcoin gives users the freedom to explore other blockchains.
Did You Know?
Wrapped Bitcoin is part of the Wrapped Tokens project, which is a joint collaboration between three organizations: BitGo, Kyber Network, and Ren.
Max Supply: Not Available
Current Market Cap: $3,051,730,822
Current Price: $55,901.27
photo source: CoinMarketCap
Bitcoin BEP2 is a Bitcoin backed token used for trading on Binance, a cryptocurrency exchange that provides a platform for trading various cryptocurrencies. Binance was founded by Changpeng Zhao, a developer who had previously created high frequency trading software. The goal of Binance has always been to become the leading blockchain-based decentralized institutions in the world. Users are able to trade more than 100 cryptocurrencies on Binance. So all tokens must be compatible with the Binance Chain Evolution Proposal 2 or BEP2.
Did You Know?
As of April 2021, Binance has become the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world in terms of trading volume.
Max Supply: 36,666
Current Market Cap: $1,895,184,879
Current Price: $51,588.70
photo source: CoinMarketCap
yearn.finance is an aggregator service used by Decentralized Finance (DeFi) investors that seeks to facilitate access to yield farming and liquidity mining strategies. The cryptocurrency that the project deals in is YFI coins and currently there is a fairly low circulating supply of 36,635 coins. Currently each YFI coin is worth about $51,588.70 and there is a market cap of $1.89 billion.
YFI went live in July 2020 and within a few months its assets under total value locked reached over $1 billion. Yearn.finance currently charges users withdrawal fees of 0.5% as well as 5% gas subsidization fees (transaction fees).
Did You Know?
Yearn.finance was founded by Andre Cronje, who has become known for being a key player in the Decentralized Finance movement.
Max Supply: 13,698
Current Market Cap: $700,964,424
Current Price: $55,816.63
photo source: CoinMarketCap
renBTC is part of the Ren project, the brainchild of Taiyang Zhang. The goal of renBTC is to create a token whose value is anchored to the value of Bitcoin. Currently one renBTC is equal to about one Bitcoin. Additionally, the Ren project aims to provide flexibility so that renBTC can be transformed into any of the supported tokens on the platform without any hassle.
Did You Know?
renBTC is a direct competitor to Wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC), which has a similar concept.
