The top 10 most popular cryptocurrencies of early 2020

Three years ago, about 800 cryptocurrencies were included in the Coinmarketcap rating, their total amount reach the mark of 5000 to date. The most popular coins, which deserve the attention of the experts and investors are in the TOP, the ones that had fallen short of expectations inevitably drop out of the list. Since 2017, the crypto rating was under constant change, so now it has both old-timers and ambitious newcomers.

On analytical resources, such as Coinmarketcap, the principle of the ratings compilation is based on cost and capitalization of a coin. Digital assets from the TOP-10 do not need additional presentation, so these indicators are more likely a statement of a certain market position, evidence of reliability and availability of prospects. So what does the TOP 10 cryptocurrencies look like at the beginning of May 2020?

BTC

Bitcoin is the absolute and permanent leader of the rating. Today it is still the most famous and most expensive cryptocurrency in the world. Over the 11 years of its existence, the coin managed to survive a period of rapid growth, which was marked by a maximum cost of BTC ($20,000 per 1 coin) and disappointment in this cryptocurrency, and a certain renaissance we are currently witnessing.

Today, despite the existence of thousands of other digital assets, the very concept of cryptocurrency is still largely associated with Bitcoin. Its market share exceeds 60 percent, its capitalization is about 140 billion dollars, and its rate was able to fix on comfortable values of 8–9 thousand dollars.

The total BTC issue accounts for 21 million coins, and 18 million of them have already been mined.

ETH

Since its introduction in 2015, Ethereum has rapidly became popular due to the presence of smart contracts — a strict algorithm that monitors the implementation of the commitments. In addition, the Ethereum platform made it easy to create new digital tokens. This circumstance led to the fact that the majority of all ICOs launched in 2017–2018 were built on the Ethereum blockchain.

Today, ETH is strongly positioned as a second cryptocurrency with a capitalization of $21 billion and good prospects for its further increase, since several important updates are scheduled for the Ethereum network in 2020, including the transition to ETH 2.0 and the Proof of Stake mining algorithm.

XRP

Ripple (XPR) is often criticized for its centralization, but this does not prevent the cryptocurrency from holding itself firmly in the TOP-3. What is the reason of it? The XPR coin was created to be used by the banking community as an alternative to the interbank transfer system SWIFT. Ripple product turned out to be quite competitive and popular due to the ability to conduct very fast transactions with minimal fees.

Anyway, Ripple cannot be called a full-fledged cryptocurrency — the XRP emission is controlled by the company of the same name, and most of the coins (61%) are also holding by the corporation. This coin is not decentralized.

Tether

Tether (USDT) is a crypto asset, which is built on the Bitcoin blockchain using the Omni Layer protocol. Each USDT block is supported by the US dollar (however, the coin can also be integrated with the Japanese yen or euro). The coin solves one of the most acute problems of the entire cryptocurrency market — it smooths high volatility. With the help of stablecoins, it is much more convenient to put cryptocurrency into exchanges and withdraw fiat money from them.

Of course, there are many similar coins besides Tether, but it is still the most popular and well-known stablecoin.

BCH

Bitcoin Cash is a fork of Bitcoin, which was created in 2017, when the network of the world’s first cryptocurrency was divided into two parts. The reason for this was the congestion of the main Bitcoin network and the refusal of some developers to accept the SegWit2x protocol, which was created to solve accumulated problems. As a result, they got two cryptocurrencies instead of one.

The BCH fork occurred at the block number 478558. Since then, Bitcoin cash has firmly entered the TOP 10 cryptocurrency rating, and now its capitalization exceeds $4.5 billion.

BSV

Bitcoin SV is a fork of Bitcoin cash, which was born due to the fact that some developers could not coordinate among themselves to identify further ways for system’s development. As a result, BCH and BSV are direct competitors now. Moreover, BCH market capitalization is ahead of BSV by almost a billion dollars.

LTC

Litecoin is also a fork of bitcoin. It has an open code, which makes it possible for everyone to create new cryptocurrencies based on it. The coin was conceived as an alternative to an overloaded and slow bitcoin, which also had problems with scalability. The size of the litetcoin block is 4 times larger than the BTC’s one, the transaction confirmation speed is 4 times faster, the amount of issued coins is two times higher, but despite this, the capitalization of litecoin is 47 times lower comparing with the №1 cryptocurrency.

BNB

BNB is the coin of the largest cryptocurrency exchange (Binance), the main purpose of which is to reduce transaction fees. It is noteworthy that the issuer regularly “burns” a part of the tokens, thereby pushing its rate to growth. NBN entered the TOP-10 cryptocurrency rating in 2019 and currently takes the 8th place with a token price of $16.5 and a capitalization of $ 2.5 billion.

EOS

This cryptocurrency is considered to be the prime competitor of Ethereum. Its platform also supports smart contracts and provides the ability to create new tokens. Over the past few years, EOS has been consistently included in the TOP-10, but could not really get closer to ETH. EOS capitalization is 9 times less, whereas the price of ETH is 65 times more!

XTZ

Today, Tezos is a newcomer to the TOP-10, but if it continues to grow unabated (+ 1100 percent over the past 14 months), then it will be quite possible for it to reach the top 5, or even the top 3 of the rating.

Tezos raised $230 million during the ICO in 2017, the network was launched a year later. The main difference between XTZ and the majority of other cryptocurrencies is that the project works on the principle of Proof of Stake. Accordingly, the labor costs of mining new coins can not be compared to bitcoin mining. In addition, owners of large XTZ wallets can receive passive income in the amount of 5–6 percent from storing their tokens on large exchanges.

Bitcoin is still able to maintain a dominant position on the cryptocurrency market. It simply has no real competitors in popularity, capitalization, or in the volume of daily trading. Many market experts agree that BTC is the most reliable coin among other cryptocurrencies.