After my first article on the Basics of Bitcoin, I received a lot of follow up from the readers demanding more on the blockchain craze. It is such a vast topic so I agree a single article isn’t enough. Thus, for today lets talk about Altcoins.

What is Cryptocurrency?

It is a digital asset that is constructed to function as a medium of exchange, premised on the technology of cryptography, to secure the transaction flow, as well as to control the creation of additional units of the currency.

Bitcoin has been the pioneer of the cryptocurrency age, following which a lot of currencies have been created which are inspired from bitcoins. These are either modified or improved versions of bitcoins. These currencies are collectively known as altcoins. There are approximately over 1384 cryptocurrencies available over the internet and the number keeps growing constantly. Bitcoin is currently the largest blockchain network. But in the long run, altcoins are where the big gains lie.

A bubble that will burst? A scam? A passing fad?

Whatever the critics out there want to call it, The blockchain technology is here to stay. There is an insane rally of investors who are driven by the fear of missing out (FOMO is real!). Those that missed out making money on the bitcoin bull are frantically on the search for the next bitcoin (Altcoin). So here are 5 altcoins (In no particular order) that you should know about apart from bitcoins.

1. Litecoin (LTC)( Symbol: Ł)

Litecoin

Year of Release: 2011.

Market Capitalization: $6.49 Billion (As of 1st April 2018).

Founder: Charlie Lee, an MIT graduate and former Google engineer.

Its the silver to Bitcoin’s gold. Basically its an alternative of bitcoin. The only major difference is that it could be mined easier than bitcoin. It was created such so that anybody could participate. It has an 84 million coin limit versus the 21 million limits for bitcoin.

During the month of November 2013, the aggregate value of Litecoin experienced massive growth which included a 100% leap within 24 hours. In May 2017, Litecoin became the first of the top 5 (by market capitalization) cryptocurrencies to adopt Segregated Witness. The first Lightning Network Transaction was completed through Litecoin, transferring 0.00000001 LTC from Zürich to San Francisco in under one second.

2. Ripple (XRP)

Ripple

Year of Release: 2013.

Market Capitalization: $20.08 Billion (As of 1st April 2018).

Founder: Web developer Ryan Fugger, businessman Chris Larsen and programmer Jed McCaleb.

It is a centralized real-time gross settlement system (RTGS), currency exchange and remittance network. It doesn’t require mining which in turn reduces the use of computing power. Unlike other cryptocurrencies, the ripple is not anti-bank, anti-government and anti-fiat currency. It is more liberal. The New York Times once described it as “a cross between Western Union and a currency exchange, without the hefty fees” because it’s not only a currency but also a system on which any currency, including bitcoin, can be traded. It connects banks, payment providers, digital asset exchanges and corporate via RippleNet to provide one frictionless experience to send money globally.

June 2016, Ripple obtained a virtual currency license from the New York State Department of Financial Services, making it the fourth company with a BitLicense. As of April 2017, members of the network known as the Global Payments Steering Group (GPSG) are Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Royal Bank of Canada, Santander, Standard Chartered, UniCredit and Westpac Banking Corporation. As of the first week of March 2018, It is the third largest coin by market capitalization. It has licensed its blockchain technology to over 100 banks.

3. Ethereum/Ether (ETH)

Ethereum

Year of Release: 2015

Market Capitalization: $39.1447 Billion(As of 1st April 2018).

Founder: Russian-Canadian programmer and writer of Bitcoin Magazine Vitalik Buterin

Ethereum was initially described in a white paper in late 2013 with a goal of building decentralized applications. Vitalik argued that Bitcoin needed a scripting language for application development. Failing to gain agreement, he proposed development of a new platform with a more general scripting language. It enables smart contracts and distributed applications (DApps)to be built and run independently without any third party interference. Its different from bitcoin in terms of its mining time being shorter, cheaper transaction fees and usage of smart contracts.

Microsoft has partnered with ConsenSys, which offers EBaaS (Ethereum blockchain as a service)on Microsoft Azure for cloud-based blockchain developer environment. In March 2017, It established Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, which focuses on building and promoting the best practices and standards that facilitate adoption of the Ethereum protocol for enterprises. Some of the biggest blockchain start-ups, research groups, and Fortune 500 companies are part of the alliance. It has 116 enterprise members including ConsenSys, Cornell University’s research group, Toyota Research Institute, Samsung SDS, Microsoft, Intel, J.P. Morgan, , Deloitte, Accenture, National Bank of Canada, MasterCard, Cisco Systems, and Scotiabank. As of January 2018, there are more than 250 live DApps, with hundreds more under development.

The other two cryptocurrencies and some handy tips to pick them to follow in part 2 of the said article. I divided the article into two for the ease of reading. Will be posting the Part 2 very soon.

Thank you for reading! Did you already know about any of these altcoins? If not did this article help you navigate through them? Still, have questions? Feel free to drop a note and I will try my best to answer them.

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