Race for dominance: 10 Bitcoin and Ethereum killers

Highlights

• As other digital currencies and their accompanying blockchains emerge, is it conceivable that one day, BTC and ETH could be toppled by something else.
• While Solana aims to facilitate decentralised app (DApp) creation, it also aims to improve scalability by introducing a proof-of-history (POF) protocol.
• Binance Coin has expanded past facilitating trades on Binance’s exchange platform.

For much of the lifespan of cryptocurrency, two cryptos - Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) - have dominated the space. Bitcoin is purely a digital currency, whose purpose is to be used as a digital and decentralised alternative to fiat. Ethereum, on the other hand, accomplishes this as well, but is also a decentralised blockchain which can host apps, also known as decentralised applications or DApps.

They’re also amongst the oldest digital currencies still in action today, with Bitcoin having been released in 2009 and Ethereum in 2014.

Since then, the digital currency has undergone a gradual rise in users and popularity, particularly in the last two or three years, with its adoption by El Salvador as well as by major companies.

Moreover, in the past few years, the market has been flooded with a range of different cryptocurrencies and now, as of November 2021, there are over four thousand cryptos in circulation.

And yet of those four thousand cryptos, two remain the largest by market capitalisation – Bitcoin and Ethereum.

But as other digital currencies and their accompanying blockchains emerge, is it conceivable that one day BTC and ETH could be toppled by something else?

Here are 10 altcoins which have the potential to rule over all other cryptos.

Solana (SOL)

You may notice a common theme with this list of digital currencies is firstly the presence of a highly functional blockchain with the ability to host projects. Secondly, the mining protocol of these coins doesn’t use proof-of-work (POW), which has become a problem for BTC and ETH due to their excessive energy use and consequently their harmful impact on the environment.

Solana is one such project that ticks both these boxes. In fact, since Ethereum’s network has increasingly experienced problems pertaining to speed and costs of transactions, which their developers are currently trying to fix with Ethereum’s long-awaited Ethereum 2.0 update, users have searched for newer and more functional alternatives. Solana is one of these.

While it aims to facilitate decentralised app (DApp) creation, it also aims to improve scalability by introducing a proof-of-history (POF) protocol – a much more environmentally friendly option to the aforementioned POS protocol.

Solana’s market cap currently sits at over US$67 billion. At the beginning of August, that figure was around US$9 billion – an indication of its vastly growing popularity.

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Cardano (ADA)

Cardano follows very much the same path as Solana since it is an updated version of Ethereum.

Cardano has gained nearly 11,000% since its low of March 2020. Not to mention a market cap which has grown from around US$5.5 billion to where it stands today at around US$64.5 billion.

One of the Cardano blockchain’s big projects is its use as a viable method to support all the stakeholders along the supply chain in the agricultural industry, including farmers, hauliers, and retailers who can use blockchain for product certification and traceability.

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Litecoin (LITE)

Much like how Solana and Cardano are upgrades of the Ethereum blockchain, Litecoin is an upgrade of the Bitcoin blockchain.

Litecoin is based on an open-source global payment network, which is not controlled by any central authority, much like Bitcoin. However, Litecoin has a faster block generation rate than Bitcoin.

Litecoin is currently ranked 17^th in terms of market capitalisation with US$13.7 billion, which is a jump from the beginning of the year where the market cap was US$8.25 billion.

Binance (BNB)

Binance Coin is the token that powers the Binance exchange, which is the largest exchange in terms of the daily trading volume. It is a coin used to trade and pay fees on Binance.

Launched in 2017, Binance Coin has expanded past, facilitating trades on Binance’s exchange platform. Today, it can be used for trading, payment processing and even booking travel arrangements.

Binance has a current market cap of US$92.1 billion, an astounding jump from its January market cap of US$5.41 billion.

XRP

XRP is the token created by Ripple to provide users with a faster, cheaper, and more scalable alternative to other cryptos.

XRP is built for payments and is the native digital asset on the XRP Ledger, which is an open-source, permissionless and decentralised blockchain technology that can settle transactions in less than five seconds.

XRP also provides convenience and can be sent directly without the need for a central intermediary.

XRP has a current market cap of US$53.5 billion, a considerable rise from its market cap of US$10.78 billion at the beginning of this year.

Polkadot

Polkadot provides a unique service in the crypto space by making a wide range of blockchains interoperable with each other. This, in turn, develops a decentralised and private web.

Decentralisation of the web is a big goal of many blockchains which seek to revolutionise the current web, which is largely monopolised by large companies like Google and newly formed, Meta (previously Facebook).

Polkadot has a market cap of US$49.6 billion, rising from US$7.48 billion at the beginning of 2021.

Tether (USDT)

Tether is the world’s largest stablecoin and is tied to the US dollar, although not directly. This means that whatever the price of the US dollar may be, Tether is the same price. It, therefore, is resistant to the volatility other digital currencies are subject to.

It is the fourth highest-ranked crypto with its market cap currently at US$70.5 billion. At the beginning of 2021, its market cap was US$21.2 billion.

Terra (LUNA)

Terra was launched in April 2019 and as of September 2021, offers stablecoins pegged to the U.S. dollar, South Korean won, Mongolian tugrik and the International Monetary Fund's Special Drawing Rights basket of currencies.

Terra's native token, LUNA, is used to stabilise the price of the protocol's stablecoins.

Terra’s current market cap is US$17.4 billion, having risen from US$311.14 million at the beginning of 2021.

UniSwap (UNI)

Launched in 2018, UniSwap is a popular trading platform known for facilitating the  automated trading of decentralised finance (DeFi) tokens. DeFi are programs available on a blockchain which offer services pertaining to finance without the need for a middleman.

UniSwap has a current market cap of US$16 billion, having grown from US$1.23 billion at the beginning of this year.

Dogecoin (DOGE)

The only memecoin on this list, we’d be remiss to exclude Dogecoin due to its phenomenal growth this year along with its rival Shiba Inu (SHIBA).

Dogecoin has a loyal online following and includes big-name supporters such as Tesla founder, Elon Musk, who has regularly tweeted his support of the memecoin.

Dogecoin has a current market cap of US$36.13 billion – a huge rise from the beginning of 2021, where its market cap was US$668.63 million.

Wrap Up

It’s difficult to predict what’s going to happen in the crypto space given the nature of the digital currency market.

There are those who think crypto is a passing fad. They are probably the same people who believed the internet was a passing fad.

The truth is, cryptocurrency is still in its beginning stages and although Bitcoin and Ethereum have dominated the market so far, there’s no guarantee that they will do it forever. There’s not even a guarantee they will dominate soon. As is often the case with crypto market predictions, we’ll just have to wait and see.