The total market cap of public crypto stocks has quadrupled since January

The combined market cap of publicly-listed crypto firms has roughly quadrupled this year while the number of public digital asset firms has increased by 28% over the same period.

A new report from CoinShares estimates that public “cryptocurrency pure play companies” were worth roughly $25 billion at the start of the year, with mining firms and financial service providers representing the lion’s share of value.

While the report notes that 16 digital asset firms have gone public this year — increasing the number of public crypto companies to 57 public companies, the combined capitalization of said firms has skyrocketed to nearly $100 billion.

This year has already seen the greatest influx of public crypto firms out of any calendar year, followed by 2018 with 14. Just three firms went public during 2014, 2016 and 2017 respectively.

The report highlighted the April initial public offering (IPO) of leading U.S.-based centralized exchange Coinbase, describing the offering as “the first true large cap pure play in this sector.” 

Amid Coinbase’s April IPO, the capitalization of public digital asset firms surged to a record high of nearly $120 billion. By contrast, the sector’s combined market cap was less than $3 billion at the start of 2020.

The 15 public crypto exchanges now represent 62% of the sector’s combined capitalization at roughly $59 billion, followed by 19 financial services firms with nearly $20 billion and 20 mining companies with $10 billion.

Public mining firms have seen the strongest year-to-date (YTD) gains with 121% on average, followed by crypto financial services companies with 105% and exchanges with just 34%.

The crypto firms that went public in 2016 have enjoyed the largest gains in share price this year, posting an increase of roughly 140% on average. Then 2018’s cohort ranks second by YTD gains with 115% on average, followed by 2017 with approximately 110%, and 2019 with 95%.

2020’s firms are currently up by just 19% on average, with the report suggesting that “most of these companies were already floated at higher valuations.”

CoinShares also notes that the average capitalization of public crypto firms has increased dramatically this year from $1.1 billion in 2019 and 2020 to $3.8 billion.

Related: Reports suggest that a mainstream tech giant holds shares of Coinbase stock

The liquidity of public crypto stocks has also increased significantly this year, with most shares representing less than $500,000 in daily volume until the end of 2020.

While only two of 23 listed crypto firms were considered liquid at the end of the 2019, the figure jumped to 20 of 41 in December 2020, and 48 of 57 as of July 2021.