Cryptocurrency is a familiar word now and almost everyone is talking about it. Elon Musk, founder and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, said that "crypto is a far better way to transfer value than pieces of paper".
There are a lot of cryptocurrencies available in the market, with new currency coming out each day and old ones disappearing. But there are a few cryptocurrencies that are always in the limelight. We'll be going through the top 10 cryptocurrencies (by market capitalization) in this article.
Remember that the price of cryptocurrencies constantly fluctuates, and the facts and figures shown here are based on the market situation at the time of witting this article. Though, I'll try to keep this article up-to-date.
#1. Bitcoin (BTC)
Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency developed on top of blockchain technology and so far, it is in the first position. The basic idea behind inventing bitcoin is to cut-down the middleman and develop a decentralized peer-to-peer network; where everyone can participate and transfer their funds and the system also can be used as an alternative to the traditional banking system.
The concept of Bitcoin was introduced by Satoshi Nakamoto (an unknown group or a person) in 2008. Initially, bitcoin was not as popular as it is nowadays. Gradually everyone realized that bitcoin has the potential to change the traditional payment system, and then it became part of day-to-day life.
The price of a bitcoin in 2010 was $0.003 USD, then 2017 was the most volatile period where the price of bitcoin went up to $19,000 USD. The price of any cryptocurrency is dependant on demand and supply of that currency; as the total supply is fixed, bitcoin is still in high demand. Many big firms including Overstock, KFC Canada, Microsoft, Reddit, Subway, Shopify are accepting bitcoin payments.
Bitcoin price and market cap charts
#2. Ether (ETH)
The Ethereum blockchain is an open-source public blockchain, and it has enabled the end-user to run a custom code with its smart contract feature. Ethereum blockchain has its own cryptocurrency called Ether. Ether is the fuel of the network that uses it in the form of payment or execution fees of any transaction. The blockchain intentionally uses cryptocurrency to avoid wasteful code and remain chain healthy.
Ethereum was proposed by Vitalik Buterin in late 2013, then the team had launched an ICO in August 2014. At that time the initial price of ether was $0.31 USD. As per the market, the current rate of an Ethereum is around $139.06 USD. As per the historical data, in early 2018 ether price reached approx $1400 USD.
Ether price and market cap charts
#3. Ripple (XRP)
Ripple is also known as XRP coin or token and it is on the third position in terms of market cap. Ripple is an open payment network and an exchange for digital currency and has its own ledger where all transactions get settled. The basic aim of Ripple is to enable a secure and instant global financial network with lower transaction cost; meaning that you can send money to anywhere in the world just like information or an email. Unlike Bitcoin, Ripple is working with banks instead of avoiding them. So, some people believe that Ripple goes against cryptocurrency and they do not support Ripple.
Ripple was released in 2012 by Arthur Britto, David Schwartz, and Ryan Fugger. Fugger had developed a system called OpenCoin that later transformed into Ripple. Currently, many banks and institutions trusted Ripple including MUFG Bank, Standard Chartered, CIMB bank, SBI Remit, and more. Ripple is on the third position in a cryptocurrency list.
XRP price and market cap charts
#4. Litecoin (LTC)
Litecoin is an open-source, global payment network that runs fully decentralized. It is designed to be used in peer-to-peer transactions the same as bitcoin. However, it has a lot more technical improvements; and because of this, Litecoin can verify a number of transactions with lower fees compared to credit card companies and other digital payment processors.
Litecoin was created in October 2011 by Charlie Lee, while he was working with Google. He worked on the Litecoin project in his spare time and launched the Litecoin live network on October 13, 2011. As Lee described, Litecoin is not a competitor of bitcoin, it’s just another cryptocurrency that you can use for your daily bills.
Litecoin price and market cap charts
#5. EOS (EOS)
EOS is the native currency of the blockchain platform called EOS.IO and it's also known as “Ethereum Killer”. It is designed to be a very easy way for developers to create decentralized applications. Meaning that without messing up with much code; you can create your application easily, and that is the beauty behind the EOS platform.
Unlike Ethereum, transactions just for validation on EOS would not cost you anything, and that makes more sense. Let’s take an example of a blockchain-based decentralized singing platform. Would you like to pay every time to just sign the document? Of course not, in such cases, EOS Blockchain fits into the requirements.
EOS was launched in 2017. They had used Ethereum blockchain-based ERC20 tokens for its ICO. The interesting thing about an ICO of EOS is, they offered ICO for a whole year; from Jun 2017 to Jun 2018. Perhaps the intention behind the long term ICO is to stabilize the price and gain more recognition.
EOS price and market cap charts
#6. Bitcoin cash (BCH)
Bitcoin cash is a hard fork of the bitcoin and was created in August 2017 after debating it about a year. A group of developers wanted to increase the block-size of bitcoin and therefore they created a fork from the existing bitcoin blockchain. They have also defined that anyone who holds bitcoin will get the same amount of bitcoin cash units on the forked blockchain.
In other terms, bitcoin Cash is an upgraded version of the bitcoin core software. It’s faster, cheaper, and more reliable to use. There are many other advantages as well; with bitcoin cash, you can send low payments, like less than 10 cents. It is suitable for both small and large amounts of transactions. Also, transactions of bitcoin cash are faster than older Bitcoin core, and it has more transaction capacity.
Bitcoin vs bitcoin cash is still a debating point, some investors support Bitcoin cash whereas others are against it and they support the Bitcoin core.
BCH price and market cap charts
#7. Binance Coin (BNB)
Binance Coin is a product of the Binance exchange. Binance is one of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges in terms of trading volume. It supports more than 100 cryptocurrencies to trade. BNB coin is used to perform certain operations over the Binance exchange, such as exchange fees, withdrawal fees, and listing fees. The Binance team is providing a discount on fees if the user uses BNB coin to pay the fees.
Recently, Binance has launched its own chain called Binance chain. The market prediction says that the price of BNB coin will rise in the future.
BNB price and market cap charts
#8. Tether (USDT)
Tether is a cryptocurrency token issued by Tether limited and uses the Omni Protocol and ERC20 tokens. The idea behind Tether is to create a stable currency relative to the US dollar. So, if any organization or individual doesn't want to deal with the US dollar because it involves a lot of US law, they can instead use a cryptocurrency that is stable and has the same rate as the US dollar.
Tether reserves 100% of actual fiat currency in the user's account, meaning that if anyone deposits fiat money into their account; they will be able to issue the same amount of tethers, and that can be redeemed with US dollars in the future.
As a matter of transparency, the value of bank balance and reserves are published daily on Tether's website. Tether is a centralized currency, unlike Bitcoin or Ether. Tether bank has rights to give you access to redeem Tether or not; which made it a controversial cryptocurrency.
The current price of a Tether coin is around 1.1 USD and fluctuates over time. Here is the price chart of Tether.
Tether price and market cap charts
#9. Stellar (XLM)
Stellar is an open-source, decentralized platform for a digital currency supported by a nonprofit Stellar Development Foundation. The basic aim behind developing Stellar is to enable quick payments with low fees. Instead of using any other consensus algorithm like proof-of-work, stellar is using its own algorithm called “Stellar Consensus Protocol”. However, still, it claims decentralization, trust, and security. As it has faster confirmation timing, stellar can be used in remittances, mobile payments, micro-payments, and services for the under-banked.
Lumen (XML) is a native asset of Stellar. The stellar network launched 100 billion stellar in 2014; later in 2015, they have upgraded the network and changed the name of the native asset from Stellar to Lumen.
Before the official launch, stellar is launched as a “secret bitcoin project” by Jed McCaleb, founder of Mt. Gox and co-founder of Ripple in 2014. Later, the nonprofit stellar foundation created a collaboration with Stripe and received $3M USD from Stripe.
Stellar price and market cap charts
#10. Tron (TRX)
TRON (TRX) coin is the currency of a decentralized protocol project called Tron. The goal of the Tron protocol is to be a content distribution platform for the entertainment industry. By putting all the data on blockchains, Tron is attempting to create a global and free entertainment content ecosystem; where creator and consumer are the nodes of the Tron blockchain, and they can create, publish or use all the content with no cost like an Internet.
Tron is a young blockchain project though it's more popular nowadays. BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer file-sharing protocol, launched an ICO on the Tron network in Jan 2019.
Tron Foundation was created by Justin Sun in Sept 2017. Previously, the Tron token was created with ERC-20 standard and was circulated on Ethereum blockchain. Then in June 2018, the Tron team has launched its mainnet and migrated all the TRX tokens from Ethereum blockchain; this event is known as TRON independence day.
Tron price and market cap charts
References
- Wikipedia
- Respective blockchain products websites and their documentation
- Coinmarketcap
- Social media websites & discussion groups
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