Beyond Bitcoin and Ether: 10 cryptocurrencies you need to know

Founded in 2017, Solana is also known as the ‘Ethereum killer’ because it is faster and provides lower transaction fees than the Ethereum blockchain network. Like Ethereum, the Solana blockchain is also home to hundreds of decentralized apps, or dApps. As of June 5, 2024, Solana was valued at $174 and had a market capitalization of $80 billion, making it the fifth-largest cryptocurrency.

Created as a joke by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer in 2013, Dogecoin features the likeness of the Shiba Inu dog popularized in the Doge meme. But what initially began as a joke would transform into one of the world’s most valuable cryptocurrencies.

The credit for Doge’s success goes to the GameStop saga that began in January 2021. The meme stock reached its peak when a group of small investors, encouraged by the Reddit community WallStreetBets and helped along by an Elon Musk tweet, skyrocketed the price of individual GameStop shares to $86.88 in January 2021.

On Reddit, investors later discussed what cryptocurrency is equivalent to meme stock GameStop — and the answer was Dogecoin. That’s how Dogecoin came into the limelight, and just as GameStop reached its peak, Dogecoin started to gain traction, peaking in May 2021 at $0.74 per coin.

Dogecoin had a market capitalization of $23 billion as of June 5, 2024, making it the eighth-largest cryptocurrency.

BNB, previously known as Binance Coin, is a cryptocurrency created and issued by Binance, the largest crypto exchange by trading volume.

Binance Chain’s native coin, BNB, was originally created on the Ethereum blockchain in July 2017 and migrated to BNB Smart Chain in February 2019. BNB can be used to pay for trading fees on the crypto exchange Binance at a discounted rate. Moreover, BNB can also be used for various payments, including travel, credit card fees, gifts, and more. Due to its use cases, BNB has seen significant growth over the past few years.

BNB is the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, and its price reached its all-time high of $711 on June 5, 2024.

Cardano was established in 2015 by Charles Hoskinson, a co-founder of Ethereum.

It began trading publicly in 2017 and was named after the 16th-century Italian polymath Gerolamo Cardano. Its symbol, ADA, is named after the 19th-century mathematician Ada Lovelace, who is regarded as the world’s first computer programmer.

The Cardano blockchain network has improved efficiency over the last few years, reducing costs and enhancing transaction validation. As of June 5, 2024, the cryptocurrency is trading at $0.46.

Polkadot is a popular cryptocurrency whose blockchain was designed to build an interoperable decentralized network. This means the Polkadot blockchain network allows independent blockchains to communicate with one another and work together. Its native token is Polkadot (DOT), and its price is $7 as of June 2024.

Ethereum is home to thousands of decentralized applications. Due to its high demand, the Ethereum blockchain network sometimes becomes slow. To cope with this issue, the Polygon blockchain network was built on the Ethereum blockchain to enhance and scale Ethereum-based decentralized applications. It runs parallel to the main Ethereum blockchain.

The speed of the Polygon blockchain has made its cryptocurrency, Polygon (MATIC), also popular among investors. As of June 2024, the price of cryptocurrency is $0.73.

As of June 2024, Avalanche ranks 12th in terms of market capitalization, and its price is $36. It is the native token of the Avalance blockchain network, which competes with Ethereum. Avalanche claims that the speed and transaction fees are faster and cheaper than those of Ethereum. There are 6,500 transactions per second (TPS) in Avalanche, compared to 12-15 in Ethereum.

Toncoin was originally developed by the messaging service Telegram in 2017, and is now being developed by the TON Foundation. The blockchain was created to promote cross-chain interoperability, which refers to the ability to exchange data, communicate, and execute transactions across different blockchain networks. As of June 2024, Toncoin’s price is $7.3.

Founded by cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun in 2017, the Tron blockchain network aims to decentralize the internet. By hosting decentralized applications, also known as dApps, it intends to provide an alternative to the Ethereum blockchain network. Its native token is Tron, which is ranked 15th by market capitalization and trades for $0.11 per token as of June 6, 2024.

Crypto exchanges like Coinbase, Binance, and Gemini are popular, but all of them are owned by someone. Since the blockchain and crypto world advocates for the philosophy of decentralization, where not one entity or group of entities owns everything, the idea came: Why not make the crypto exchange a decentralized entity?

In 2018, Uniswap was launched to automate crypto trading and enhance trading efficiency compared to traditional, centralized exchanges. Due to its unique feature, Uniswap became a popular crypto exchange, and in 2020 it launched its own native token Uniswap (UNI). Currently, the cryptocurrency is trading at around $10 and ranks as the 20th largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization as of June 2024.