Comparison of cryptocurrencies

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Revision as of 19:02, 9 July 2017 by Belcher (talk | contribs) (removed 'anonymity' column because that is a very large topic that cant be covered with a single yes/no word, added column "one sentence summary")
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The cryptocurrency market is explosive which currently serves more than a thousand currencies. Most of them are obvious scams—including many which purport to have a large market cap. This article aims to list only the most relevant cryptocurrencies in terms of novel technological advancements or strong engineering teams, or due to widespread awareness thereof. Direct, low-level scams should not be listed here.

Cryptocurrency Exchange symbol Launched One-sentence summary Website
Bitcoin BTC 2009-01-03 First blockchain. bitcoin.org
Dash DASH 2014-01-18 Introduced the X11 algorithm, which is just a composite function of multiple hashing algorithms. Heavily premined. Uses coinjoin + master nodes for anonymity.
Ethereum ETH 2015-08-07 ? ethereum.org
Ethereum Classic ETC 2016-07-24 Result of Ethereum community schism due to the TheDAO hard fork ethereumclassic.org
Litecoin LTC 2011-10-07 Like bitcoin but with shorter block times and a different PoW algorithm litecoin.org
Monero XMR 2014-04-18 Uses Ring Confidential Transactions to attempt to create an anonymous cryptocurrency. getmonero.org
Zcash ZEC 2016-10-28 First cryptocurrency that implemented the zerocash protocol. z.cash
Namecoin NMC 2011-04-18 The first altcoin, implements Satoshi's BitDNS idea [1]
Zcoin XZC 2016-09-28 First cryptocurrency that implemented the zerocoin protocol which also makes it the first useful Zero-knowledge proof based anonymous cryptocurrency. zcoin.io
Cryptocurrency Max supply Algorithm Proof Type
Bitcoin ~21,000,000 SHA256 PoW
Dash ? ? ?
Ethereum Infinite Ethash PoW
Ethereum Classic Infinite Ethash PoW
Litecoin ~84,000,000 Scrypt PoW
Monero Not Applicable CryptoNight PoW
Zcash ~21,000,000 Equihash PoW
Namecoin ~21,000,000 SHA2 Merged-Mined PoW
Zcoin ~21,000,000 Lyra2RE PoW