The selection of Top 5 Cryptocurrencies is by market capitalization. Information is obtained from coinmarketcap.com (2017-10-28).
| Name | Symbol | Market Cap | Price | Volume (24h) | Circulating Supply | |
| 1 | Bitcoin | BTC | $96,632,901,225 | $5803.56 | $1,676,360,000 | 16,650,625 |
| 2 | Ethereum | ETH | $28,300,320,502 | $ 296.75 | $ 253,767,000 | 95,366,265 |
| 3 | Ripple | XRP | $ 7,797,357,811 | $0.202363 | $ 28,449,800 | 38,531,538,922 |
| 4 | Bitcoin Cash | BCH | $ 6,276,341,224 | $ 375.05 | $ 515,085,000 | 16,734,813 |
| 5 | Litecoin | LTC | $ 2,978,211,354 | $ 55.60 | $ 79,570,500 | 53,567,457 |
1.Bitcoin is currently the largest blockchain network.
| Founder | Hash Algorithm | Time-stamping | Notes |
| Satoshi Nakamoto | SHA-256d | POW | The first decentralized ledger currency. Cryptocurrency with the most famous, popular, notable and highest market capitalization. |
Bitcoin uses peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority or banks; managing transactions and the issuing of bitcoins is carried out collectively by the network. Bitcoin is open-source; its design is public, nobody owns or controls Bitcoin and everyone can take part. Through many of its unique properties, Bitcoin allows exciting uses that could not be covered by any previous payment system. https://bitcoin.org/en/
It is also the most traded cryptocurrency and one of the main entry points for all the other cryptocurrencies. The price is as unstable as always and it can go up or down by 10%-20% in a single day.
Bitcoin BTC is an SHA-256 POW coin with 21,000,000 total minable coins. What happens to Bitcoin after all 21 million are mined?
The block time is 10 minutes.
Bitcoin payment settle at 1+Hr.
USES:
(The form of digital asset exchange is Bitcoin BTC.)
1) As the fuel for operating the distributed application platform of Bitcoin and a form of incentive payment for those who mine the transactions into blocks.
2) Transfer of electronic cash (virtual currency), between peer to peer without the middle man, as a form of payment, like real life purchases, using cash.
3) In an uncertain economy, Bitcoin BTC, like gold has emerged as a possible financial staple of value.
4) Bitcoin BTC becomes an alternative investment asset class, for long term growth by some adventurous investors. More people, especially young people, are flocking to this space in numbers we have never seen before.
2.Ethereum
| Founder | Hash Algorithm | Time-stamping | Notes |
| Vitalik Buterin | Ethash | POW | Supports Turing-complete smart contracts. |
Ethereum is a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts: applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third party interference. https://www.ethereum.org/
These apps run on a custom built blockchain, an enormously powerful shared global infrastructure that can move value around and represent the ownership of property.
This enables developers to create markets, store registries of debts or promises, move funds in accordance with instructions given long in the past (like a will or a futures contract) and many other things that have not been invented yet, all without a middle man or counterparty risk.
The project was bootstrapped via an ether presale in August 2014 by fans all around the world. It is developed by the Ethereum Foundation, a Swiss nonprofit, with contributions from great minds across the globe.
Ethereum has traction, network effects and technical capabilities that has yet to be tapped. The real question is what can you do with Ethereum that you couldn’t already do before. It’s a solution in search of a problem.
Ethereum payment settle at 2+ minutes.
USES:
(The form of digital asset exchange is Ethereum ETH.)
1) As the fuel for operating the distributed application platform of Ethereum and a form of incentive payment for those who mine the transactions into blocks.
2) Transfer of electronic cash (virtual currency), between peer to peer without the middle man, as a form of payment, like real life purchases, using cash.
3) As a means to raise Fiat money in exchange of tokens, based in cryptocurrency ethereum, for funding DAO projects.
3.Ripple
| Founder | Hash Algorithm | Time-stamping | Notes |
| Chris Larsen & Jed McCaleb |
ECDSA | “Consensus” | Designed for peer to peer debt transfer. Not based on bitcoin. |
Ripple is a centralized system. It connects banks, payment providers, digital asset exchanges and corporates via RippleNet to provide one frictionless experience to send money globally.
Built on the most advanced blockchain technology that is scalable, secure and interoperates different networks.
100,000,000,000 XRPs were created when Ripple was founded. They will not make more or less. XRP is destroyed every time a transaction occurs on the network so the amount of XRP decreases over time.
It is a payment system specially designed for financial transactions between banks, payment providers and digital asset exchanges. It process and provide liquidity for payments on RippleNet, creating new, competitive cross-border payments services for their customers.
The XRP Ledger processes more than 1,000 transactions per second and can scale to the same throughput (average 2,000 transactions per second) as Visa, all in real-time.
Payment settle at 4 second.
Traditional Business – 3-5 Days.
USES:
(The form of digital asset exchange is Ripple XRP.)
1) As the fuel for operating the distributed application platform of RippleNet. It is supported by a community of trusted validators and a team of full-time engineers that actively develops and maintains the ledger.
2) Transfer of electronic cash (virtual currency), between peer to peer without the middle man, as a form of payment or exchange.
3) It acts as a bridge between fiat currencies as part of an overall network solution for faster cross-border payments.
4.Bitcoin Cash
| Founder | Hash Algorithm | Time-stamping | Notes |
| SHA-256d | POW | Hard fork from Bitcoin |
All Bitcoin holders as of block 478558 are also owners of Bitcoin Cash.
On Chain Scalability – Bitcoin Cash follows the Nakamoto roadmap of global adoption with on-chain scaling. As a first step, the blocksize limit has been made adjustable, with an increased default of 8MB. Research is underway to allow massive future increases.
New Transaction Signatures – A new SigHash type provides replay protection, improved hardware wallet security, and elimination of the quadratic hashing problem.
Emergency Difficulty Adjustment (EDA) – Responsive Proof-of-Work difficulty adjustment allows miners to migrate from the legacy Bitcoin chain as desired, while providing protection against hashrate fluctuations.
Decentralized Development – With multiple independent teams of developers providing software implementations, the future is secure. Bitcoin Cash is resistant to political and social attacks on protocol development. No single group or project can control it. The bitcoin-ml mailing list is a good venue for making proposals for changes that require coordination across development teams.
USES:
(The form of digital asset exchange is Bitcoin Cash BCH.)
1) As the fuel for operating the distributed application platform of Bitcoin Cash and a form of incentive payment for those who mine the transactions into blocks.
2) Transfer of electronic cash (virtual currency), between peer to peer without the middle man, as a form of payment, like real life purchases, using cash.
5.Litecoin
| Founder | Hash Algorithm | Time-stamping | Notes |
| Charles Lee | Scrypt | POW | The first cryptocurrency to use Scrypt as a hashing algorithm. |
Litecoin is a peer-to-peer Internet currency that enables instant, near-zero cost payments to anyone in the world.
Litecoin is an open source, global payment network that is fully decentralized without any central authorities. Mathematics secures the network and empowers individuals to control their own finances.
Litecoin features faster transaction confirmation times and improved storage efficiency than the leading math-based currency. With substantial industry support, trade volume and liquidity, Litecoin is a proven medium of commerce complementary to Bitcoin.
The Litecoin blockchain is capable of handling higher transaction volume than its counterpart – Bitcoin. Due to more frequent block generation, the network supports more transactions without a need to modify the software in the future.
As a result, merchants get faster confirmation times, while still having ability to wait for more confirmations when selling bigger ticket items.
Wallet encryption allows you to secure your wallet, so that you can view transactions and your account balance, but are required to enter your password before spending litecoins.
This provides protection from wallet-stealing viruses and trojans as well as a sanity check before sending payments.
Takes 2.5 minute time to generate a block.
Payment settle at 7.5 to 10 minutes.
USES:
(The form of digital asset exchange is Litecoin LTC.)
1) As the fuel for operating the distributed application platform of Litecoin and a form of incentive payment for those who mine the transactions into blocks.
2) Transfer of electronic cash (virtual currency), between peer to peer without the middle man, as a form of payment, like real life purchases, using cash.
Flash News (31-Oct-17): CME Group Inc. is planning to have Bitcoin Future Contracts listed in its exchange before end of this year – The implication is volatility of Bitcoin currency can be hedged! It addresses a major concern of Bitcoin’s usefulness as a stable stored currency.
CME Group Inc. (Chicago Mercantile Exchange & Chicago Board of Trade) is an American financial market company operating the world’s largest options and futures exchange.
If you would like to know whether you are ready for it, please read my recent post on “5 Tips To Trade Bitcoin Or Volatile Cryptocurrency”
For cryptocurrency starter, you may like to consider opening an account with Coinbase, a secure online platform for buying, selling, transferring, and storing digital currency.
Note:- If you buys or sells US$100 of digital currency or more through Coinbase using this link, you and your referral will both get US$10 worth of free bitcoin.
Disclaimer: This article should not be taken as, and is not intended to provide, investment advice. Please conduct your own thorough research before investing in any cryptocurrency.
If you’ve any comment, please drop me a note.
Thanks for dropping by.
Reuben Ong
[wpforms id=”410″]