As more people get involved in bitcoin and make money off it, a portion of them will start dabbling in alternative cryptocurrencies, often called "altcoins."
The largest U.S. exchange, Coinbase, now offers three cryptocurrencies. (Until last year, it only offered bitcoin.) Those three are...
Bitcoin
Litecoin
And Ethereum.
And while bitcoin is grabbing all the headlines, the altcoin market is doing even better.
There are now 15 coins with market caps of more than $1 billion. A year ago, there was just a single coin valued in the billions, and that was bitcoin - it was valued at $768 per coin with a market cap of $12 billion.
The price of Litecoin has risen from $3.92 to more than $96.
In the last year, Ethereum has soared from around $7 to more than $428. It's now the second-largest coin by market capitalization (total value of all coins).
A year ago, the total value of all cryptocurrencies was around $14 billion, with bitcoin making up $12 billion of that. Today the overall cryptocurrency market is worth $426 billion, with bitcoin accounting for $302 billion of that.
Do the math... Altcoins are rising much faster than bitcoin alone.
As I often say, there's room for dozens, if not hundreds, of long-term winners in this space. Remember, we're talking about building an entirely new financial ecosystem here.
Now hundreds of teams are racing to build the next big coin. Competition can do wonders in a market this large and fast-growing.
Many of the best coders on the planet have been attracted to the cryptocurrency space by the world-changing mission (and the money).
It's all happening. Right now.
And no, it's not too late to get involved. We are still so, so early. If you're worried about buying at an all-time high, I recommend "averaging in." By that I mean buy the same amount of cryptocurrencies at regular intervals over time. Just keep in mind that bitcoin has always had sharp corrections.
