With what seems to be a million tokens and coins all claiming to be the same crypto currency, we ourselves needed some understanding what seperated them. A very fun blog to investigate indeed.Highly functional to the investor, crypto novice, curious mind, or those who often hear of the benifit of blockchain, but fail to discern the unique contrabution of each currency and how they evolve from niche markets. This is a effort to associate the claims with the names, and lift the fog.
Bitcoin : Most renown and widly accepted, Bitcoin is designed to make global transactions possible and boost financial inclusion. Moreover, thousand of merchants all over the world have started accepting bitcoin payments, both in the online and offline world.
Ethereum : Ethereum focuses on the technical side of blockchain development, including native tokens, smart contracts, and decentralized applications. It is possible all of these features will come to bitcoin in the future, but it is good to have some competition among cryptocurrency ecosystems.
Litecoin: Market cap, as of Jan. 3: $13.95 billion, Performance over last 12 months, as of Jan. 3: +6,025%. Who created it? Former Google GOOGL, -2.53% employee (and now notable star in the crypto universe) Charlie LeeThe skinny: Litecoin has been described as the silver to bitcoin’s gold. Created by Lee back in 2011, it’s billed as an alternative to bitcoin. Without getting too wonky, Lee essentially aimed to cut the amount of time required to confirm new transactions and tweak the way bitcoin was being mined to ensure anybody could participate. “My vision is people would use Litecoin every day to buy things. It would just be the payment method of choice,” Lee once said.Litecoin is also designed to produce more coins — it has an 84 million coin limit, versus bitcoin’s 21 million. About 54 million coins are currently in circulation, versus bitcoin’s current 16.7 million circulating supply. Litecoin offers a different mining algorithm and faster transactions. Interestingly enough, there are some development similarities between bitcoin and litecoin. Segregated Witness, for example, may very well activate on the litecoin network first before it will go into effect among bitcoin users. Litecoin is accepted as a payment solution in various places, although it is nowhere near bitcoin’s level of acceptance.
Bitcoin Cash: Market cap: $45.61 billion, Performance in 2017 (since start of trading in July): +623%. Who created it? Bitcoin Cash was created by a team of people who forked the bitcoin blockchain ledger. It is now controlled by multiple independent teams of developers. The skinny: Bitcoin Cash is among the newest of the cryptocurrencies, developed in August of 2017 as a hard fork of bitcoin. What’s that? Essentially a new version of bitcoin that’s incompatible with bitcoin. Bitcoin Cash was created as some users were 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 philosophical divide between bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash was aptly described by Forbes as “Cypherpunk Vs. Silicon Valley.” 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. In mid-November, Bitcoin Cash briefly topped Ethereum’s market cap to become the second-most valuable crypto. Since then it’s fallen back into third place. Its circulating supply is currently at 16.8 million, out of a maximum supply of 21 million.
Ripple : Market cap: $95.45 billion, Performance in 2017: +41,040%. Who created it? Web developer Ryan Fugger, businessman Chris Larsen and programmer Jed McCaleb. The skinny: Former bitcoin developers launched software company Ripple in 2012 and its digital currency, XRP, is seen by some industry types as bitcoin’s logical successor.The New York Times once described Ripple as “a cross between Western Union and a currency exchange, without the hefty fees” because it’s not only a currency, but also a system on which any currency, including bitcoin, can be traded. “Ripple connects banks, payment providers, digital asset exchanges and corporates via RippleNet to provide one frictionless experience to send money globally,” its creators explained. Ripple has licensed its blockchain technology to over 100 banks. And a new hedge fund recently announced it would be denominated in XRP. Its CEO recently told Fortune: “We’re not anti-bank, we’re not antigovernment, we’re not anti-fiat currency. For a while that took conviction to stay the course in the face of the more libertarian elements of crypto.”The XRP circulating supply is currently about 38.7 billion out of a maximum supply of 100 billion… which is A LOT more than the rest of the cryptos on this list. Although many have quite contrasting opinions regarding Ripple, one cannot ignore the benefits it brings to the table. Unlike other cryptocurrencies, Ripple is not about speculation, but strongly focuses on transactional utility. Dozens of banks around the world are looking at Ripple to improve their transactions and other day-to-day operations moving forward. Over the past few days, Ripple’s XRP token saw its price increase significantly due to a new banking partnership.
Next : launched in November 2013 by anonymous software developer BCNext. NXT was created without announcing any ICO (Initial coin offering) with total 1,000,000,000 coins amount. On 28 September 2013 Bitcointalk.org member BCNext created a forum thread announcing the proposed launch of Nxt as a second generation cryptocurrency and asking for small bitcoin donations to determine how to distribute the initial stake. It uses proof-of-stake to reach consensus for transactions—as such there is a static money supply and, unlike bitcoin, no mining. Nxt was specifically conceived as a flexible platform around which to build applications and financial services. It has an integrated Asset Exchange (comparable to shares), messaging system and marketplace. Users can also create new currencies within the system. The last major release enabled Multisignature capabilities and a plugin-system for the client. Just as with bitcoin, the blockchain is at the core of this currency. But Nxt is written completely from scratch, and has departed in several ways from existing cryptocurrencies. Most notably, in one of his founding statements, BCNext asked the community not to consider the NXT coin as the important part, but rather to create currencies on top of it– possibly devaluing the core currency. Nxt is coded in Java. Nxt was the first currency to rely purely on proof-of-stake for consensus. Allowing a block creation rate of roughly one minute. The standard client works as a brain-wallet: Instead of storing keys in a cryptocurrency wallet file, security works via a secret passphrase. This means it can be accessed from any instance of the Nxt software.
Cabenero : Market cap: $20.21 billion, Performance in 2017 (since start of trading in October): +3,296%. Who created it? Blockchain developer Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK) Tung believes that “this next-gen platform has the right team, dedication and money to create a real contender to Ethereum.”The Cardano blockchain just launched a few months ago and exploded on the scene with massive gains in its coin, called Ada, in November to break into the top 10 cryptos in terms of market cap. At latest check it had slipped down to No. 13. The project began in 2015 and billed itself as the first blockchain network backed by a “scientific philosophy” and built by leading academics and engineers through peer-reviewed research. 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. Its CEO, Charles Hoskinson, says that Cardano tackles issues of “sustainability, interoperability and scalability” so that cryptocurrency can go from a “fun novelty” to something that could be used by billions of people and interface with legacy financial systems. 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.About 26 billion out of a maximum 45 billion coins are currently in circulation.
Particle : Date of Launch: 2013-12-31 , Forked from: Bitcoin. Total Number of Coins: 1,000,000,000. Particle (PRT) is a decentralised open-source cryptocurrency forked from Bitcoin in late 2013. The project’s key differentiator in the cryptocurrency market is its advanced wallet technology. Unlike most altcoins that are simple clones of Bitcoin-Qt with a few parameter changes, Particle has set to develop a unique wallet with a number of user-friendly features. Code-named “BitParticle” and written in C#, the wallet offers a modern user interface, with additional functionality available through plugins. Particle’s other interesting feature is its enhanced transaction security that uses six different hashing algorithms during its 9-pass hashing process.
Dash : The main thing that Dash does is providing its users with additional privacy. The network of Dash Masternodes provides these services, while also incentivizing users to not spend their wallet balance. Additionally, Dash is making quite an impact in the point-of-sale industry, through strategic partnerships. All things considered, Dash provides a valuable service to people looking for those specific traits.
Monero : Market cap: $5.95 billion, Performance in 2017: +2,596%. Who created it? Much like bitcoin, Monero’s creator is anonymous. The skinny: The appeal of Monero? Anonymity. With Monero, the details of every transaction, including sender, receiver and size, are recorded on a public ledger,but are obfuscated to reportedly make them untraceable. Use Monero, and, in theory, there’s no way for anyone else to connect the dots between the sender, receiver or size of the transaction. Sound like an appealing coin to cybercriminals? It is. The hackers behind the global ransomware incident WannaCry, which infected 230,000 computers running Microsoft Windows, demanded payments in Monero. That said, there are many more cases recorded of hackers demanding bitcoin, and Monero’s backers say the coin’s biggest use cases aren’t illicit. It would appeal, they say, to corporations who want to move money around without competitors knowing, or to anyone who simply doesn’t want their balance and transactions made public, such as someone doing business in a foreign country who doesn’t want to become a target. Monero recently said 45 musicians, including Lana Del Ray, Sia and Dolly Parton, will be accepting Monero. Many will even offer discounts to those who pay with it. There are about 15.5 million XMR in circulation, and, unlike bitcoin and Litecoin, Monero doesn’t have a fixed coin supply. When it comes to finding anonymous cryptocurrencies, one has to look well beyond bitcoin and others. Monero is leading the charge in the anonymity race due to some innovative concepts. Monero has also been embraced by darknet markets because it provides privacy and anonymity one cannot find in bitcoin. Other use cases for Monero are somewhat limited, though.
Reddcoin: Reddcoin is dedicated to one thing – tipping on social networks as a way to bring cryptocurrency awareness and experience to the general public.
Dodgecoin: Introduced as a “joke currency” on 6 December 2013, Dogecoin quickly developed its own online community and reached a capitalization of US$60 million in January 2014. The currency has gained traction as an Internet tipping system, in which social media users grant Dogecoin tips to other users for providing interesting or noteworthy content.
Monacoin: MonaCoin is quite popular among JPY traders. It is listed on the Zaif exchange, where it can be traded against Bitcoin as well. MonaCoin was also one of the altcoins successfully activating SegWit before Litecoin did.
Neo: Market cap: $5.86 billion, Performance in 2017: +83,570%, Who created it? Da Hongfei , CEO of Onchain and blockchain evangelist in China, along with co-founder Erik Zhang. The skinny: Tung predicts Neo, dubbed the “Ethereum of China,” will explode if China eases its stance on ICOs and bitcoin. Ethereum is the clear No. 2 behind bitcoin in terms of market cap at $61 billion. So Neo obviously has a long way to go. Founder Da Hongfei recently went on CNBC to soothe fears about cryptos getting overheated. “I would say that there is a bubble in this industry, but would say it’s OK,” he said. “Every technology that is so disruptive — there’ll definitely be bubbles, like the train or the automobile.” Neo has been around since 2014, when it was called “Antshares.” Yes, it’s been changed to reference the Matrix. NEO’s circulating supply is currently at 65 million, out of a total of 100 million coins.
Iota: Market cap: $11.10 billion , Performance in 2017 (since start of trading in June): +525%. Who created it? David Sønstebø, Sergey Ivancheglo, Dominik Schiener, and Dr. Serguei Popov, a team of entrepreneurs, mathematicians and developers. The skinny: lota’s big draw is that it doesn’t have any trading fees, miners or blocks. For every transaction you make, your processing power is used to validate two other transactions, making every Iota owner also an Iota “miner.” Essentially, Iota focuses on becoming the backbone for secure machine-to-machine payments in the Internet of Things economy and is unique in that it is hailed as the first crypto created without the use of a blockchain. Instead, it is based on a distributed ledger architecture called “The Tangle,” an innovation that is credited for allowing Iota to achieve three major crypto milestones: zero-cost transactions, offline transactions, and infinite scalability. Word of its latest partnership with Microsoft just gave it a big boost and propelled it into the top tier of the most valuable cryptos. The maximum supply of MIOTA is just under 2.8 billion, and the entire maximum supply is currently in circulation.
