4 Popular Altcoins You Should Know

2021 is the year when Bitcoin rose over $64,000 — almost double of its price at the start of the year. It is also the year when altcoins caught the world’s attention — the explosion of Dogecoin. Altcoins, the short form for “Alternative Coins”, refer to cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin.

Ethereum (ETH)

Market Cap: $240,677,389,878

Circulating Supply: 116,803,101 ETH

Source: CoinMarketCap as of 23 July 2021

Founded by Vitalik Buterin and other crypto entrepreneurs in 2013, Ethereum is a decentralised and blockchain-based computing platform used for its native cryptocurrency, Ether. Ethereum allows people to build decentralised apps (dApps) on its blockchain and requires Ether as gas to run dApps. Most NFTs are on the Ethereum network.

Ethereum’s London hard fork will launch on 4 August 2021. This network upgrade is another step towards Ethereum 2.0 — changing the network from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake.

Aave (AAVE)

Market Cap: $3,706,942,397

Circulating Supply: 12,843,397 AAVE

Source: CoinMarketCap as of 23 July 2021

Created in 2017, Aave is an open source and non-custodial liquidity protocol, built on Ethereum for earning interest on deposits and borrowing assets. As it is a decentralised lending system, users can lend, borrow and earn interest without any middlemen. Instead of obtaining a credit approval, borrowers must deposit a crypto collateral in order to borrow. Lenders on Aave will be issued aTokens to collect interest on deposits and AAVE tokens — the native token of Aave.

Aave has partnered with Axie Infinity to earn a limited-edition Aave themed NFT. Its CEO Stani Kulechov is planning to create a social media platform similar to Twitter on Ethereum blockchain.

Litecoin (LTC)

Market Cap: $8,068,000,607

Circulating Supply: 66,752,415 LTC

Source: CoinMarketCap as of 23 July 2021

Founded two years after Bitcoin, Litecoin was created in 2011 as a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency. Modelled after Bitcoin, Litecoin has many similarities with Bitcoin such as being a form of payment, proof-of-work ecosystem, and requiring storage. However, Litecoin has other differences and merits as well. Its transaction speed is much faster than that of Bitcoin, which might appeal more to merchants. Litecoin uses Scrypt hashing algorithm while Bitcoin uses SHA-256 algorithm.

Bitcoin Cash (BCH)

Market Cap: $8,935,763,477

Circulating Supply: 18,796,794 BCH

Source: CoinMarketCap as of 23 July 2021

As its name suggests, Bitcoin Cash is a cryptocurrency created in 2017 from a fork of Bitcoin. It allows more transactions to be processed by increasing the size of the blocks. Similar to Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash uses the same proof-of-work consensus mechanism and its supply is capped at 21 million BCH. As Bitcoin Cash processes transactions more quickly, it can be used for spending in our daily lives rather than holding.

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