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Crypto Currencies are all the rage in the digital investing world now a days. They are a form of monetary exchange that uses strong cryptography in order to make sure the financial transactions are secure, control the creation of new units, and to continuously verify unit transfers. There are a lot of different factors that are important as to whether the crypto currencies community adopts new digital assets. Some people have mastered them and become crypto currency millionaires and billionaires. Check out below for the top 10 crypto currencies in use today and why people are investing in them.
#10: NEM
The lead developer of the new cryptocurrency NEM developed it in order “to rectify some of the problems with not only the world economy, but also with other cryptocurrencies. One of the problems is of course distribution of wealth.”[1]coin telegraph – NEM Launches, Targets Old Economy with Proof-of-Importance
NEM gives people users direct control over the transfer of information and value to other people. It uses a proof-of-importance model as opposed to a proof-of-work or proof-of-stake one. In a proof-of-work model, such as the one Bitcoin uses, it comes at a high cost of resources such as electricity. This means that the people who are rich enough to afford the hardware in order to do the computations just get richer. The proof-of-stake model improves on the proof-of-work model in that it only requires you to know the balance. This means that you do not need to use as much resources. However, it still rewards the rich. The proof-of-importance model improves on both of the previous models because it rewards people who actively participate in the cryptocurrency market.
NEM has a circulating supply of almost 9 billion XEM. At its current exchange rate, NEM has a market cap value of around $1.7 billion US.
#9: EOS.IO
EOS.IO is one of the top crypto currencies on the market today. It is a decentralized application hosting, smart contract capability, and decentralized storage enterprise solution. It aims to solve the scalabitilty, usability, and flexibility issues of other large crypto currencies such as Ethereum and Bitcoin.[2]eosio In addition, it also eliminated the fees for all of its users. NEW also wants to be the first world wide decentralized operating system.
EOS.IO uses a proof-of-stake timestamping scheme. As of May 1, 2018, it has a circulating supply of 828,948,913. At an exchange rate of $12.36 per share, EOS.IO has a market cap value of around $11 billion.
#8: Litecoin
Charles Lee, a former Google software engineer, developed Litecoin as better version of Bitcoin.[3]wired – EX-GOOGLER GIVES THE WORLD A BETTER BITCOIN Litcoin does several things in order to improve the crypto currencies experience.
- It produces 4 times the number of coins than Bitcoin. This is in order to make sure that it does not become too expensive due to its scarcity.
- Litcoin is quicker at doing transactions.
- It discourages high volume small value transactions that currenetnly plague Bitcoin.
- Litcoin also make mining coins online much easier as the computational power is not as great as other crypto currencies.
Litecoin uses a proof-of-work timestamping scheme. As of June 6, 2018, it has a circulating supply of 56,851,198 LTC; however, its max supply is 84,000,000 LTC. Currently Litecoin has a market cap value of around $6.9 billion US.
#7: NEO
NEO is one of the most popular crypto currencies in the world today. It is a both a cryptocurrency and blockchain platform that builds decentralized and scalable networks of applications. As such, users can use multiple different programming langues such as C++ and Javascript on it.
NEO is similar to Ethereum, another big player on the crypto currencies market, in many ways. The biggest difference is that NEO’s developers made it with a very specific purpose in mind, to help enable and start a smart economy.[4]hackernoon – NEO versus Ethereum: Why NEO might be 2018’s strongest cryptocurrency
As of March 6, 2018, NEO has a circulating supply of 65 million; however, its supply limit is 100 million. Currently NEO has a market cap value of around $2.4 billion US, making it one of the largest crypto currencies in the world.
#6: Stellar
In early 2014, Jed McCaleb and Joyce Kim founded Stellar. They started it as an open source protocol for exchanging value in order to help nonprofit organizations, particularity in developing countries, with their finances. The Stellar platform allows these companies to “move money across borders quickly, reliably, and for franctions of a penny.”[5]stellar
As of July 2018, Stellar has a circulating supply of 18.7 billion XLM; however, its max supply is over 104 billion XLM. Currently it has a market cap value of around $3.86 billion US.
#5: Cardano
Charles Hoskinson, former co-founder of Ethereum and BitShares developed Cardano with the company, Input Output Hong Kong. Cardano uses a distributed computing platform to run the Ada cryptocurrency. Coming form the scientific research field, the platform is completely open source and looks to bring the most advanced features to crypto currencies.[6]cardano
As of June 20, 2018, Cardano has a circulating supply of 25.9 billion units; however, its max supply is 45 billion units. At the current exchange rate of $0.162477 per unit, it has a current market cap value of around $4.21 billion US.
#4: Bitcoin Cash
Bitcoin Cash’s goal is to fulfill Bitcoin’s original promise of peer-to-peer electronic cash. It promises the following things to help users and merchants around the world.
- Fast transaction speeds that can be done in seconds.
- A reliable network.
- Low fee cost structure for literally pennies on the dollar.
- Easy to use system with no hassle for everyone involved.
- A stable system.
- The most secure blockchain crypto currencies technology in the world.[7]bitcoin cash
Bitcoin Cash uses a proof-of-work timestamping scheme. Its max supply is 21,000,000 BCH. Ast of April 20, 2018, Bitcoin Cash has an exchange rate of $1,075.28 US. This comes to a market cap value of around $18.36 billion US.
#3: Ripple
The Ripple company created Ripple as a currency exchange and real-time gross settlement system. It uses a distributed open source protocol and consensus ledger to help secure itself. In fact, according to many companies and banks, “distributed ledgers like the Ripple system have a number of advantages over cryptocurrencies like bitcoin.”[8]American Banker – Banks Can Cherry-Pick the Best Bits from Bitcoin: Report
As of February 22, 2018, it has a circulating supply of over 39 billion XRP; however, its max supply is 100 billion XRP. Currently Ripple’s XRP has an exchange rate of $1 US bringing it to a total market cap value of over $39 billion US. In fact, as of June 2018, Ripple’s XRP is the third largest of the crypto currencies by market capitalization.
#2: Ethereum
In 2013, Vitalik Buterin proposed the development of the crypotcurrency Ethereum, a “decentralized platform that runs smart contracts: applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third-party interference.”[9]Ethereum
The project was funded completely by crowdfunding in 2014. However, it took a bit of time to bring online. By 2015, it went live with 11.9 million premined coins. However, by 2016, due to The DAO project collapsing, Ethereum had to split into two, the first being the new Ethereum and the second being the original Ethereum Classic. This didn’t slow Ethereum down at all though. In fact, in 2017, Ethereum grew over 13 thousand percent and is the second largest cryptocurrency market.
Ethereum uses the Ethash proof-of-work timestamping scheme. As of March 20, 2018, it has a circulating supply of over 98 million units. Currently Ethereum units have an exchange rate of $563.13 bringing it to a market cap value of around $55.37 billion US. In fact, this makes it the second largest cryptocurrency.
#1: Bitcoin
In 2009, the unknown person or group, Satoshi Nakamoto, released the open source software Bitcoin. Bitcoin was the first decentralized cryptocurrency in the world. For a long time, Bitcoin’s remained in the realm of the super geeky or digital libertarian.[10]Techcruch – Bitcoin: How An Unregulated, Decentralized Virtual Currency Just Became A Billion Dollar Market In fact, many economists only saw it as a bubble. Especially since places such as the black market marketplace, Silk Road, uses Bitcoin as its main form of currency. However, Bitcoin prooved many people wrong and helped usher in a multi billion dollar cryptocurrency market.
Bitcoin uses a proof-of-work timestamping scheme. As of February 11, 2018, it has a circulating supply of over 16.8 million bitcoins; however, its max supply is 21 million bitcoins. Currently Bitcoin has a market cap value of around $114 billion US. In fact, this makes it the largest of all the crypto currencies.
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