CoinDesk 20’s Latest Change Is the Biggest Yet

The collapse of terraUSD (UST) and luna (LUNC) has led to the biggest shakeup of the CoinDesk 20 since its start a couple of years ago. We have also decided to make a modification that gives a better indication of what’s happening in the market. Using data supplied from our friends at Kaiko, we’ve swapped out eight assets, the most changes the list has ever seen.

First the obvious: Algorithmic stablecoin terraUSD (UST) and its “balancer” coin, luna (LUNC), imploded back in May, depleting nearly $60 billion in the process. Now that have those coins become shadows of their former selves, the successor coin, also called luna (LUNA), pales in comparison.

Another change we’ve made was to take out stablecoins entirely from the CoinDesk 20. That doesn’t mean stablecoins aren’t an important part of the crypto ecosystem – far from it. Rather, it has to do with the fact that stablecoin prices – with the obvious exception of the luna fiasco – tend to stay around $1 and don't give an indication of where money is going daily within crypto. If anything, it’s more of an indicator of the general market; the higher the increase in stablecoin market cap, the more money that’s going into crypto.

Yet once turned into stablecoins, those funds then get traded into other assets. Thus, in a way, including stablecoins would be a form of double counting. Therefore, two major stablecoins, tether (USDT) and USD coin (USDC), were removed from the CoinDesk 20.

Four other assets were also taken out of the CoinDesk 20 because their trading volumes over the past two quarters didn’t measure up to other coins. The tokens of layer 1 blockchains Polkadot (DOT) and Loopring (LRC) didn’t make the cut this round, nor did the tokens of metaverse darlings Gala (GALA) and Decentraland (MANA).

The removal of stablecoins and luna meant that there were four available slots for new coins. The new entrants are old names familiar to those following the CoinDesk 20.

Litecoin (LTC) made a surprising return to the list. Privacy coins monero (XMR) and zcash (ZEC) are once again in the CoinDesk 20, as are tron (TRX), EOS (EOS), bitcoin cash (BCH) and algorand (ALGO). Decentralized finance's (DeFi) kava (KAVA) rounds out the latest additions to the group of cryptocurrencies we’re following closely.