We’re starting with the cryptocurrency that began the crypto we know today: Bitcoin ($BTC.X). Was Bitcoin the first cryptocurrency? Technically, no, we’d have to back to the 1980s – but we’re not going to start there.
Bitcoin
Year: 2009
Stocktwits Ticker: $BTC.X
Still around? Yes.
This one doesn’t need much of an introduction.
Hard to believe it’s been 13 years since Satoshi Nakamoto published his whitepaper: Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.
Litecoin
Year: 2011
Stocktwits Ticker: $LTC.X
Still around? Yes.
You don’t hear this comparison much anymore, but if Bitcoin is considered ‘digital gold,’ then Litecoin was once considered ‘digital silver.’
Litecoin was started by Charlie Lee, the same Charlie Lee who worked at Coinbase ($COIN) as their Director of Engineering until 2017ish. Litecoin was created to address concerns about how Bitcoin was mined: GPUs. Litecoin’s response was to develop mining done with CPUs. But a lot of things have changed since then.
Depending on who you talk to, some consider Litecoin as the first hard fork of Bitcoin.
Namecoin
Year: 2011
Stocktwits Ticker: $NMC.X
Still around? Yes. Sort of. But it’s mostly dead.
Namecoin’s claim to fame was the creation of the top-level domain .bit. .bit is not under the control of ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers).
Namecoin has a much stronger claim to being Bitcoin’s first true hard fork. Why? Because Namecoin was being considered as far back as 2010. Satoshi Nakamoto participated in the BitcoinTalk forum and encouraged the ideas that ultimately formed Namecoin.
But Namecoin isn’t really around that much. It’s only listed on three extremely low-volume exchanges, and one of them accounts for nearly 90% of its trade volume – so it’s on its last leg and has been for quite some time.
Peercoin
Year: 2012
Stocktwits Ticker: $PPC.X
Still around? Yes, kind of.
And here is the first Proof-of-Stake cryptocurrency ever. But it’s not the first solely Proof-of-Stake crypto. Peercoin uses both Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake. PoW creates the tokens, while PoS maintains the network.
Ripple
Year: 2012
Stocktwits Ticker: $XRP.X
Still around? Yes.
Ok, let’s talk about the names. If you don’t get the name right, the keyboard warriors on the interwebz will come after you. Ripple is not XRP, and XRP is not Ripple. Ripple is a company that developed the cryptocurrency XRP.
However, they’ve become synonymous and remain so.
XRP’s creation had a different purpose than Bitcoin, Litecoin, Namecoin, or Peercoin. Where Satoshi wanted to decentralize currency, Ripple aspired to replace the current SWIFT system essentially.
Additionally, it is extremely centralized.
Dogecoin
Year: 2013
Stocktwits Ticker: $DOGE.X
Still around? Shockingly, amazingly, astoundingly, yes.
Here it is—the first memecoin. One engineer from IBM and another from Adobe created Dogecoin mostly as a joke.
But it’s a joke that has continued for almost a decade and has seen Dogecoin’s adoption grow into one of the top ten most valuable cryptocurrencies by market cap.
Gridcoin
Year: 2013
Stocktwits Ticker: $GRC.X
Still around? Technically, yes, but it’s mostly dead.
Gridcoin is one of the first cryptocurrencies that tackled a use case outside of money. Gridcoin, in a nutshell, allows people to share their processing power (GPU and/or CPU) on your computer or smartphone.
Want to support mapping the Milky Way galaxy? Want to help with research into protein structure prediction for finding cures in medicine? Want to lend your power to the University of Warsaw’s physics and astronomy projects?
Gridcoin provides rewards (GRC) for the use of your processing power.
But if you want a cryptocurrency to trade or invest in that you can easily buy and sell, Gridcoin probably isn’t for you. It’s listed on two extremely low-volume exchanges and barely breaks $30,000 (yes, only $30,000) in its average daily traded volume.
A full white list of their projects can be found here.
Primecoin
Year: 2013
Stocktwits Ticker: $XPM.X
Still around? Dead.
The same guy (Sunny King – not his/her real name) who co-created Peercoin created Primecoin. It calculated prime numbers.
And it’s pretty much dead. It’s on one shady exchange and did $200 bucks worth of volume.
Nxt
Year: 2013
Stocktwits Ticker: $NXT.X
Still around? Yes, but dying.
Nxt is either the first or one of the first 2nd-generation blockchain networks. Instead of mining, a fixed amount of NXT tokens were created with the consensus mechanism based entirely on Proof-of-Stake.
In many ways, Nxt is like an early version of Ethereum ($ETH.X): a platform for developing businesses and applications. But, unfortunately, it’s essentially getting replaced by its competitors.
It’s not listed on many cryptocurrency exchanges but still finds some volume on Bittrex and Poloniex.
Dash*
Year: 2014
Stocktwits Ticker: $DASH.X
Still around? Yes.
Dash is arguably one of the most important cryptocurrencies ever created. Why? Because it’s the first cryptocurrency that provided anonymity when sending crypto.
But before we look at that, Dash had a bumpy road before it got to where Dash is today.
Dash is one of the first hard forks of Bitcoin, and it was first called Xcoin, but it faced some pamp and damp before rebranding to Darkcoin, which sounded like something illegal.
Then it was rebranded again as ‘digital cash’ – or Dash.
Why the *? Because Dash is technically not the 10th oldest crypto – that goes to Auroracoin, which was created as an alternative currency for Iceland’s krona. 👴