Cryptocurrency

A cryptocurrency is a medium of exchange like normal currencies such as USD, but designed for the purpose of exchanging digital information through a process made possible by certain principles of cryptography. Cryptography is used to secure the transactions and to control the creation of new coins. The first cryptocurrency to be created was Bitcoin back in 2009. Today there are hundreds of other cryptocurrencieso.

Put another way, cryptocurrency is electricity converted into lines of code with monetary value. In the simplest of forms, cryptocurrency is digital currency.

Unlike centralized banking, like the Federal Reserve System, where governments control the value of a currency like USD through the process of printing fiat money, government has no control over cryptocurrencies as they are fully decentralized.

History of Cryptocurrency

The first decentralized cryptocurrency, bitcoin, was created in 2009 by pseudonymous developer Satoshi Nakamoto. Bitcoin uses SHA-256, which is a set of cryptographic hash functions designed by the U.S National Security Agency. Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency that is based on the proof-of-work system. In April 2011, Namecoin was created. Soon after, in October 2011, Litecoin was released. It was the first successful cryptocurrency to use scrypt as its hash function instead of SHA-256.

Litecoin began receiving media attention in late 2013 – reaching a market cap of $1 billion. Ripplecoin, created in 2011, was built on the same protocol as Bitcoin but services as  a payment system – think of it like a Paypal for cryptocurrencies that supports any fiat currency, cryptocurrency, commodity or even frequent flier miles.

Cryptocurrency market capitalisation 2016



Cryptocurrency market capitalisation 2017

List of cryptocurrencies

The number of cryptocurrencies available over the internet as of 11 July 2017 was over 900 and growing. A new cryptocurrency can be created at any time. By market capitalization, Bitcoin is currently (2017-08-19) the largest blockchain network, followed by Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Ripple and Litecoin.

This is the list of cryptocurrency :

Release	Status	Currency	Symbol	Founder	Hash algorithm	Timestamping
2009	Active	Bitcoin	BTC, XBT	Satoshi Nakamoto	SHA-256d	POW
2011	Active	Litecoin	LTC	Charles Lee	Scrypt	POW
2011	Active	Namecoin	NMC	Vincent Durham	SHA-256d	POW
2012	Active	Peercoin	PPC	Sunny King	SHA-256d	POW & POS
2013	Active	Primecoin	XPM	Sunny King	1CC/2CC/TWN	POW
2013	Active	Ripple	XRP	Chris Larsen	ECDSA	Consensus
2013	Active	Dogecoin	DOGE, XDG	Jackson Palmer	Scrypt	POW
2013	Active	Emercoin	EMC	EvgenijM86 & Yitshak Dorfman	SHA-256	POW & POS
2013	Active	Omni	MSC	J. R. Willett	SHA-256d
2013[14][15]	Active	Gridcoin	GRC	Rob Hälford	Scrypt	Decentralized POS
2014	Active	DigitalNote	XDN	XDN-dev team, dNote	CryptoNight	POW
2014	Active	Monero	XMR	Monero Core Team	CryptoNight	POW
2014	Active	Vertcoin	VTC	Bushido	Lyra2rev2	POW
2014	Active	Synereo AMP	AMP	Dor Konforty & Greg Meredith	POS	POS
2014	Active	Auroracoin	AUR	Baldur Odinsson	Scrypt	POW
2014	Active	BlackCoin	BC	Rat4 (pseudonym)	Scrypt	POS
2014	Active	PotCoin	POT		Scrypt	POW
2014	Active	Burstcoin	BURST	Burstcoin Community	SHA-256d	Proof of Capacity
2014	Active	MazaCoin	MZC	BTC Oyate Initiative	SHA-256d	POW
2014	Active	Titcoin	TIT	Edward Mansfield & Richard Allen	SHA-256d	POW
2014	Active	Nxt	NXT	BCNext	SHA-256d	POS
2014	Active	Dash	DASH	Evan Duffield &	X11	POW & Proof of Service[nt 2]
2015	Active	Ethereum	ETH	Vitalik Buterin	Ethash	POW
2015	Active	Ethereum Classic	ETC		Ethash	POW
2015	Active	SixEleven	SIL	fflo	SHA-256d	POW
2015	Active	IOTA	IOT, MIOTA	...	SHA-3	...
2016	Active	Waves Platform	WAVES	Sasha Ivanov	POS	POS
2017	Active	BitConnect	BCC		Scryp	PoW & PoS
2017	Active	Bitcoin Cash	BCH		SHA-256d	POW