Lead image: Unsplash
As of today, it is a well-known fact that the entire idea and concept of cryptocurrencies was brought to reality the very day Bitcoin was created. This is a major reason why Bitcoin will always be considered as the Boss of the crypto space.
Nevertheless, the success of Bitcoin has led to several further innovations bringing about alternative forms of cryptocurrencies (altcoins) asides the Bitcoin with the hope of addressing and improving on the flaws of Bitcoin in their own way.
While the total number of cryptocurrencies in the world has risen to over 3000 since 2009, I have decided to pick just the top seven most popular cryptocurrencies asides from Bitcoin in this article;
BITCOIN CASH (BCH)
Yes, you were probably expecting this as the first, I presume. Well, here you have it! Bitcoin Cash was created in 2017 as a hard fork of the original Bitcoin and till date, it still remains a major altcoin and the most successful forks of the original Bitcoin.
Even as of today, Bitcoin cash has been gaining adoption and a lot of people have been starting to trust the coin as a good form of peer-to-peer currency.
ETHEREUM (ETH)
Ethereum launched in 2015 and is currently the second-largest digital currency by market cap after Bitcoin. Ethereum runs on a decentralized software that allows for decentralized applications (dAPPS) to be built, and smart contracts to run without any downtime, fraud, control, or interference from a third party.
This decentralized nature of Ethereum has also allowed for several new cryptocurrencies called 'ERC-20 tokens' to be created.
TETHER (USDT)
Tether is a well-known 'stablecoin'. A stablecoin is a form of cryptocurrency whose aim is to peg its market value to an external reference point or asset (like gold, fiat currencies, etc.) with the aim of reducing volatility as with regular cryptocurrencies.
Tether is pegged against the U.S Dollars and most times, at any point in time, the value of 1 tether would always be equal to 1 USD.
BINANCE COIN (BNB)
Binance coin (BNB), is the official cryptocurrency of the now popular cryptocurrency exchange launched in 2017- Binance. Since its launch, Binance has risen to become virtually the largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume. BNB has been thriving well and as part of its adoption plans, Binance now allows users on the exchange to pay fees with BNB.
RIPPLE (XRP)
Ripple is a cryptocurrency developed in 2012 to help serve as a real-time global settlement network. This enables banks to settle cross-border payments in real-time, with end-to-end transparency, and at lower costs.
However, as of recent, Ripple seems to be currently challenged with a major setback as the company is currently facing a lawsuit from the US Securities and Exchange Commission consequentially leading to a massive fall of over 50% of its price value since November 2020.
MONERO (XMR)
Monero is a privacy-focused cryptocurrency launched in 2014 as an open-source protocol based on Cryptonote. It uses an obfuscated public ledger which allows for transactions to be performed with great anonymity and cryptography. Over time, this has attracted a lot of users desiring an added level of total privacy while performing transactions unlike with other cryptocurrencies.
LITECOIN (LTC)
And to wrap up this list, we have no other but Litecoin! Litecoin was one of the first to show up in 2011 as a better alternative to Bitcoin. It was presented as 'silver to Bitcoin's gold' and allows for faster and more efficient transactions requiring even lesser fees and shorter confirmation times.
Thank you for taking the time to go through this. Kindly let me know which one of these is your favorite and what you think in the comments! :)
