Coinmarketcap lists nearly 10,000 coins. Many of these are defunct, forgotten, or never really took off, but nearly 2,000 of those coins have a market capitalization of $1 million or more with active daily trading. Of those 2,000 many are pure meme coins, with little utility other than sentiment trading, but that still leaves a significant number of relevant, current cryptocurrency coins.
Dogecoin
Dogecoin was born as a light-hearted take on Bitcoin. It is widely considered the first of the meme coins, so why is it on the list? It shows the power of community, sentiment, and influence within the cryptocurrency sphere.
After being shilled by the likes of Elon Musk and Snoop Dogg, it has gained favor with e-commerce companies, businesses, and especially online casinos. Dogecoin dice games, in particular, have proven popular and hark back to Bitcoin Dice, which was the first crypto-gambling platform. They offer anonymity, privacy, security, and the opportunity to take home handsome profits.
Ripple
Ripple is sometimes compared to the Swift fiat payment system and leads the decentralized finance sector. It is a platform that enables payments between users, but it does so using the Ripple ledger. It has very low transaction fees and very fast transaction times.
For several years it was heralded as being a potential bridge between traditional financial institutions and modern web 3.0 fintech solutions. While that hasn’t quite come to pass yet, Ripple does have some interesting agreements in place and it is being deployed widely across the world.
Cardano
Cardano was first mined in 2017 by Charles Hoskinson, one of the co-founders of Ethereum. Hoskinson left Ethereum when he disagreed with the direction the network was heading.
Like Ethereum, it has enjoyed a rapid rise, although it hasn’t yet hit the same market capitalization. Cardano offers similar features and functions to Ethereum, but it bills itself as being the next generation of decentralized app platforms.
Toncoin
Toncoin has a somewhat unique background. The Open Network is a blockchain that was developed by the messaging app, Telegram. Telegram is hugely popular and widely used within the cryptocurrency industry, which means Toncoin has enjoyed a lot of natural exposure to an eager crowd.
Many Telegram users hold and use Toncoin, especially those who play Telegram games. And Telegram games are seeing a substantial increase in user numbers, which makes Toncoin highly significant.
Binance Coin
Binance Coin is a utility crypto that is tied to, run by, and was established by the Binance exchange. It is commonly used to pay exchange fees on Binance because the exchange offers discounts for those who use BNB, rather than other cryptocurrencies, to pay fees. As such, a lot of traders have a permanent pool of BNB in their exchange accounts.
The Binance Coin runs on the same blockchain as the exchange, and while it was originally launched as an ERC-20 token, running on the Ethereum network, it launched its own mainnet in 2019, soon migrating Binance Coin to that network.
Solana
Solana is similar to Ethereum. It enables developers to create decentralized apps on its network. It has become particularly noteworthy in the past couple of years because it has been widely used in the creation of meme coins, and it can also be used to mint ETFs.
Meme coins went through a significant boost in 2022 and 2023, and many of the coins were built in the Solana network. This has helped it become one of the biggest cryptos on the market and will likely see its influence continue to increase.
Tether
Tether is an important coin because it stands as the largest stablecoin in the cryptocurrency industry. Stablecoins are those that are tied to the value of physical assets. In this case, Tether is tied to the value of the US Dollar.
This means Tether’s price doesn’t change according to Bitcoin’s performance and it retains its value of $1 per Tether. It enables traders to hold a neutral position, can be used to hold cryptocurrency without facing the volatility of the market, and can act as a bridge between fiat and cryptocurrencies.
Ether
Ether wasn’t the first altcoin. In fact, it only launched in 2015, which is two years after even Dogecoin. But, while it is relatively new to the party, it has quickly become the second-largest coin by market capitalization.
It is also the largest utility coin. Because, while Bitcoin is really only meant as a means of transferring value between users, via P2P payments, the Ether coin is used to pay gas fees by companies that develop and establish apps on the Ethereum network. It has facilitated the launch of many other coins and networks.
Bitcoin
As cliched as it might sound, Bitcoin is the most important coin in the fintech industry. It was the first cryptocurrency, remains the largest by market capitalization, and it acts as most people’s introduction to the world of cryptocurrency coins.
It also has the highest levels of uptake in the industry as it is more widely accepted than any other cryptocurrency on the market.
Conclusion
There are thousands of cryptocurrencies on the market today, but while a large number of those are inactive, defunct, or have such little market capitalization or liquidity as to be irrelevant, there are still a lot of cryptos with real-world value.
Bitcoin remains the most important because of its market capitalization and also because it leads the way in most areas, including the introduction of ETFs. But the likes of Ethereum and Solana, with their real-world utility, are also considered highly important.