1 of 11 Bitcoin Has Company on Cryptocurrency Stage By Sean Michael Kerner

2 of 11 Litecoin Is Second Most Valuable Cryptocurrency While the value of all Bitcoins currently in existence hovers above $12 billion US, Litecoin's current value hovers around $700 million. Litecoin developers claim that faster transaction confirmations can be achieved with a Litecoin than with a Bitcoin.

3 of 11 Peercoin Makes Mining More Energy Efficient Peercoin (PPC), which was created in August 2012, is built on top of the same concepts as Bitcoin. A key distinguishing feature of PPC is the claim that mining is more energy efficient, since PPC creation requires a less hardware- and compute-intensive computation.

4 of 11 Namecoin Aims to Build a New Domain Name System Namecoin (NMC) was created in April of 2011 and has a hard limit of 21 million NMC that can be created. In addition to being a currency, NMC is being developed as the basis for a Domain Name System (DNS) known as dot-bit.

5 of 11 Quark Coin Emphasizes Security Quark Coin (QRK) is among the most recent cryptocurrencies, first publicly announced on July 21, 2013. QRK offers the promise of super-secure hashing, leveraging six different hashing functions.

6 of 11 Megacoin Is Limited to 42 Million Coins Megacoin (MEC) is another recent addition to the cryptocurrency landscape, first debuting in 2013. There is a global limit of 42 million MEC that can ever exist. The number 42 is a nod to the fictional Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which identifies 42 as the "Answer to The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything."

7 of 11 Feathercoin Has an Active Marketplace for Goods Feathercoin (FTC) has a limit of 336 million coins, of which only 25 million have been mined (as of Dec. 2, 2013). In an effort to bolster liquidity and value, the Feathercoin community hosts a market that lets users buy and sell goods with FTC.

8 of 11 WorldCoin WorldCoin (WDC) was officially launched on May 14, 2013, and offers the promise of transaction confirmations of 60 seconds or less.

9 of 11 Primecoin Mines Prime Number Chains Primecoin (XPM) miners perform a search for a special type of prime number chain. According to XPM developers, "The innovative prime proof-of-work in Primecoin not only provides security and minting to the network, but also generates a special form of prime number chains of interest to mathematical research."

10 of 11 Freicoin Adds a Holding Fee for Cryptocurrency Freicoin (FRC) introduces the concept known as Dumurrage to cryptocurrency, which is a holding fee of 5 percent that FRC owners pay.