Best Guide to 5 Major Cryptocurrencies

In a world of fictional "Satoshi Nakamotos", crypto currencies are becoming more real and mainstream. We hear so much about them, it's hard for the lay person to differentiate them at all.

How to tell the difference between major alt-coins? Use this quick guide:

Whatever the cryptography sub-culture of the late 1990s was, in the 2020s it's evident blockchain and cryptocurrencies are going to become somewhat of a big deal.

DASH

Dash, a combination of the words “digital” and “cash", promises to be quick, nay, instantaneous!

Dash has an interesting masternodes layer that enables instant payment, a way to resolve disputes between miners (miners vs miners and miners vs the userbase), has a governance system built in that pays for development and marketing of Dash. 

I find it neat that there's ongoing development ensured with developers earning a salary (growing in value every month as Dash grows!). That is, Dash doesn't need donations from anyone with its own internal treasury can pay for a full time staff of programmers, marketing personnel, and community proposals to help get the word out.

Dash has made important strides in strategic partnerships in the point-of-sale industry in particular.

RIPPLE

If Bitcoin's initial purpose was intended to serve as the very first peer-to-peer cryptocurrency protocol, Ripple's was payment system, remittance network, and currency exchange.  

So unlike other cryptocurrencies, Ripple is not about speculation, but strongly focuses on transactional utility.

Dozens of banks around the world are looking at Ripple to improve their transactions and other day-to-day operations moving forward. Banking partnerships are a key unique selling point of Ripple’s XRP token.

Ripple tracks not only transactions but also any other type of data related to the user (similar to a conventional bank). XRP is all premined and while transactions are fast, aren't considered truly decentralized. Oddly Ripple has 100 bln premined coins.

Important to note that Ripple is both bank backed and Google-backed.

BITCOIN

Why or how is Bitcoin is different than all the other altcoins that exist? Hmm, most altcoins (cryptocurrencies) have some technical differences compared to Bitcoin and that is often the reason given for why people invest in them (am I right?).

So, what does Bitcoin's first mover advantage amount to? Trust, security and network effect. Bitcoin has a large lead as a store of value over every cryptocurrency for merely existing without failure for a long 8 years. Bitcoin has a word of mouth of accessibility:

• More exchanges, more merchants, more software and hardware that support it
• Bitcoin is far more liquid, with much larger volumes
• Bitcoin has the most entrepreneurs creating companies around it with a lot of intellect, dedication and creativity

ETHEREUM

Ether is not a shrinking supply, that is, while Bitcoin block rewards halve every 4 years whilst Ethereum releases the same amount of Ether each year ad infinitum. Ethereum is also a foundational platform for smart contracts whereby blockchains can be facilitated by it.

Ethereum's native tokens, decentralized applications and smart contracts shine a different light on the future of blockchain as a service (BaaS).

Ethereum represents more truly the paradigm and spirit of decentralisation. For example think about how they started, Ethereum was crowd funded whilst Bitcoin was released and early miners own most of the coins that will ever be mined.

It's important to note that the now-popular smart contract feature is also a result of early joint investment by J.P Morgan Chase, Microsoft and Intel, i.e. not a solution China would particularly want operating block-chains within its borders.

LITECOIN

In the spirit of open-source code, which means it can be modified by anyone and freely used for other projects, Litecoin has to be the Bitcoin clone that stood the test of time the best.

Many cryptocurrencies have launched with modified versions of this code, with varying levels of success. Former Google engineer Charles Lee created Litecoin in 2011, and it generates new block much faster with faster transactions with a consequently larger blockchain.

The key difference for end-users being the 2.5 minute time to generate a block, as opposed to bitcoin's 10 minutes.

The history of crypto-currencies has only just begun!

2008: Bitcoin

2011: Litecoin

2013: Ripple

2014: Dash

2015: Ethereum

2016 ZCash

2017 Bitcoin Cash

2018 ???

What cryptocurrency or blockchain platform is your bet to scale in the future?

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