Infographic: 2021: Year of the Cryptocurrency (2024)

Dogecoin may have been grabbing the headlines over the past few weeks, but it's not just been an astonishing year of growth for what started out as a meme - 2021 is fast turning into the year of the cryptocurrency.

As this infographic shows, when comparing the 7-day average price with CoinDesk data from the end of 2020 to the most recent period in 2021, there has so far been very strong growth in value for a number of the higher profile cryptocurrencies. There have of course been fluctuations between January and May, some quite wild, but the overall trend for these coins, and plenty of others too, has been firmly upwards.

Despite having the lowest value of all currencies featured here, those aforementioned headlines have certainly been justified by astonishing growth of 7,555 percent up to May 4. Maker, currently valued at around $6,000 compared to Dogecoin's 55 cents, has seen a price increase of 760 percent having hovered below the $600 mark up to the end of last year.

It's a similar story for the other currencies here, including the most valuable crypto in the world, Bitcoin. Its explosion in value in 2021 can find its roots in October 2020, therefore the growth we see in this focus on 2021 is only really the tip of the iceberg. When counting from the first 7 days of October, Bitcoin has since grown by 426 percent.