The Top Ten Cryptoccurencies as of the January 1,2018 (Part 1)

Happy New Year Everyone!

It seems 2018 will be a good year for different cryptocurrencies rising this year, I sure hope so!

As I told you before in my 1st blog post (link: What is Cryptocurrency? ) there are several cryptocurrencies out there in the internet. According to Wikipedia, there are 1372 cryptocurrencies as of December 31 of 2017 and even right now, a new cryptocurrency can be release or created. There may be a lot of cryptocurrencies out there but each cryptocurrency varies or differ from each other in terms of technology and purpose but their main function would be used as a medium of exchange without a central authority governing from it. Although there is no government controlling the cryptocurrencies, different countries are now making their own digital currency, soon this will be used as a medium of exchange with the government in control.

With so many cryptocurrencies in the internet, I decided to only put up the Top Ten Cryptocurrencies due to their value and their popularity amongst miners, investors and traders as of 1^st of January, 2018

So here are the Top Ten Cryptocurrencies (5 of 10):

Bitcoin, 1 BTC = $ 13,826.5

    Market Cap: $ 231,944,376,775

    

Bitcoin is the most popular cryptocurrency in the world as of 1^st of January, 2018. The reasons are quite obvious it’s because Bitcoin is the first decentralized cryptocurrency. It was cryptographed by an anonymous individual or an unknown group of people in the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto. Satoshi Nakamoto invented Bitcoin and released it in January of 2009, he was the first person to do a peer-to-peer transaction in Bitcoin. He was active in the Bitcoin Foundation up until December of 2010, he suddenly disappeared without any reason. Bitcoin has its limits, there will only be 21 million Bitcoin in the world when it will all be mined by the year of 2110 to 2400.

                        

Bitcoin Cash, 1 BCH = $ 2,515.7        

    Market Cap: $ 42,484,166,766

Bitcoin Cash was born from Bitcoin but it is a different cryptocurrency from Bitcoin. Confusing right? Bitcoin Cash was invented due to Bitcoin’s scalability problem, it means that there are practical limits in the number of transactions in the peer-to-peer transaction in the Bitcoin network. That is why on July 20 of 2017, Segwit was activated. I will discuss about this along with Hard Fork later onwards.

   Ethereum, 1 ETH = $ 774.558

Market Cap: $ 74,901,108,121

Ethereum is the easily the second most popular cryptocurrency right after Bitcoin, it could probably rival Bitcoin with its more advanced technology. Even when Bitcoin and Ethereum serves as a decentralized network, each digital currencies differ from each other. Ethereum enables Smart Contracts, (According to Wikipedia, A smart contract is a computer protocol intended to facilitate, verify, or enforce the negotiation or performance of a contract. (See link: Smart Contract )

   Litecoin, 1 LTC = $ 233.625

Market Cap: $ 12,748,117,989

Litecoin, according to https://litecoin.org, “Litecoin is a peer-to-peer Internet currency that enables instant, near-zero cost payments to anyone in the world. Litecoin is an open source, global payment network that is fully decentralized without any central authorities.” As Cryptocurrency Enthusiasts say, Litecoin will be the silver to Bitcoins gold. As Bitcoins value rises up, Litecoin value skyrocketed too. On January of 2017, 1 Litecoin was worth $ 4 and as of January 2018 it is now worth $ 233. Litecoin was invented by Charlie Lee, a former Google employee.

Ripple, 1 XRP = $2.26112

Market Cap: $ 2.26112

Ripple is getting attention right now due to its value increasing for this year. Ripple does not only provide as a currency exchange but also acts as a remittance system in which an individual can send funds to another country by using a secure blockchain technology. What Ripple does is that it connects banks and other financial institutions to send money worldwide or abroad and reduce fees when transferring money to different countries.




Cryptocurrency values referred to Coinmarket app

If you want know more about cryptocurrency, news and education. Please keep up-to-date with my blog, the Part 2 of this Article will be posted soon. Keep in touch!