According to coinmarkrise meaningetcap.com, there are 1465 existing cryptocurrencies at the moment of writing this article (22 January, 2018). I strongly doubt, that anybody in the world is acquainted with all of the above mentioned digital coins, and, frankly speaking, it is absolutely unnecessary. Most of them won’t last long, so there is no need to bother. But being interested only in two-three major cryptocurrencies is also a risky venture, that may lead to missing the possible profit by not investing in crypto that will go up in the future or even loss of existing funds if you don’t recognize in time the strong rival of digital coin you own. You have to keep your finger on the pulse and know at least 20–30 cryptocurrencies with largest market capitalization, brief information about which you find in the list below. So, let’s start!
1. Bitcoin (BTC)
Well, you know. Digital gold.
2. Ethereum (ETH)
Was created by young genius Vitalik Buterin, disappointed in centralized services after Blizzard removed the damage component from his beloved warlock’s Siphon Life spell in the World of Warcraft game. Boy wiped his tears and built an open-source, blockchain-based platform that enables developers to create their own cryptocurrencies and decentralized apps. Thanks to Vitalik’s sad adolescent experience we now have platform that opened the door for great innovations, providing at the same time cryptocurrency with the second-largest market cap among digital coins.
3. Ripple (XRP)
Ripple has a noble goal to make transfer of any currency or digital assets instant, seamless and cheap. With the recent announcement about partnership with MoneyGram we can say that project is on its way to make its idea real. Ripple coins are non-mineable, all of them have already been released, and no additional issue is possible.
4. BitcoinCash （BCH)
Hard fork of Bitcoin with increased block size and strong supporters including Roger Ver and Calvin Aire. Split crypto community into two groups — those who support Bitcoin Core and think that system were not designed to be changed and those who want to get larger block size and, as a result, higher speed. BitcoinCash aims to solve problems of Bitcoin technical limitations, and it’s doing well, taking fourth position in the list of cryptocurrencies with the largest market capitalization.
5. Cardano (ADA)
Launched in September 2017, Cardano represents 3rd generation of cryptocurrencies (with Bitcoin and early crypto being 1st and Ethereum with other smart contract tokens being 2nd). Was marketed during ICO, as “investment to retire on” mainly for Japanese investors (95% of buyers were Japanese). Cardano project’s team has designed secure proof of stake algorithm called Ouroboros. Ouroboros divides data into epochs and creates slot leaders in every epoch. Division into epochs make it possible for Cardano to maintain many chains of blocks for each slot, creating not a single chain, but consensus among groups of chains. Cardano has ambitious plans to solve main problems of most cryptocurrencies: interoperability, scalability and sustainability.
6. Litecoin (LTC)
Was released in 2011 by Charlie Lee, former Google employee. Designed as better and faster version of Bitcoin — often named “digital silver”. Unlike Bitcoin, allows instant, almost free transfers. An interesting fact — recently Charlie Lee announced in his Twitter account that he has sold and donated all LTC coins he owned to avoid conflict of interest and accusations that he releases or tweets news to affect the price of Litecoin and get personal benefit. Of course, everybody instantly accused him that doesn’t believe in his own cryptocurrency. When you are a creator of famous crypto, you can’t do anything without risk of being criticized. I suppose, if Charlie drinks a cup of coffee in the morning and tweets about it, omniscient Internet users will find something to accuse him of even in this innocent thing. Be strong, Charlie!
7. NEM (XEM)
Launched in 2015 by group of pseudonymous developers. NEM isn’t just another altcoin (all altcoin foundes swear that their crypto is not just another altcoin, but in some rare cases, like this one, it is true). NEM aims to build advanced blockchain. When coins were issued, they were distributed among members, and then were distributed by members to the community, there is no mining. Processing of transaction is the only way to earn NEM coins. NEM is the second-largest cryptocurrency used in Japan. NEM was written in Java and NEM’s supported full-fledged cryptocurrency NanoWallet was built with JavaScript and HTML. Thanks to being built with standard coding languages it can run on most platforms with a browser.
8. Stellar (XLM)
Founded in 2014 by creator of e-Donkey (and co-founder of the Ripple, by the way) Jed McCaleb. Open-source hybrid blockchain that enables cross-asset transfers of value. Opens possibility for low-cost payment all around the world. Runs as non-profit project. Stellar has a lot of common features with Ripple (including same creatory), but is built in more decentralized manner.
9. IOTA (IOT)
Launched in 2015 by David Sønstebø, Sergey Ivancheglo and few more developers with strange surnames, IOTA provides transactions between machines connected to Internet of Things. There are no fees for transactions (seriously, no at all) because all participants of system control the transactions themselves. While Bitcoin and Ethereum uses blockchain, IOTA uses created by itself new innovative protocol Tangle. With IOTA, machines and devices can make payments between themselves without any need of control — your fridge can order food and pay for it, while your house extinguishes an electricity bill.
10. Dash (DASH)
Released in 2014, based on improved Bitcoin software, offers private anonymous transactions. Bitcoin claims to be anonymous, but the truth is all transactions can be seen in Bitcoin blockchain and the sender or receiver of payment may be found out with enough effort. Dash uses mixing protocol thanks to which transactions can’t be traced.
To be continued…
We also want to remind that Bonpay has its own Bonpay Token/Coin (BON), that was released during successful Token Sale and now shows stable rise in price. BON is backed by Bonpay company — cryptocurrency service, that have thousands of clients all over the world, offering wallet for storing crypto funds and debit card for convenient and secure spending of them. BON is already listed and tradable on the largest cryptocurrency exchanges. Learn more in Bonpay Whitepaper.
