NOTE: I’m not a financial or legal advisor. I just have a passion for software technologies and believe in Blockchain’s future. However, I definitely don’t recommend you putting all your life savings in Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrencies.

In this post I will introduce the top 10 Crytpocurrenices by market capatlaization.

Bitcoin Bitcoin

Not only Bicoin holds the first place in market capitalization but is the first cryptocurrency. Created by Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin came to life in 2008. It is simply as indicated in Satoshi’s paper a “peer to peer cash system that would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.” Bitcoin was built using “blockchain”, which is a technology that helps prevent double spending. This is all powered by a distributed peer-to-peer network and crytpography. Instead of using a trusted central authority to validate all transactions, Bitcoin validates the transactions through its peer to peer network.

Ethereum Ethereum

The biggest value add of Ethereum is that it’s a Turing-complete “programmable blockchain” that allows developers to build all sorts of distributed apps (DApps) and technologies.

The Ethereum platform enabled many projects to raise capital for their own Ethereum-based projects through Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). ICO is used by startups to bypass the rigorous and regulated capital-raising process required by venture capitalists or banks. This use case increased Ethereum’s value, reaching around half of Bitcoin’s market cap in 2017.

Bitcoin Cash Bitcoin Cash

Bitcoin Cash is actually a fork of Bitcoin. A fork happens when a group of developers decide they don’t like the direction of the current software roadmap and then take the existing code and add their own improvements to it. This creates a separate version of the previous software with its own roadmap. In the case of Bitcoin Cash it was adding SegWit to allow cheaper transactions to address Bitcoin’s scalability problem.

Ripple Ripple

Ripple is a payment network that enables “secure, instant and nearly free global financial transactions of any size with no chargebacks.” Unlike most cryptocurrencies, it uses an iterative consensus process that makes it faster than the Bitcoin network, but may also leave it more exposed to attacks. Ripple has seen some success in convincing large financial institutions, including Japan’s largest banks, to test its blockchain and perhaps even implement it in the future.

Litecoin Litecoin

Litecoin (a fork of Bitcoin) was one of the very first “altcoins” to be created with the goal of being the “digital silver” to Bitcoin’s digital gold. It’s value add is faster transactions becasue it could generate blocks four times faster and have four times the maximum number of coins (84 million) than Bitcoin. It also one of the early coins that showed off the implemtation of SegWit and a different mining algorithm, called scrypt, compared to Bitcoin, which uses SHA256. This gives Litecoin a mining decentralization advantage because people only need GPUs to mine Litecoin, as opposed to Bitcoin, where ASICs are required these days for any sort of mining reward.

Cardano Cardano

Cardano is built by technology-focused developers and academics from multiple universities. On top of that, Cardano’s developers have formally verified some core components of the network, including its Proof of Stake(PoS), which should also drastically increase its security. The Ouroboros algorithm for PoS systems was also peer-reviewed by multiple cryptographers. Cardano’s developers have said that the protocol’s multi-layer architecture should allow for Bitcoin levels of privacy for users while also allowing regulator oversight on a per-app basis. Cardano also comes with its own “treasury” system, which the developers have said will ensure the sustainability of the protocol.

IOTA IOTA

IOTA is a cryptocurrency technology that targets the Internet of Things (IoT) and doesn’t use a blockchain in order to reduce the computational needs of the network and eliminate transaction fees. It also removes dedicated miners who are needed to verify transactions on most other cryptocurrencies. IOTA’s breakthrough ledger technology is called Tangle, wherein the Sender in a transaction is required to do a proof of work that approves two transactions. It also makes the system more decentralized because every user essentially becomes a “node” in the network.

Dash Dash

Dash is a more private version of Bitcoin that offers faster transactions leveraging the InstantSend technology, as well as anonymous transactions PrivateSend technology. It also has decentralized governance, which makes it the first decentralized autonomous organization.

NEM NEM

One of the things that sets the New Economy Movement (NEM) apart is its Proof of Importance algorithm(PoI). Unlike PoW, which requires miners to use significant processing power to get new coins, or PoS, which requires users to already own a certain amount of coins in order to get new ones, PoI actually encourages users to spend their coins. The PoI algorithm tracks a user’s transactions to determine how important that user is to the overall NEM economy.

Monero Monero

Monero is one of the private transactions-capable cryptocurrencies with the most active communities because of its open and privacy-focused ideals. Monero’s privacy is guaranteed by a ring signature algorithm, which means that the coins are “mixed” at the protocol level, which according to Monero developers, makes transactions “untraceable.” Monero’s coins are also fungible, which means there won’t be any way for an exchange or for vendors to block certain Monero coins. All Monero coins will be interchangeable with others.