1. Bitcoin BTC
Bitcoin is the original cryptocurrency to emerge in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Created by an anonymous programmer or group of individuals under the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto, the token rose to spectacular popularity in 2017.But despite rapidly skyrocketing in value, bitcoins detractors are worried about the tokens incredibly volatility, slow speeds and transaction fees. There are currently more than 16.8 million BTC tokens in circulation, out of a predetermined 21 million token limit. On Monday, bitcoins market cap was estimated to be in the region of $191billion (£135billion).
2. Ethereum ETH
is the second most popular platform in the crypto community and is often touted as bitcoins main rival. But unlike bitcoin, Ethereum was developed as a world computer super network of sorts, for the decentralised development of apps that would do away with third party companies like Google and Apple.All of the apps developed on Ethereum are on a distributed public platform where miners work to earn Ether to fuel the network.
Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin argued that bitcoin laid the foundation for blockchain technology but ETH has the potential to be a more programmable money.
On Monday, Ethereums market cap was estimated to be just over $116billion (£82.4billion).
3. Ripple XRP
Ripple seemingly came out of nowhere towards the end of 2017, when it briefly shot past Ethereum and then settled in third place in January 2018. Despite appearing to be a competitor to bitcoin, Ripple serves a different purpose and is in fact a centralised transaction network used by banks for money transfers just like SWIFT.Money sent on the Ripple network is converted into the XRP token on one end and then back into the currency of choice at the other end.
Ripples management are certain that XRP offers a faster and reliable alternative to other tokens like bitcoin.
On Monday, Ripples overall value on CoinMarketCap was around $52billion (£36.9billion).