Things to Know About the Major Cryptocurrencies Besides Bitcoin

boldWhat’s a Cryptocurrency?

At it’s most simple, a cryptocurrency is a digital form of money that uses encryption to secure transactions, but there are a few other key details to understand.
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Bitcoin Cash (BCH)

Bitcoin Cash was created through a fork to Bitcoin that occurred in August 2017, establishing two distinct currencies. The goal was to make transactions quicker by increasing the size of blocks for Bitcoin Cash, which also makes it easier to scale up.

boldLitecoin (LTC)

Litecoin was created in 2011 by Charlie Lee, an MIT graduate, former Google employee, and former director of engineering at Coinbase. It functions similarly to Bitcoin, but with a higher maximum number of coins that can be mined. Litecoin blocks can also be created faster: one every 2.5 minutes compared to Bitcoin’s one every 10 minutes.

ETHER (ETH)

The Etherium platform and it’s currency, Ether, were originally proposed in 2013 and released in 2015. It functions similarly to Bitcoin, but with an added focus on smart contracts (agreements enforced by code rather than the law). These can be used to manage contracts between people, create multi-signature accounts where a majority need to sign off before the funds can be accessed, and more.

Ripple (XRP)

Ripple is the latest cryptocurrency to make headlines after soaring in value at the end of 2017. In late December is reached a value of $2.21, giving it a market capitalization of over $85 billion.