Cryptocurrencies (or cryptoassets) are digital tokens designed to work as mediums of exchange, stores of value, and units of account. They use use cryptography to secure transactions, to control the creation of additional units (and enforce economic policies), and to verify the transfer of assets. For the most part (and with some notable exceptions like Ripple XRP), cryptocurrencies use decentralized control as opposed to centralized electronic money and central banking systems. In most cases, the decentralized control of each cryptocurrency works through a blockchain, which is a public transaction database, functioning as a distributed ledger.

Bitcoin, created in 2009, was the first decentralized cryptocurrency. Several other cryptocurrencies have been created. These are frequently called altcoins, as a blend of alternative coin.

According to J. Lansky, a cryptoasset is a networked system that meets the following criteria:

1. It does not require a centralized authority.
2. It keeps an overview of cryptocurrency units and their ownership.
3. The system defines whether new cryptocurrency units can be created (if new crypto units can be created, the system defines the circumstances of their origin and how to determine the ownership of these new units).
4. Ownership of cryptocurrency units can be proved exclusively cryptographically. The system allows transactions to be performed in which ownership of the cryptographic units is changed. A transaction statement can only be issued by an entity proving the current ownership of these units.
5. If two different instructions for changing the ownership of the same cryptographic units are simultaneously entered, the system performs at most one of them.

Over a thousand cryptocurrency specifications exist; most are similar to and derive from the first fully implemented decentralized cryptocurrency, bitcoin. Within cryptocurrency systems the safety, integrity and balance of ledgers is maintained by a community of mutually distrustful parties referred to as miners: members of the general public using their computers to help validate and timestamp transactions, adding them to the ledger in accordance with a particular timestamping scheme. Miners have a financial incentive to maintain the security of a cryptocurrency ledger.

Most cryptocurrencies are designed to gradually decrease production of currency, placing an ultimate cap on the total amount of currency that will ever be in circulation, mimicking precious metals. Compared with ordinary currencies held by financial institutions or kept as cash on hand, cryptocurrencies can be more difficult for seizure by law enforcement. This difficulty is derived from leveraging cryptographic technologies.

*Some of the material above is taken from a Wikipedia Cryptocurrency article which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Overview

What you’re seeing below is a list of the top cryptoassets sorted by market cap or total network value. The market cap is derived by multiplying the value of each cryptocurrency asset by the circulating supply of that asset. So, for example, if NomicsCoin had a value of $1 USD, and there were 1 million of these coins in circulation, then NomicsCoin’s market capitalization would be $1M USD.

The all-time high data displayed below represents the highest reputable price at which a given cryptocurrency or cryptoasset has traded. For example, Ethereum’s price peaked at $2,235 and was achieved on January 4th of 2018 (amids high trading volume). This high was achieved on the Kraken cryptocurrency exchange and occurred on the exchange’s Ethereum (ETH)/Canadian Dollar (CAD) market.

Please see here  for more information about how we price cryptoassets and here for how we calculate all-time high data.

Please note that you can view all the data below through the lens of your fiat currency or cryptoasset of choice. Want to view the cryptosphere through the lens of $DOGE? Go for it. Are you an Ethereum Maximalist? Now you view the world through the eyes of the "one true currency" (whichever currency you believe that might be).