After searching the google for almost five minutes, I was unable to find a good overview of different categories of Cryptocurrency projects. Setting out, the goal was to find a quick overview of what is different categories were available so a person could pick projects from different categories to better distribute their investments. I have heard this stock investors talk about doing similar things with their portfolio's in the past.
Strong as my Google-Fu is, my searches were fruitless. So, I am going to take a crack at providing you with such a list. Obviously, I will not be listing coins, there are far too many for me to take that project on alone. However, if you see value in this and find a coin or project you feel strongly should be listed, please let me know about it in the comments below.
Undoubtably, someone will be irritated that I have placed project x in category y, please make your case in the comments below. I'm not opposed to making changes if they are warranted.
Categories
- Currencies - Must have high degree of liquidity. Value is driven from use and scarcity (supply and demand).
- Store of Value - not suitable for micro transactions
- Privacy - projects with privacy built in
- Other - Me too coins
- Smart Contracts - Value is derived from contracts or other projects using the platform. Scarcity is maintained by burning small amounts of currency referred to as gas.
- Social Media
- Decentralized Organization / Business
- Shared Distributed Computing
- Peer to Peer Commerce - coins that enable person to person private transactions or exchanges
- Settlement Networks - bank interests
- Government Funded and Other Coins Without Utility and/or Scarcity - disgusting I know (perhaps we should label these "True Sh^t Coins")
(Links to the following can be found by searching for the name or ticker symbol on https://coinmarketcap.com/)
Currencies
Store of Value
| Name | Ticker Symbol | Notes |
|---|
| BitCoin | BTC | First mover advantage, slow with high transactions fees. Commonly used as the reserve / exchange currency |
Privacy
| Name | Ticker Symbol | Notes |
|---|
| DASH | DASH | Fast, has smart organization to pay developers/organization, master node holders and minors |
| Monero | XMR | Obscures details on Ledger |
| ZCash | ZEC | (pending) |
| ZenCash | ZEN | (pending) A fork of ZCash and ZClassic, private messaging and transactions |
Other
| Name | Ticker Symbol | Notes |
|---|
| LiteCoin | LTC | One of the First BitCoin Forks, adopts proposed solutions and processes transactions faster than BitCoin |
Smart Contracts
| Name | Ticker Symbol | Notes |
|---|
| Ethereum | ETH | First mover advantage |
| Ethereum Classic | ETC | Ethereum Fork |
| Ubiq | UBQ | Enterprise ready, stable fork of Ethereum |
| NEO | NEO | Formerly Ant Shares, developed in China with the aim to allow developers to create smart contracts with a variety of languages |
Social Media / Ecosystem
| Name | Ticker Symbol | Notes |
|---|
| Steem | STEEM | Exchange Currency for SteemIt.com |
| Steem Backed Dollars | SBD | Rewards Currency for SteemIt.com |
| Basic Attention Token | BAT | Currency to enable safe distributed advertisement, rewards viewers of advertisement and content producers |
| LBRY | LBC | Designed to reward content producers; a free, open, community-run digital marketplace |
Decentralized Organization / Business
| Name | Ticker Symbol | Notes |
|---|
| Aragon | ANT | Allows people to make digital organizations (built on Ethereum) includes it's own legal system. |
| Golem | GNT | Currently in development, will allow distributed GPU utilization in the near future |
| MaidSafe | MAID | Distributed Processing, Storage and Networking |
| Shift | SHIFT | Decentralized web |
| Sia | SC | Decentralized private cloud storage |
| StorJ | SJCX | Decentralized private cloud storage |
| iEx | RLC | Decentralized private cloud computing |
| SNOM | SNOM | Like Golem, but they are using current technologies. |
Peer to Peer Commerce
| Name | Ticker Symbol | Notes |
|---|
| Swarm City | SWT | Currently in development, Boardwalk was released in June 2017 allowing people to exchange SWT for goods and services |
| Chronobank | TIME | Recruitment and labor based cryptocurrency designed to eliminate the third parties. |
Dividend Paying Investments
| Name | Ticker Symbol | Notes |
|---|
| BlockChain Capital | BCAP | Like a mutual fund, token holders are rewarded from investments made into companies by VC investors. |
| DigixDAO | DGD | Allows holders to receive dividends when DGX (a soon to be released gold backed cryptocurrency is traded) |
| Iconomi | ICN | Invest and manage digital assets (semi centralized) |
| Melonport | MLN | Like Iconomi, only more decentralized and still under development. |
| Veritaseum | VERI | Enables peer to peer capitol markets |
Settlement Networks
| Name | Ticker Symbol | Notes |
|---|
| BitShares | BTS | Decentralized financial service, banking and exchange |
| Ripple | XRP | Banking industry settlement network (possible sh^t coin?) |
| TokenCard | TKN | an Ethereum based debit card that will allow you to spend numerous coins |
Government Funded and Other Coins With No Utility (Sh^t Coins)
| Name | Ticker Symbol | Notes |
|---|
| Unknown | UNKNOWN | Coming soon to an ICO / Exchange near you. Seriously, if you know of any sh^t coins, let me know and I will post them here to warn others |
A big shout out goes to @crypt0, I listed many of the tokens he mentioned on his June 22nd, 2017 post
So how do you distribute your cryptocurrency holdings?
What projects did I miss that you are excited about?
It is Litecoin not Lightcoin. Excellent post I'm going to use it as a guide.
Great catch! I will update the post.
nice listing of categories in a dynamic industry. Yes I'm diversifying and see crypto as the evolution of finance globally. I'm highly interest in Global Trade Coin on c-cex GLTC as they will be launching a mobile app targeted at the marketplace in India allowing them to pay for utilities, recharge phones, buy consumables etc...It's currently trading in the $.40 -$.60 range. I'm looking for it to pump up over 4X that and form a solid resistance line as they market it in India. When their volume starts to increase it might jump to the Moon!
Awesome! I'll look in to it and add it to the list. Thanks for sharing.
glad to help Smitty