Bitcoin: The one that started it all. Bitcoin is the most widely traded cryptocurrency. It’s primary utility is as a investment vehicle and a value store.
Ethereum: If you ask most hardcore crypto heads they will tell you that Etheream is the future of the internet, that’s because Ethereum is not only a cryptocurrency but its is also a distributed computer network that allows programmers to host their software program on the blockchain. Ethereum is one of the few cryptocurrencies that is actually being used for everyday transactions. Although many of these transactions are currently in the gaming space like Crypto-kitties, there is much potential
Litecoin: Created as an alternative to bitcoin. Litecoin essentially cuts the amount of time it takes to confirm new transactions and also tweaks the way coins are mined to ensure anybody could participate. Litecoin has about 54 million coins in circulation.
Bitcoin Cash: bitcoin cash was created by a team of people who forked the bitcoin blockchain ledger. Bitcoin cash was created as some users where frustrated by high fees and slow processing times. Because Bitcoin Cash has a greater block size limit, its creators say the cryptocurrency has more capacity to handle transactions with lower fees and faster confirmations. On the other side of that reasoning, though, are the bitcoin loyalists who believe that increasing block sizes endangers the cryptocurrency’s decentralized nature. The biggest challenge facing Bitcoin Cash right now is adoption: For it to be valuable, it needs to convince businesses to accept both bitcoin AND the rival payment network. It also needs to convince miners to participate in the transaction-clearing process. Bitcoin cash has a market cap of 49 billion which is 3rd largest market cap behind bitcoin and ethereum. Bitcoin Cash grew 684% in 2017
Ripple: Is another coin which is growing fast in popularity, and is mostly used in b2b transaction. A cross between western union and a currency exchange, Ripple connects, banks, payment providers, digital asset exchanges and corporates via RippleNet to provide one frictionless experience to send money globally. Ripple has a market cap of $40.5 billion and grew 17,000% in 2017.
Monero: Monero is one of the fastest growing coins out there. It’s biggest appeal is anonymity. With monero the details of every transaction, including sender, receiver and size are recorded on a public ledger but obfuscated to make them untraceable. Monero really begun to gain popularity when developlers released software that allowed people to mine monero right in their web browser. People started to secretly embed the miner in their websites which meant overtime someone visited their site the visitors web-browser would be used to mine just a little bit more monero as an alternative to advertising.
Bitcoin Gold: is a hard fork of the bitcoin software. Infact if you owned bitcoin when bitcoin gold was released you also have an equivalent amount of Bitcoin Gold sitting somewhere on their blockchain. The goal of BTG is to become a better gold than Bitcoin. The chief way they have decided to do this is trying to solve miner centralization through a proof-of-work change. BTG is growing fast with a market cap of 4Billion within just 1 month of launch
Cardano: Billed as a competitor to Ethereum. Cardano was built by leading academics and engineers. Cardano, while still a relative unknown, is apparently big on private transactions as well as responding to the needs of regulators, making it primed for mass adoption. Cardano’s framework is still in its very early stages (what the team refers to as its “bootstrap era”), and the next phase in its road map is set to launch sometime in the second quarter of 2018. That means its framework is still being developed, and it may take time for it to reach the full-fledged smart contract platform its leaders envision.
IOTA: Iota is unique in that it has no fees and no miners. For every transaction you make, your processing power is used to validate two other transactions, making every iota owner also an iota miner. Iota is focused on being the backbone for secure machine-to-machine payments. The iota blockchain has achieved 3 major milestones: zero-cost transactions, offline transactions, and infinite scalability. Iota has a market cap of 9.7 billion and grew 446% in 2017
Dash: Dash is designed as an alternative to bitcoin to make transactions fast cheap and private. Formerly called darkcoin, dash has a self-funding structure that is unique among cryptocurrencies. When new dash are minted, 10% are set aside to improve the currency’s ecosystem. For example Dahs has planned to invest up to $1.2 million in Alt Thirty Six, a point-of-sale payment software for the marijuana industry. Dash power users vote to decide which projects are funded. Unlike Bitcoin, where miners do all of the work on the blockchain, Dash has a tier of super-users called “masternodes” who perform key functions like deciding which projects get funded and enabling private transactions on Dash. To become a masternode, you must buy at least 1,000 dash coins — as of December 2017, that buy-in price is nearly $1 million.When new coins are created, 45% of them go to miners, 45% go to masternodes, and 10% go to the network. Some critics say due to the tiered structure, dash is not a truly decentralized network. But the coin is growing. Dash has a market cap of 9.24 B and grew 8000% in 2017
