Bitcoin is the most valuable and well-known cryptocurrency with the highest volumes in circulation – but it’s far from the only crypto worth watching.
As crypto becomes more mainstream, new digital currencies continue to appear and have begun to be accepted in conventional financial transactions such as credit card spending.
Part of the appeal of crypto is that it is decentralized, so it cannot be manipulated or controlled by government regulation. However, the issue of regulation is brewing and governments are likely to introduce some form of compliance rules.
Altcoins are modeled after Bitcoinand some offer advanced features but generally don’t match the level of security available through Bitcoin networks – but that doesn’t mean they don’t have huge potential.
Here are the ten cryptocurrencies said to be “the next big digital token” out of the 10,000 different cryptos in circulation.
1. Dogecoin – DOGE
Dogecoin values have skyrocketed in 2021 and major companies are now accepting it as payment, including SpaceX, Elon Musk’s aerospace company.
The cryptocurrency was designed as a joke to highlight the volatility and speculation inherent in crypto markets, created by software engineers Jackson Palmer and Billy Markus in 2013.
From there, the meme coin got a huge profile boost when Musk tweeted about it and peaked at a valuation of around £0.55 when the entrepreneur appeared on the US show. Saturday Night Live.
At the time of writing, Dogecoin is worth around £0.12 per coin, as the 11th largest cryptocurrency in the world, with a market cap value of £16 billion.
2. Monero-XMR
Monero is an untraceable currency offering high levels of privacy and security, launched in April 2014 and currently worth £131 per token.
Open-source crypto is community-driven and donation-only, focusing on scalability and complete decentralization.
Ring signatures are a technique used to ensure anonymity. Unfortunately, this security feature means Monero is related to crime. Yet people living in oppressive environments can also use it to provide security and secrecy to circumvent personal spending controls.
3. Tether – USDT
As the fourth largest crypto, Attached is worth exactly $1 (£0.74) per token and holds a market capitalization of £57.58 billion.
The price is pegged to the US dollar and Tether was one of the first stablecoins pegged to an external source to avoid turbulence.
Investors looking to get involved in crypto but with a risk-averse approach tend to opt for stablecoins as they can transfer to and from regular currencies much faster and significantly reduce risk exposure .
4. Binance Coin – BNB
This utility cryptocurrency is used as a payment method allowing users to trade on the Binance Exchange (prohibited in the UK).
The third-largest cryptocurrency offers discounts to people who trade with the token as payment and operates on the Binance decentralized exchange.
Binance Coin is worth £321 per BNB and has a market capitalization of £54.19 billion.
5. Stellar – XLM
Stellar is designed as an enterprise solution, facilitating large financial transactions between investment brokers, corporations, and banks through an open blockchain network.
Transactions can be completed instantly and incur no cost to participating parties.
The cryptocurrency remains an open blockchain that anyone can use and allows cross-border transfers in any currency, based on the Lumens XLM native currency.
Stellar Lumens is worth around £0.18 and has a market cap value of £4.42 billion.
6. Bitcoin Cash–BCH
Bitcoin Cash was one of the first hard forks of the original Bitcoin cryptocurrency when developers or miners had different goals or ideas for crypto.
Launched in August 2017, bitcoin money was developed due to scalability disagreements, due to one-megabyte block limits on the Bitcoin network.
BCH generates larger blocks of eight megabytes, containing more transactions and increasing exchange speeds.
Bitcoin Cash has a market capitalization of around £4.79 billion and is worth £251 per token.
7. Dots – DOT
the Peas The protocol allows blockchains to work together.
A relay chain supports network communications and allows parallel blockchains to transact using native tokens.
Developers can use Polkadot to develop new blockchains. However, they must create separate security protections, which means smaller or newer projects are often vulnerable without the robust security of a larger blockchain.
Created by Gavin Wood, one of the founders of Ethereum, Polkadot is trading at £16.66 with a market capitalization of £18.06 billion.
8. Gimbal – ADA
A collective of mathematicians, cryptographers, and engineers created Cardano as a Proof-of-Stake crypto. While still a relatively young cryptocurrency, gimbal It is believed to have more exceptional capabilities than Ethereum.
With the sixth-largest market cap, standing at £28.39 billion and a trading value of £0.88 per ADA, Cardano aims to become the world’s leading DeFi-based financial operating system.
Cardano apps include solutions to support contact tracing, voter fraud, and on-chain interoperability.
9. Litecoin – LTC
Litecoin was launched in 2011 and was one of the first cryptos to follow the Bitcoin model, created by former Google engineer Charlie Lee.
The open-source global payment system has no central controls and can be decoded with standard processors, providing faster generation of new blocks and faster transactions.
A growing number of organizations and merchants have started accepting Litecoin, worth £99.54 per token, with a market capitalization of £6.86 billion.
10. Ethereum – ETH
Our final cryptocurrency to consider alongside Bitcoin is Ethereum – a decentralized platform supporting dApps and smart contracts, with built-in protections against fraud, third-party control or downtime.
The concept is that Ethereum’s decentralized financial products are available to anyone around the world, without any reliance on national identification infrastructure or procedures.
Theoretically, anyone can open a bank account, take out insurance, take out a loan or obtain another financial product, regardless of their nationality.
Ethereum apps run on Ether, the platform-specific crypto token, and are primarily used by developers building apps within Ethereum or investors buying digital currencies with Ether.
Ethereum is the second largest digital currency behind Bitcoin. However, there is a good margin between the two, with ETH trading at £2,323 in February 2022, holding a market capitalization just over half that of Bitcoin.
FAQs on 10 Cryptocurrencies to Compete with Bitcoin
What are altcoins and tokens?
Any cryptocurrency other than bitcoin is called altcoin; it simply means an alternative coin. The crypto used to make payments is classified as a value token.
Ethereum, as noted above, is the most commonly used altcoin, along with Ether the real currency and Ethereum the larger blockchain network.
Blockchain-based tokens are also available, acting slightly differently from a form of digital cash.
Why are cryptocurrencies so important?
The main difference between crypto and an established investment is that there is no centralized exchange or regulator controlling transactions.
As a disruptor, crypto is an alternative investment and has grown significantly over the past ten years, reaching a market capitalization of over £1.29 trillion.
One of the concepts behind crypto is that it is a democratized form of finance, with no banks, laws, monetary authorities or third parties intervening or charging transaction fees.
How did so many competing cryptocurrencies emerge?
Bitcoin is perhaps the most well-known cryptocurrency, but countless others have been derived from it, using similar architecture structures and open source code. Anyone can create a new part by modifying the code.
Each crypto is based on the underlying blockchain technology, but developers seek to create different types of crypto for various purposes.
For example, utility cryptos work together as infrastructure, with other cryptocurrencies built on their networks. Other forms of crypto are money in the usual sense, storing value and paying for transactions.
What are the biggest cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin?
There are several cryptocurrencies considered important or likely to become so. Dogecoin is a good example and instantly became more popular when it was tweeted by Elon Musk.
In addition to the list above, others include Bitcoin forks such as Bitcoin SV and coins such as USD Coin, Tezos, Solana, and Ripple.
Why is Bitcoin so popular?
Bitcoin is the original cryptocurrency and is dominant because it has the highest volumes in circulation and the highest value per coin. As of February 2022, each Bitcoin was worth around £32,400, or £612 billion of the cryptocurrency’s total market cap.
The supply is limited to 21 million Bitcoins, which stimulates demand. However, it will become more difficult to mine as scarcity increases and could skyrocket in value or drop dramatically as traders seek less volatile alternatives.
Nearly 19 million of Bitcoin’s cap has already been mined, although it will be 18 years before the remaining 2 million coins are mined.
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