Figure 1
(a) Rank-size plots. Evolution of the rank-size plot of the cryptocurrency market over time. The black dashed line represents the expected trend corresponding to the average Zipf’s power law distribution exponent \(\gamma \approx 1.71\). (b) Dominance of Bitcoin. The Bitcoin dominance is displayed as function of time with the red dashed line showing the asymptotic dominance derived from Zipf’s exponent. Note how the dominance fluctuates around its theoretical estimated value. The inset shows a comparison between the empirical dominance of the first \(M=1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64\) coins and the theoretical values; the red dashed line is the bisector of the quadrant. By considering a larger number of cryptocurrencies, the noise is attenuated and the adherence between theory and empirical data improves. Figures created with Matlab R2021a https://it.mathworks.com/products/matlab.html.
