Top 5 Trending Cryptocurrencies In 2020

Since 2009, the year when the world got its first crypto coin, the crypto market has evolved a lot and has expanded dramatically. Its rapid growth and potential use-cases of crypto coins have attracted the interests of millions of individuals, companies, and governments.

Currently, there are over 5,500 cryptocurrencies trading and new digital tokens are getting released every day, adding to the number. However, if we closely follow the market, the top 50 cryptocurrencies almost make 95% of the market by total market capitalization. And, the top 5 cryptocurrencies make close to 85% by total market capitalization.

So, which cryptocurrencies are dominating the market trends? I have put together a list of top 5 trending cryptocurrencies in 2020. Let’s have a look.

Top 5 Trending Cryptocurrencies In 2020

#1. Bitcoin

Bitcoin is the world’s first cryptocurrency and has been the most valuable and popular cryptocurrency ever since its launch in 2009. Bitcoin still determines the momentum of the cryptocurrency market and influences the prices of other cryptocurrencies.

The coin has intrigued many individuals, not just for its underlying technology, but also because of its creator’s identity. To date, the world has not been able to figure out the real identity and all we know is that it is created by the pseudonym known by Satoshi Nakamoto.

Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency that works on a proof-of-work consensus system and its total supply is capped at 21 million coins. Currently, there are only 3 million bitcoins left to be mined. Due to its scarce nature, it makes it more precious and is regarded as the best store in value coin equivalent to gold.

By the end of 2017, the prices of bitcoin sky-rocketed to $20,000, an increase of up to 20 times in that year, but crashed soon after. Still, it is the most valued coin in the crypto market.

One of the widely believed stories of bitcoin being used for the first time for the purchase of a product, when a programmer in May 2010 purchased two large pizzas worth $30 for 10,000 BTC.

#2. Ethereum

If bitcoin has initiated the idea of cryptocurrencies/digital assets, then Ethereum has helped it to expand, reach masses, and explore multiple use-cases.

Ethereum is an open-source blockchain-based distributed computing platform that supports smart contract functionality. It enables developers all around the world to build new kinds of decentralized applications (dapps) on the Ethereum blockchain.

Launched in July 2015 and written by Vitalik Buterin and Gavin Wood, both co-founders of Ethereum. Its native cryptocurrency is called Ether and is the second most valued cryptocurrency by market capitalization.

Ethereum used to be one of the preferred platforms for launching ICOs when it was a popular option for fundraising by blockchain projects.

One of the advantages over bitcoin is, Ethereum is highly scalable and has a transaction speed of a few seconds. Bitcoin’s transaction speed is 4.6 TPS, which often leads to a surge in transaction confirmation time and fees.

It uses the proof-of-work consensus mechanism to validate transactions but is transiting to a much efficient proof-of-stake consensus mechanism soon.

The Ethereum community is the world’s largest and most diversified blockchain community and it includes researchers, developers, financial institutions, fortune 500 companies, mining companies, etc.

#3. Bitcoin Cash

Bitcoin Cash is a hard forked version of bitcoin, created in 2017 with much better technological capabilities, especially to solve the issue of scalability. In the hard fork, the block size increased to 8MB from 1MB in bitcoin, which helped to solve the issue of scalability that resulted in a lower transaction fee. It also removed the SegWit protocol, which resulted in a higher number of transactions in each block.

However, again in 2018, Bitcoin Cash blockchain split into Bitcoin SV (Satoshi Vision) and Bitcoin Cash ABC. Going forward, Bitcoin Cash ABC became the dominant coin as it had a higher hash power and nodes in the network. And, it took over the BCH ticker. It uses the proof-of-work consensus mechanism and its supply is also capped at 21 million coins.

Post the second split, the value of Bitcoin Cash has suffered a lot, but still has a lot to offer in terms of both value and utility. It directly competes with PayPal and VISA for instant fund transfers.

#4. Ripple

Since its launch, Ripple has successfully captured the attention of many financial institutions and large corporations towards it and is certainly the most trending crypto coin.

Co-founded by Chris Larsen and Jed McCaleb in 2012, Ripple is more popular for its digital payment network than its native cryptocurrency XRP. It is a real-time gross settlement system, currency exchange, and cross-border remittance system, a system similar to SWIFT payments, but does the job at a fraction of cost and instantaneously.

There are 100 billion pre-mined XRP tokens, but only 38 billion are available in the market. The rest of the coins are with Ripple labs and are periodically released.

Ripple has got funding from some of the large PE funds including Standard Chartered, IDG Capital, Accenture, SBI Holdings, CME Group, etc. It also has tie-ups with large banks and financial institutions including MUFG, Cambridge Global Payments, Star One Credit Union, and eZforex.com. 

#5. Binance Coin

Binance Coin (BNB), initially an ERC-20 standard utility token was launched by Binance to support its ecosystem. Later on, it moved to the main Binance Chain blockchain. The token is more like a payment token, that can be used for making online payments, buying virtual gifts, trading, storing, and can even be used in donations.

It has a supply cap of 200 million BNB tokens, and Binance users are given discounts on the trading fees when paid with BNB tokens. The Binance Coin is ranked in the list of top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. 

Binance has plans to repurchase around almost 50% using its profits, which will leave only 100 million tokens in circulation, which will help to maintain its value. 

Top upcoming cryptocurrency list

There are many other cryptocurrencies with unique features and functionalities that can be added to this list. But, the coins discussed above have been able to maintain their positions for a long time and few have moved up the ladder in a very short time, breaking into the elite top 10 cryptocurrency list in this highly competitive market.

The above list of top trending cryptocurrencies will help you to pick the best one for yourself and ride the crypto wave successfully.