Let's face it: there are a lot of cryptocurrencies, with news coming out almost every day and old ones disappearing as quickly as they appeared. It's easy to feel overwhelmed.
If you're new to the world of cryptocurrencies, this is a great place to start to learn more about each of the top 100 cryptocurrencies (by market capitalization). Even if you are a cryptocurrency veteran, this is a great reference resource if you want to have a cryptocurrency fact sheet at your fingertips, or if you want to learn more about a new crypto that has joined the ranks of the 100 largest caps.
Our hope is to point you in the right direction, stimulate your interest in doing more research and keep you away from potential scams (and yes, there are potential scams in the top 100!).
At
SimpleCrypto, we are obsessed with searching the Internet for everything that is crypto. The information found in this post is the result of hundreds of hours of careful research by me and others on our team.
Note that this list is constantly evolving and I will do my best to keep it up to date, but the best 100 change almost every day! Please refer to our home page for the latest information on the top 100 cryptocurrencies and their prices.
Before you start, a quick recap of the best platforms or buy your cryptocurrencies .
WHERE TO BUY CRYPTOCURRENCIES IN 2020?
If you are new to cryptocurrency and don't want to freak out, then one of the safest and easiest platforms to use is Etoro. This basic trading site has been able to monopolize cryptocurrencies to make their purchase / resale very easy.
You are going into cryptocurrency and you want something simple then you need Etoro. Present since 2007, this trading platform is one of the best known and most popular. You will be accompanied during your operations on the site.
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If you prefer to hold your cryptocurrencies in a real blockchain-style wallet, but still favor simplicity, then we recommend
Coinbase. It is undeniably the platform through which everyone passes. It is effective to buy bitcoin or altcoins very easily but also allows their resale in one click.
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Finally, if you want to have a very wide choice of cryptocurrencies, then it is towards Binance and its many advantages that you should turn to.
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Well, here is the turn of the main platforms or buy crypto made. Let's start!
BEST CRYPTO COINS TO INVEST IN 2020
CRYPTOCURRENCY NO. 1 - BITCOIN (BTC)
King of the cryptocurrency world, Bitcoin is a household name today; for many it is synonymous with "cryptocurrency". Its purpose is to provide a peer-to-peer electronic version of cash to allow payments to be sent online without the need for a third party (such as Mastercard).
The rapid rise in the price of Bitcoin has resulted in an explosion in the number of new Bitcoin investors. The huge increase in interest has been accompanied by an increase in the number of merchants accepting Bitcoin as a legitimate form of payment. Bitcoin is fast approaching its goal of becoming a worldwide accepted currency.
Bitcoin development is led by Bitcoin Core developer Wladimir J. van der Laan, who took over on April 8, 2014. Bitcoin changes are democratically decided by the community.
CRYPTOCURRENCY NO. 2 - ETHEREUM (ETH)
Ethereum is the revolutionary platform that brought the concept of "smart contracts" to the block chain or blockchain. Launched to the public in July 2015 by Vitalik Buterin, then 21, Ethereum quickly went from obscurity to celebrity status in the world of cryptocurrencies. Buterin has a full team of developers working behind him to further develop the Ethereum platform.
Ethereum has the ability to process transactions quickly and inexpensively on the blockchain, like Bitcoin, but also has the ability to execute smart contracts.
Think of automated processes that can do just about anything based on trust transactions.
CRYPTOCURRENCY NO. 3 - RIPPLE (XRP)
Ripple aims to improve the speed of financial transactions, especially international banking transactions. Anyone who has ever sent money abroad knows that it currently takes 3-5 business days for a transaction to clear.
It is faster to withdraw money, fly and get there than to send it electronically! Not to mention that you will pay exorbitant transaction fees - usually around 6%, but this can vary depending on the financial institution.
Ripple's goal is to make these transactions quick (it only takes about 4 seconds for a transaction to clear) and inexpensive.
The Ripple team currently employs over 150 people, making it one of the largest in the world of cryptocurrency. They are headed by CEO Brad Garlinghouse, who has an impressive resume that includes senior positions in other organizations like Yahoo and Hightail.
CRYPTOCURRENCY NO. 4 - BITCOIN CASH (BCH)
Bitcoin Cash was created on August 1, 2017 after a hard fork of the Bitcoin blockchain. For years, there has been a debate in the Bitcoin community about whether to increase the size of the block in the hope of alleviating the network bottleneck that has affected Bitcoin due to its increased popularity.
As no agreement could be reached, the original Bitcoin blockchain was forked , leaving the Bitcoin chain intact and actually creating a new blockchain that would allow developers to modify some of the original programmed features of Bitcoin.
Generally speaking, the argument in favor of Bitcoin Cash is that by allowing an increase in the size of the block, more transactions can be processed in the same amount of time. Those who oppose Bitcoin Cash argue that increasing the size of the block will increase the storage and bandwidth requirements and, in fact, the price of normal users. This could lead to increased centralization, which Bitcoin wanted to avoid.
Bitcoin Cash doesn't have a single development team like Bitcoin. There are now multiple independent teams of developers.
CRYPTOCURRENCY NO. 5 - LITECOIN (LTC)
Similar to Bitcoin, Litecoin is a peer-to-peer transaction platform designed to be used as a digital currency. Thanks to notable technical improvements, Litecoin is able to process more transactions at a lower cost. Litecoin was designed to process the small transactions that we carry out daily.
Litecoin is sometimes called "digital money" while Bitcoin is known as "digital gold". This is because traditionally silver was used for small daily transactions while gold was used as a store of wealth and was not used in everyday life.
The Litecoin blockchain is also a fork of the Bitcoin chain. It was first launched in 2011 while its founder, Charlie Lee, was still working for Google. Well known as a cryptocurrency expert, Charlie Lee is supported by a solid development team that seems to be doing what they set out to do. They recently produced a very remarkable achievement with the first successful atomic exchange.
CRYPTOCURRENCY NO. 6 - CARDANO (ADA)
Cardano is a blockchain of smart contracts. This cryptocurrency was originally published as Input Output Hong Kong by Charles Hoskinson and Jeremy Wood, some of the first members of the Ethereum team, and then renamed Cardano.
Cardano is trying to solve some of the biggest problems in the cryptocurrency world that have been causing ongoing problems for years, such as scalability issues and democratized voting.
They have the potential to challenge Ethereum's dominance in the world of smart contracts. Cardano is developing their own programming language similar to Ethereum; however, they focus more on interoperability between other cryptocurrencies.
While some cryptocurrencies are all biting but no bark, Cardano is just the opposite. They quietly focus on powerful software that will be completely open-source.
The Cardano team includes some of the best minds in the blockchain industry, and they are looking to create a solid foundation on which others can build for years to come.
CRYPTOCURRENCY NO. 7 - NEO (NEO)
A leading platform for smart contracts and sometimes called "China Ethereum".
NEO (formerly Antshares) hopes to digitize many types of assets that were previously held by more traditional means, and thus allow them to be used in smart contracts.
To imagine a potential use case for a NEO crypto, consider scanning the title of a house into a smart asset, then configure this asset to be automatically transferred to another person after receipt of payment for the House. It would, in fact, be a simple smart contract or smart contract.
The founder of NEO Da Hongfei is a figurehead in the world of cryptocurrency and has worked on many blockchain projects in the past. The development team is made up of 6 internal investors and a large community of third-party developers.
CRYPTOCURRENCY NO. 8 - STELLAR LUMENS (XLM)
Stellar Lumens seeks to use Blockchain to make very fast international payments with small fees. The network can process thousands of transactions per second with a confirmation time of 3 to 5 seconds. As you may know, Bitcoin can sometimes take 10 to 15 minutes to confirm a transaction, can only process a few transactions per second and, in turn, has very high transaction fees.
If this sounds a lot like Ripple, you're right! Stellar Lumens was based on the Ripple protocol and is trying to do similar things. Stellar Lumens will mainly be used to make small daily payments (micropayments), send money abroad and make mobile payments.
Stellar Lumens focuses on the developing world and, more specifically, on the multi-billion dollar industry of migrant workers who send money to their families in poor countries.
The Stellar Lumens team is led by Jed McCaleb, who has worked successfully with many startups in the past, such as eDonkey, Overnet, Ripple and the infamous Mt Gox.
CRYPTOCURRENCY NO. 9 - EOS (EOS)
Considered a potential "Ethereum Killer", EOS offers improvements that may challenge Ethereum as the dominant smart contract platform.
One of the main issues that EOS cryptocurrency seeks to improve is the scalability issues that have affected the Ethereum network during periods of high transaction volume, especially during popular ICOs (like the famous crypto-kitties) .
Perhaps the most profound difference from EOS, compared to Ethereum, is the way you use the EOS network. With Ethereum, every time you make changes or interact with the network, you have to pay a fee.
With EOS, the creator of DAPP (decentralized application) can pay the bill, while the user does not pay anything. And if you think about it, it makes sense. Would you like to have to pay every time you post something on social media? No of course not !
In addition to this, EOS has a few other technical advantages over Ethereum, such as delegated proof of stake and other protocol changes. Just know that EOS has serious power under the hood to support the claim of "Ethereum Killer".
EOS was created by Dan Larrimer who is no stranger to blockchain or start-up technonologis. He has been the driving force behind many successful projects in the past, such as BitShares, Graphene and Steem.
CRYPTOCURRENCY NO. 10 - MONERO (XMR)
Monero is a digital currency designed to be used as a completely anonymous payment system.
A common misconception at Bitcoin is that it is completely anonymous. In reality, all payments processed on the Bitcoin network are recorded in a general ledger (blockchain), so that Bitcoin is in fact only partially anonymous or "pseudonym".
This means that you can, in theory, trace every transaction in which a coin has been involved since its creation. Although users will not be able to inherently link the public key on the blockchain with the private keys used to store the coins themselves, there will always be a correlation between the two.
Monero solved this problem by implementing cryptonic hashing of receiving addresses, thereby separating the room from the address for which it is intended. This can be extremely valuable for anyone wishing to conceal their purchases.
The Monero development team consists of 7 main developers, of which only two are known to the public. There have been over 200 additional contributors to the project and software updates take place approximately every six months.
CRYPTOCURRENCY NO. 11 - DASH (DASH)
Dash (which comes from “Digital Cash”) aims to be the most user-friendly and scalable cryptocurrency in the world. It has the ability to send funds instantly confirmed by security "double proof of shipments" with the additional functionality of erasable transaction history and the ability to send transactions anonymously.
Like Bitcoin, Dash is intended to be used as a digital currency, but it has added values such as much faster transaction times and lower fees. For a slightly higher price, Dash has the additional instant send feature that allows you to confirm transactions almost instantly. This is one of the main selling points of Dash because many believe that this feature would allow it to be used in higher end establishments.
The Dash development team consists of over 50 members and is chaired by Evan Duffield, a former financial services professional.
CRYPTOCURRENCY NO. 12 - NEM (XEM)
NEM (New Economy Movement) is the first proof of importance cryptocurrency (POI) based on blockchain technology. With an emphasis on commercial use cases, the software was built from the ground up with adaptability in mind.
The objective of NEM crypto is to allow companies to use their “smart asset system” to set up customizable block chains. A smart asset can be almost anything: a cryptocurrency token, a company's stock, or a company's billing and records.
Here are some examples of potential uses of NEM technology: voting, crowdfunding, share ownership, secure record keeping, loyalty point programs, mobile payments and disbursement services. A list of NEM use cases can be found here .
The development of NEM is monitored by the NEM Foundation, based in Singapore.
CRYPTOCURRENCY NO. 13 - IOTA (MIOTA)
IOTA has seen many of the problems Bitcoin and Ethereum have with the POW (Proof of Work) and POI (Proof of Significance) models and is looking to improve them with their revolutionary transaction validation network simply called "tangle".
When issuing a transaction in IOTA, you validate 2 previous transactions. This means that you no longer outsource validation to miners, which requires unnecessary amounts of computing power and usually a large bet of cryptocurrencies. These necessary resources are, in fact, the centralization of currencies which, in the opinion of many, were created to be decentralized in the first place.
With IOTA, the more active a ledger, the more validation. In other words, the more people who use it, the faster it is. You don't have to subsidize minors, so there are no transaction fees. That's right: zero transaction fees to trade this cryptocurrency.
The IOTA team has been actively developing blockchain technology since 2011 and created the IOTA foundation and company in 2016. Since its emergence, the team has grown steadily, attracting exceptional talent from around the world.
CRYPTOCURRENCY NO. 14 - TETHER (UDST)
Tether is a cryptocurrency token issued on the Bitcoin blockchain. Each Tether coin is allegedly backed by a US dollar. The objective is to facilitate transactions with a rate set in the USD.
Among other things, the Tether cryptocurrency seeks to resolve some of the legal issues that can arise when trading cryptocurrencies and it aims to protect people from market volatility.
Tether has faced controversy regarding their business model, and some consider it to be a scam. More information can be read about it on reddit .
CRYPTOCURRENCY NO. 15 - TRON (TRX)
As stated in TRON's white paper, "TRON is an attempt to heal the Internet". The founders of TRON believe that the Internet has deviated from its original intention of allowing people to freely create content and post as they see fit; instead, the Internet has been taken over by huge companies like Amazon, Google, Alibaba and others.
TRON is trying to take over the Internet from these companies by building a free content entertainment system. This will allow users to freely store, publish and own data, which will give them the power to decide where and how to share it.
The project is led by founder Justin Sun, who has been listed twice (in 2015 and 2017) on the Forbes 30 under 30 list. In addition, Sun is a protégé of Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba Group, former representative of Ripple in China and founder of Peiwo APP.
Sun has assembled a strong team with heavy hitters including Binshen Tang (founder of Clash of King), Wei Dai (founder of ofo, the largest supplier of shared bikes in China), and Chaoyong Wang (founder of ChinaEquity Group). Sun has also gotten the support of some notable angel investors like Xue Manzi.
CRYPTOCURRENCY NO. 16 - VECHAIN (VEN)
As described in VeChain's development plan, the aim of the organization is to build "a distributed and unreliable business ecosystem based on self-circulating and expanding Blockchain technology".
To do this, they intend to create an efficient and trustless business ecosystem to significantly reduce the waste of today's information transfer systems.
The VeChain platform focuses in particular on the elimination of counterfeiting in the fashion and luxury goods industry, food safety monitoring systems, the digitization of maintenance in the automotive industry and many other processes of the global supply chain.
CRYPTOCURRENCY NO. 1 7 - ETHEREUM CLASSIC (ETC)
Ethereum Classic was born after a hard fork of Ethereum in 2016. The fork was the result of the infamous DOA hack where around $ 50 million of Ethereum was stolen due to what was considered an omission in the code .
The blockchain was forked in order to recover the losses from this attack, but a small part of the community did not want to go back and change the original blockchain. Vitalik Buterin, founder of Ethereum, and subsequently the development team chose to go with the fork and work on what is now "Ethereum".
There is a lot of controversy going on with Ethereum Classic which can be best described on this red thread.
CRYPTOCURRENCY NO. 18 - LISK (LSK)
Lisk is a decentralized network, like Bitcoin and Litecoin, which allows developers to deploy their own side chains from the main Lisk blockchain. These side chains are fully customizable block chains that allow you to change the parameters you want to adapt to your own block chain application.
This is similar to Ethereum and QTUM in some respects. With Lisk, the main difference is that customizable block chains split into their own separate side chains. This saves developers from having to design something from scratch. Ultimately, side chains are just decentralized databases of blockchain applications.
Lisk is developed by a small growing Berlin team. They are led by co-founders Max Kordek and Olivier Beddows who are veterans of the world of cryptocurrency and development.
CRYPTOCURRENCY NO. 19 - NANO (FORMERLY RAIBLOCKS) (XRB)
Formerly known as RaiBlocks, Nano is a coin focused on the problem of scalability.
As described in their white paper, this coin has almost instant transactions with very low fees. They operate with the motto "do one thing and do one thing well".
Their goal is to offer users a level of performance and scalability unmatched by any other platform. Nano achieves this through a unique programming structure where each account has its own unique blockchain. This allows each channel to update asynchronously to the network, resulting in quick transactions and minimal overhead.
CRYPTOCURRENCY NO. 20 - QTUM (QTUM)
QTUM (pronounced Quantum) is an open-source value transfer platform that focuses on decentralized mobile applications or Dapps. QTUM is the world's first smart proof of interest contract platform.
QTUM is intended to be used both as a value transfer protocol, such as Bitcoin, and as an intelligent contractual platform, such as Ethereum. They have a number of technical innovations that some consider superior to Ethereum, and they focus on mobile applications.
The platform itself is very new. It appeared in March 2017, after a very successful crowdfunding campaign that raised nearly $ 16 million in just 5 days. QTUM has a small but solid development team and an impressive list of investors who support their ideas. QTUM development is led by the Singapore-based QTUM Foundation.
CRYPTOCURRENCY NO. 21 - ChainLink (LINK)
ChainLink is a blockchain middleware that enables smart contracts to access key off-chain resources such as data flows, various Web APIs and traditional bank account payments.
By providing smart contracts and secure access to these key resources, ChainLink proposes to replicate real-world conventions that require external proof of performance and require making payments using widely available methods, such as bank payments.
The LINK token has performed well on the market since May 2019, but the beginning of its upward movement dates from July 2018. LINK was then worth just over 20 cents. At more than 3.5 dollars and with a capitalization of 1.2 billion dollars, one can wonder if this valuation is reasonable.
Here with regard to our ranking, of course even within the team our portfolios differ, but these seem to be more or less the consensus. We would also like to hear your opinions, we are sure that many will not agree.