In spite of the fact that Bitcoin has secured its place as the king of cryptocurrencies, the cryptocurrency market has much more to offer. After all, digital currencies like Ethereum, Litecoin, or Stellar are perfectly valid alternatives for anyone interested in investing in crypto.
Taking this into consideration, it seems like instead of asking how to invest in Bitcoin, we should ask what other cryptocurrencies are worth investing in.
No matter whether you are a cryptocurrency beginner or a long-time investor, finding new investment opportunities to make the biggest bang for your buck is something you should definitely consider.
With that being said, we have prepared a list of the most important cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin. If you are interested in cryptocurrencies, read on!
Ethereum
ETH is the most popular alternative digital currency to Bitcoin and currently holds the second position in the market, with a market cap of many billions of dollars. On top of being used as a currency, Ethereum can serve as a tool for creating decentralized applications.
Decentralized applications can be perceived as the fuel that powers the Ethereum network. Just like the name suggests, they are not controlled by any single entity and are completely decentralized.
In conclusion, it is safe to say that Ethereum is much more than a simple cryptocurrency. It is a blockchain-based decentralized platform, which cannot be censored.
Litecoin
Litecoin is a cryptocurrency that is based on the original source code of Bitcoin. It was created by Charlie Lee, who used to be a Google employee.
It is worth noting that in spite of the fact that Litecoin shares quite a few similarities with its older sibling, it does have many major improvements. For example, it can process transactions faster, making it one of the fastest payment mechanisms in the world.
Litecoin is a peer-to-peer currency that enables instant, low-cost payments to anyone in the world. Moreover, it is an open-source software project and a global payment network that is completely decentralized.
With substantial industry support, trade volume, and liquidity, Litecoin has proved itself to be a great alternative to Bitcoin.
Stellar Lumens
Stellar is an open-source protocol for exchanging money. Each transaction requires a small fee paid in lumens. It is worth noting that Stellar is decentralized and fully open-source. You will join an open, global financial network that everyone can use, including people, payment networks, and banks.
On top of that, Stellar Lumens is not a mining-based currency, and it does not use mining to secure transactions and generate new tokens, reducing the computing power needed to run the network and decreasing the latency of transactions.
Ripple
Ripple is a currency exchange and remittance network that was created by Ripple Labs. It is built upon a distributed open-source protocol. It supports tokens that represent commodities, fiat currency, and cryptocurrency.
Ripple was released in 2012, and it aims to enable secure and nearly free global financial transactions of any size, with no chargebacks. In general, it is perceived as a money transfer network that serves the needs of the financial services industry.
Dash
Dash is an open-source cryptocurrency that was forked from the Bitcoin protocol. It was originally created by Evan Duffield, and it can be mined.
This cryptocurrency aims to be the most user-friendly and scalable payment system in the world. It is a bit better than Bitcoin in two main ways, and these are speed and privacy.
First of all, Dash allows you to remain anonymous while you make transactions, similar to paying cash. Its innovative network, which consists of master nodes, facilitates the mixing of coins between users to make tracing the flow of information and money very difficult.
Second of all, it allows users to make instant transactions. The master nodes bypass mining and validate a transaction a bit differently, which speeds the transactions up.
IOTA
IOTA is an open-source cryptocurrency and a distributed ledger protocol. It was launched in 2015, and it goes beyond blockchain through its core invention of the Tangle, which is a data structure behind IOTA.
Thanks to the capabilities of the ledger protocol, the Tangle scales to an infinite number of transactions. Because of that, IOTA is considered to be an efficient transactional settlement layer that promotes data integrity.
In Conclusion
There are quite a few cryptocurrencies out there that are definitely worth looking into, such as Dash or Ethereum. After all, it is not wise to put all of your eggs in one basket. Instead, you should diversify your assets and try investing in something other than Bitcoin.
On top of providing you with interesting investment opportunities, altcoins come with different characteristics, such as sped-up transactions. Additionally, most altcoins are cheaper than Bitcoin, which might save you money in the long run.
Follow Techdee for more!