What are the biggest determinants of cryptocurrency prices?

Supply and demand is the most important determinant of cryptocurrency prices.

This is a basic economic principle. If a cryptocurrency has a high token supply with little demand from traders and users, then the cryptocurrency’s value will drop. Conversely, if the supply of a particular cryptocurrency is limited and the demand is high, then the value of the coin will increase.

This is linked to the scarcity element that drives up prices and is one of the factors that saw the price of Bitcoin climb to its highest levels. The supply of Bitcoin is capped at 21 million BTC — which is relatively low compared to other tokens — while the demand has soared in recent years.

The media or public sentiment also has a big influence over the price of cryptocurrencies. If a token or platform gets some negative publicity, you would generally see the price of that coin take a dip. While, if the same coin were to get high profile support and good media coverage, the price would almost certainly increase. This means prices are heavily influenced by human emotion and hype.

Other factors that have a big bearing on the price include the level of token utility — i.e., how useful is the token — and the underlying blockchain platform in solving a real-world problem, while the mining difficulty of proof-of-work (PoW) tokens could also dictate the value — i.e., a higher mining difficulty would mean it is more difficult to increase the supply of the coin and cause upward pressure on the price when demand is high.