Litecoin (LTC)
Market cap, as of December 2017: $15.11 billion
Creator? Former Google employee (and now notable star in the crypto universe) Charlie Lee
Max Supply: 84 million coin limit with 54 million coins currently in circulation.
Briefing: Litecoin is a lighter, faster Bitcoin.
Monero (XMR)
Market cap: $5.3 billion
Creator? Monero’s creator is anonymous.
Max Supply: No fixed supply with 5.5 million XMR in circulation.
Briefing:Completely anonymous currency.
Neo
Market cap: $3.92 billion
Performance in 2017: +54,021%
Creator? Da Hongfei , CEO of Onchain and blockchain evangelist in China, along with co-founder Erik Zhang
Max Supply: 100 million coins with 65 million currently in circulation.
Briefing: The “Ethereum of China,”
Cardano (Ada)
Market cap: $10.17 billion
Performance in 2017 (since start of trading in October): +1,528%
Creator? Blockchain developer Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK)
Max Supply: 45 billion with 26 billion currently in circulation. About 26 billion out of a maximum 45 billion coins are currently in circulation.
Briefing: Tung believes that “this next-gen platform has the right team, dedication and money to create a real contender to Ethereum.”
The project began in 2015 and billed itself as the first blockchain network backed by a “scientific philosophy” and built by leading academics and engineers through peer-reviewed research.
Ripple (XRP)
Market cap: $40.5 billion
Performance in 2017: +16,988%
Creator? Web developer Ryan Fugger, businessman Chris Larsen and programmer Jed McCaleb
Max Supply: Maximum supply of 100 billion with 38.7 billion in current circulation.
Briefing: The New York Times once described Ripple 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. “Ripple connects banks, payment providers, digital asset exchanges and corporates via RippleNet to provide one frictionless experience to send money globally,” its creators explained.
Ripple has licensed its blockchain technology to over 100 banks
Iota (MIOTA)
Market cap: $9.7 billion
Performance in 2017 (since start of trading in June): +446%
Creator? David Sønstebø, Sergey Ivancheglo, Dominik Schiener, and Dr. Serguei Popov, a team of entrepreneurs, mathematicians and developers
Max Supply: 2.8 billion and the entire maximum supply is currently in circulation.
Briefing: lota doesn’t have any trading fees, miners or blocks. For every transaction you make, your processing power is used to validate two other transactions, making every Iota investor / owner, also an Iota “miner.”
Bitcoin Cash
Market cap: $49.4 billion
Performance in 2017 (since start of trading in July): +684%
Creator? Bitcoin Cash was created by a team of people who forked the bitcoin blockchain ledger. It is now controlled by multiple independent teams of developers.
Max Supply: 21 million with 16.8 million currently in circulation.
Briefing: In essence, a new version of bitcoin that’s incompatible with bitcoin. Bitcoin Cash was created as some users were frustrated by high fees and slow processing times. Because Bitcoin Cash has a greater block size limit, the team of creators say Bitcoin Cash cryptocurrency has more capacity to handle transactions with lower fees and faster confirmations.
