The cryptocurrency market surpassed the barrier of \$100 billion market
capitalization in June 2017, after months of steady growth. Despite its
increasing relevance in the financial world, however, a comprehensive analysis
of the whole system is still lacking, as most studies have focused exclusively
on the behaviour of one (Bitcoin) or few cryptocurrencies. Here, we consider
the history of the entire market and analyse the behaviour of 1,469
cryptocurrencies introduced between April 2013 and June 2017. We reveal that,
while new cryptocurrencies appear and disappear continuously and their market
capitalization is increasing (super-)exponentially, several statistical
properties of the market have been stable for years. These include the number
of active cryptocurrencies, the market share distribution and the turnover of
cryptocurrencies. Adopting an ecological perspective, we show that the
so-called neutral model of evolution is able to reproduce a number of key
empirical observations, despite its simplicity and the assumption of no
selective advantage of one cryptocurrency over another. Our results shed light
on the properties of the cryptocurrency market and establish a first formal
link between ecological modelling and the study of this growing system. We
anticipate they will spark further research in this direction.

通过全面分析加密货币市场的历史，本文发现，虽然新加密货币不断出现、消失且市值在（超级）指数级上升，但市场的许多统计属性已经稳定多年。通过采用生态学视角，本文表明，虽然所谓的中性进化模型的假设是没有证据的，但它仍然能够在一定程度上再现市场的关键经验观察结果。