The Top 10 Most Valuable Cryptocurrencies

Bitcoin is the store of value that just won’t die and not only does it have nine lives, this store of value is at an all-time high. At the time of this writing, the value of Bitcoin pegged to the USD is valued at about 1,470 USD which is a far cry from what it was valued at during its inception.

What is interesting is that since the introduction of Bitcoin, other cryptocurrencies have been introduced to the market that have gained significant market share.
Some of these cryptocurrencies include Ethereum, Litecoin, Ripple, Monero to mention a few. In this blog post, we will be taking an in-depth look into some of the world’s most valuable cryptocurrencies.

1. Bitcoin

The only way you haven’t heard about Bitcoin is if you have been living under a rock for the past couple of years. This very controversial cryptocurrency was launched by Satoshi Nakamoto (Identity still unknown) on the 31st of October 2008. Since then it has been linked to everything from cybercrime to online drug peddling.

People in the know, however, saw the value of this amazing cryptographic invention as a store of value and its value has since taken off.
On 19 June 2011, a security breach of the Mt. Gox exchange led to the collapse of the price of Bitcoin, however, trust and confidence have been restored to the Bitcoin ecosystem and demand for the cryptocurrency has pushed the value of this cryptocurrency to all-time highs.

Considering only 21 million Bitcoins will ever be mined, coupled with the fact that demand is steadily rising, it will only make sense for one to postulate that the value of Bitcoins has nowhere to go but up. To find out more about Bitcoin please visit their official website at bitcoin.org

1. Ethereum

Most people have touted Ethereum as the next Bitcoin and rightfully so. Ethereum was co-founded by Vitalik Buterin, a 21-year-old Russian programmer at the time of Ethereum’s launch. Ethereum does differ from Bitcoin in that it is a decentralized application platform and not a unit of value.

In fact, according to the ethereum.org website; “Ethereum is a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts: applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of in downtime, censorship, fraud or third party interference.” The real store of value on the Ethereum platform are tokens known as “Ethers”.

Ethereum is simply a platform on top of which any application can be built. In fact, some of the decentralized applications built on the Ethereum platform include “The Vevue Project”, A virtual world called Etheria and a microblogging service called Eth-Tweet. To see more of the decentralized applications that have been built on the Ethereum network, you should check out this article written by the awesome folks at coindesk.

1. Litecoin

Where Ethereum differs from Bitcoin in that it is a decentralized application platform, Litecoin seeks to emulate Bitcoin. Litecoin is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency just like Bitcoin. It is licensed under the MIT/X11 license and just like Bitcoin is not managed by any one central authority.

However, unlike Bitcoin, whose creators identity remains unknown, Litecoin was invented by former Google employee Charlie Lee. Litecoin was a fork of Bitcoin’s source code but it differed from Bitcoin by having a decreased block generation time of “two and a half” minutes as opposed to Bitcoin’s 10 minutes.

This difference is one of the reasons why it was named Litecoin. Litecoin can be purchased or traded on most exchanges like Kraken. At the time of this writing, the value of 1 Litecoin pegged to the U.S. Dollar is $15.61.

1. Ripple

Founded by Arthur Britto, David Schwartz, and Ryan Fugger, Ripple is a real-time gross settlement system, a currency exchange, and a remittance network. It is similar to Ethereum in that the currency for the network are called Ripples and they are the actual store of value. 1 Ripple as at the time of this writing is equal to $0.053 and about 100 Billion Ripples were created at inception.

Some controversy was stirred up because the creators of the currency decided to keep 20 Billion Ripples for themselves with the justification that company founders usually keep a significant portion of company equity for themselves.

An uproar in the cryptocurrency community against the hoarding of Ripple by its founders has since led the founders of the currency to unload significant portion of their ripples to charitable organizations. To find out more about the Ripple network, please visit their site at ripple.com.

1. Monero

Most people think of Bitcoin as being an anonymous way of storing or transferring value from one party to another. The truth is that Bitcoin is not totally anonymous and parties with vested interests can trace the origin of a sender of Bitcoin.

Monero seeks to right Bitcoin’s privacy by creating a truly anonymous cryptocurrency. Monero is based on the CryptoNote protocol which aids it in obscuring it’s blockchain. Due to
Monero’s privacy, nefarious parties, and darknet markets have increasingly chosen it as their cryptocurrecy of choice. As a result of this increasing adoption, the market capitalization of Monero has skyrocketed to about $300 million.

1. Ethereum Classic (ETC)

For one to properly understand Ethereum Classic, we have to start at the DAO (distributed autonomous organization). In May 2016, an ambitious crowdfunding project named the DAO was instantiated on the Ethereum Block chain.

It was supposed to be an investor directed venture capital fund that was autonomous, it had no management structure or board of directors and the project was able to raise $150 M, which at the time was the largest crowdfunding raise in history.

By June 2016, hackers had exploited a vulnerability in the project’s code and they were able to steal a significant portion of the project’s funds.
A debate soon ensued on how to get investor money back. Some people wanted to rewrite the code of Ethereum Block chain to be able to get investor money back while some wanted to ensure the immutability of the Blockchain.

By the way, Blockchain immutability happens to be one of the holy grails that govern the ability of Cryptocurrencies to exist. A decision was made to retrieve the funds by a hard fork of Ethereum’s source code and this led to two block chains.

The unaltered original block chain now termed Ethereum classic and the forked version simply named Ethereum. The tokens that carry value on Ethereum are known as Ethers while the those on Ethereum classic are designated as ETC. As at the time of this writing ETCs pegged to the U.S. Dollar are worth about $6.77.

1. Dash

Dash is an open source peer to peer cryptocurrency much like Bitcoin, however, its core characteristics include fungibility, instant transactions, and privacy. Originally called Darkcoin or Dash, it uses a chained hashing algorithm called X11 for its proof of work.
The currency was introduced on the 18th of January, 2014.

The creator and lead developer of Dash were Evan Duffield. After initial road bumps in the development of the currency, it was able to solve it’s growing pains and now has a market capitalization of about $500 M. It can be traded on exchanges like Poloniex, Kraken, Shapeshift and Bitfinex.

1. ZCash

Privacy is at the forefront of the creation of Zerocash. Like Bitcoin, Zcash has a total supply of 21 million units. Even though Zcash transactions are published on a blockchain, the sender, receiver, and amount sent all remain anonymous.

As with most cryptocurrencies, Zcash also had a fork of its original blockchain known as Zclassic. However, unlike, Ethereum classic, Zclassic is more or less dead on arrival as no known programmers or scientists are working on it.

The fork of the original blockchain was as a result of the hefty mining tax of 20% that the founders of the cryptocurrency placed on its miners.

1. Golem

Dubbed the “Airbnb of computing”, Golem is simply a super computer anyone can access. The Golem network is made up of the combined computing power of user’s machines, personal laptops, or even datacenters logged onto the network.

The Golem network is more or less a decentralized sharing economy of computing power where anyone on the network can make money renting out their computing power or by developing and selling software.

An Ethereum-based transaction system clears payments between providers, requestors and software developers. 1 GNT as at the time of this writing is equal to 0.20 USD

1. Augur
   Augur is a prediction market platform that rewards a user for correctly predicting events. Prediction markets allow users to purchase and sell shares in the outcome of an event. Augur seeks to disrupt the prediction markets by simply decentralizing them.

This lessens the possibility of manipulation, errors or mistakes in those predictions. For more on Augur visit their website at Augur.net