Top 15 Leading Altcoins By Market Cap and Popularity

Cryptocurrency in broad terms is a digital or virtual asset or simply put – money, as they do not exist in a physical form and are designed to serve as a medium of exchange or store of value. It uses cryptography to secure and confirm transactions, besides to control and manage how many new units are released into circulation in the network. The cryptocurrencies come in the shape of units which are called coins or tokens. Bitcoin, which was created in 2009, is considered the first cryptocurrency with a decentralized distributed peer-to-peer network. The underlying technology for cryptocurrency is called blockchain technology and more generally – distributed ledger technology. The success of Bitcoin has inspired followers to create a number of other spin-offs, using the Bitcoin technology, characteristics and purpose almost as a standard. The number of these other cryptocurrencies have grown to more than 1600 to this point. They are collectively called altcoins. An altcoin also called alternative coin is any cryptocurrency different from and created after Bitcoin.
Another kind of cryptocurrency is the stablecoin, which is in a sense also an altcoin. The stablecoin represents a cryptocurrency designed to have price stability and thus it is appropriate for short-term and medium-term utility as a store of value and medium of exchange. The stablecoins are typically pegged to a stable asset such as fiat currencies or gold.

Here is a list of 15 altcoins sorted by market capitalization and popularity. The main source we used to compile this list is the CoinMarketCap website.

1. Ethereum (ETH)

Launched in 2015, Ethereum (ETH) is a public open-source platform for running decentralized apps with smart contracts functionality. Being a blockchain-based distributed platform and operating system, it is again a peer-to-peer network. The Ethereum platform has its own native cryptocurrency token Ether. Current price 281.04 USD.

2. Litecoin  (LTC)

Litecoin, (LTC) was released in 2011 and is an open-source peer-to-peer decentralized payment system. Technically, Litecoin is nearly indistinguishable from Bitcoin. Current price: 60.38 USD.

3. DASH

Dash is actually a fork in the Bitcoin software which resulted in a new cryptocurrency (altcoin). It was launched in January 2014 with the original name: XCoin. Then it was rebranded to DarkCoin and then once again in 2015 to Dash (short from Digital Cash). Current price: 186.27 USD.

4. Ripple (XRP) 

Released in 2012, Ripple is a technology that serves as both a digital payment network for financial transactions and a cryptocurrency. The ripple coin is named XRP. Ripple’s digital payment platform is an open-source peer-to-peer decentralized system which allows for smooth transfer of assets or money in any form no matter whether it is a fiat currency (like USD, EUR or YEN) or a cryptocurrency like (Bitcoin, Litecoin). The digital currency, XRP facilitate the Ripple network as it acts as a bridge currency to other currencies. The current price of XRP in USD is 0.3314.

5. Zcash

Zcash is based on decentralized blockchain aiming to provide its users with increased privacy and security compared to bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It incorporates shield transactions using zero-knowledge cryptography. Current price: 146.82

6. Monero (XMR)

Monero is a peer-to-peer decentralized cryptocurrency with a higher level of anonymity, defined as private digital cash system or obfuscated public ledger. It uses the CryptoNight proof-of-work hash algorithm. Its current price is 108.71 USD.

7. Bitcoin Cash (BCH)

Bitcoin cash is a hard-fork in Bitcoin’s blockchain. It is a payment network and cryptocurrency that can be defined as a clone or a second version of Bitcoin. Current price: $540.76 USD.

8. Cardano (ADA)

Cardano is the distributed blockchain-based platform. The goal of the platform is to run smart contracts, decentralized apps, and metadata. The respective, native cryptocurrency for Cardano is called ADA. Current price: $0.1006 USD.

9. EOS

EOS is a blockchain decentralized operating system created to support industrial-scale decentralized apps. The EOS cryptocurrency currently costs $6.29 USD

10. Stellar

Being a blockchain-based distributed database, Stellar is an open platform which aims to facilitate cross-border asset transfers (between any kind of currency pairs, digital or fiat). Current price: $0.220 USD.

11. Tether

Tether is a cryptocurrency token, which is considered to be a stablecoin. Tether was issued on top of Bitcoin’s blockchain via the Omni Layer Protocol. Current (stable) price: 1 USD.

12. IOTA

IOTA is a distributed ledger open-source technology, not a blockchain-based system, instead, it uses a Decentralized Acyclic Graph (DAG). It is designed to execute and manage transactions between Internet-connected devices and machines. The native cryptocurrency of the system is mIOTA (still it is referred to IOTA) with a current price of $0.72 USD.

13. TRON

Tron is a blockchain decentralized platform with the goal to create a digital entertainment system for content sharing and distributed storage. The TRX or TRonix is the cryptocurrency related to the TRON platform. It can be exchanged for other cryptocurrencies such as ETH or Bitcoin. The cost in USD is $0.025.

14. Ethereum Classic

The Ethereum Classic is a blockchain-based platform for smart contracts and decentralized Turing-complete virtual machines. It is the unforked old version of the Ethereum blockchain. The classic ether token uses the ETC symbol and has a current price of $12.85 USD.

15. NEO 

Neo, a blockchain-based platform and cryptocurrency created to sustain a network of decentralized apps. The base unit of the platform, is the token or coin NEO which generates GAS tokens, which can be used to pay for transaction fees on the NEO network. Current NEO price: $19.86 USD