Altcoins
10 Best Altcoins of May 2024 – Forbes Advisor
Editorial note: We earn commission from partner links on Forbes Advisor. Commissions do not affect the opinions or ratings of our editors.
The definition of an altcoin has evolved since the beginnings of cryptocurrency when only a handful of crypto assets existed. At the time, everything except bitcoin (BTC) was considered an altcoin.
Today, the world of crypto assets is much larger. There are a wide variety of coins and tokens whose use cases extend far beyond a medium of exchange, meaning they are not necessarily competitors to Bitcoin.
Yet, for lack of a better designation, the basic definition of an altcoin is any crypto asset other than bitcoin.
Here’s a look at the top 10 altcoins by market cap, excluding stable coins. We excluded stablecoins because they are designed to maintain a stable price and are generally not considered a speculative investment.
Featured Cryptocurrency Partner Offers
Limited time offer
Join eToro and Get $10 Free Crypto! (Only U.S)
Cryptocurrencies available for trade
20+
Fees (manufacturer/recipient)
0.95%/1.25%
Cryptocurrencies available for trade
250+
From the Uphold website
Conditions apply. Cryptoassets are very volatile. Your capital is in danger.
1. Ethereum (ETH)
- Market capitalization: $389.2 billion
Of the $2.5 trillion that represents the total market capitalization of the 26,000+ crypto assets available today, over $389 billion is held in Ethereumthe largest altcoin on the market.
Unlike bitcoin, characterized as a “decentralized currency,” think of Ethereum as a distributed computing network where users can use the blockchain to run decentralized applications, or dApps, and host smart contracts.
“BTC is a store of value while ETH is a decentralized playing field for builders to determine the future of blockchain technology innovations,” says Walker Holmes, vice president of metaverse platform MetaTope.
Critics of Ethereum point to high fees for making transactions. But with the thousands of apps and other altcoins powered by its blockchain, Ethereum is here to stay.
2. BNB (BNB)
- Market capitalization: $82.5 billion
BNB is a utility token that can be used to pay trading fees and obtain discounted market transactions. Binance exchange. You can even use BNB outside of Binance crypto exchange for payment processing, such as booking travel arrangements.
Critics say BNB is not as decentralized as other altcoins. However, the value of the coin itself has also helped fuel investor interest in the exchange since BNB began to gain popularity in 2021.
3. Solana (SOL)
- Market capitalization: $79.3 billion
Developed to help power decentralized finance and applications as well as smart contracts, Solana operates on a unique hybrid proof-of-stake and proof-of-history mechanism to process transactions quickly and securely.
Solana is one of the fastest blockchains on the market. However, it has also been criticized for being too centralized with very few validating nodes compared to Ethereum, says Whitney Setiawan, research analyst at digital asset exchange Bitrue.
Holmes says Solana is a highly scalable blockchain solution with very low fees, but has experienced outages and downtime.
4. XRP (XRP)
- Market capitalization: $32.0 billion
XRP can be used to facilitate exchanges of different types of currencies with digital technology and payment processing company Ripple Labs. Founded in 2012, Ripple Labs is practically a dinosaur in the fast-paced world of cryptocurrencies. However, while many other coins have come and gone over the past decade, Ripple Labs and its currency, XRP, have maintained their famous status throughout the cryptosphere.
In fact, XRP’s XRP Ledger offered the first-ever decentralized exchange, or DEX, with a protocol enabling custom tokenization. This open source technology is also known to be more environmentally friendly than other competing cryptocurrencies, which may contribute to its overall popularity.
Best Crypto Exchanges 2024
We combed through the top exchange offerings and tons of data to determine the best crypto exchanges.
4. Dogecoin (DOGE)
- Market capitalization: $26.3 billion
Dogecoin is the original piece of moneystarted as a joke in 2013. Nevertheless, thanks to a dedicated community and creative memes, it quickly became a leading cryptocurrency.
Richard Gardner, CEO of financial software provider Modulus Global, points out that DOGE has had big backers but remains riskier than bitcoin.
“Altcoins like DOGE can fluctuate between extremely low and high levels depending on market volatility, as they have yet to prove any real-world use cases,” says Garry Krugljakow, founder of the 0VIX protocol, a decentralized application which allows lending and borrowing of cryptocurrencies.
5. Cardano (ADA)
- Market capitalization: $20.7 billion
Cardano was one of the first to adopt the proof of participation consensus mechanism, which speeds up transaction time by removing the competitive and energy-intensive problem-solving dimension of platforms like Bitcoin.
“Cardano is a thought leader in the industry who has paved the way for proof-of-stake consensus mechanisms,” says Holmes. “ADA is a blockchain solution that promises low fees with higher levels of security than many of its counterparts.”
But Daniel Logvin, CEO of blockchain network provider and consultancy LedgerByte, says the altcoin has promised too much and has yet to deliver.
6. Avalanches (AVAX)
- Market capitalization: $17.7 billion
Developed as a layer one blockchain for dApps and other networks, avalanche has become one of the main global rivals of the altcoin, Ethereum. In particular, the AVAX network seeks to unseat Ethereum as the blockchain of choice for smart contracts. The new blockchain hopes to achieve this by increasing transaction volume without affecting scalability.
Like Ethereum, Avalanche attempts to solve Vitalek Buterin’s famous blockchain trilemma of security, scalability, and decentralization. The blockchain trilemma states that developers must sacrifice at least one of these three components to enable maximum productivity with the other two. Avalanche attempts to solve the trilemma by using three interoperable blockchains as part of its own development.
7. Toncoin (TON)
- Market capitalization: $17.2 billion
Developed in 2018 by Telegram, the encrypted messaging system, Toncoin is a layer 1 blockchain whose name originally stood for “Telegram Open Network,” but has since been changed to simply “The Open Network.”
TON was initially released so that in-app customers could easily settle transactions within the Telegram app. However, it has become a community blockchain whose proof-of-stake network maintains extremely fast processing and validation times.
8. Shiba Inu (SHIB)
- Market capitalization: $15.5 billion
Shiba Inu, an Ethereum-based meme coin, was developed in 2020. SHIB was created by “Ryoshi,” an anonymous developer who claimed that the goal of the coin was to discover if an organization could operate without any central direction. With crypto heavyweights such as Elon Musk and Vitalek Buterin quickly throwing their weight behind it, Shiba Inu appears to be proving that Ryoshi’s hope is possible.
In October 2021, Shiba Inu briefly supplanted Dogecoin as the world’s most valuable meme coin by market capitalization. Additionally, some niche retailers have started accepting the coin as payment following its success with crypto investors. But don’t start looking into paying for your dinner with SHIB just yet. An organized social media effort by the Shiba Inu community to get McDonald’s to accept the coin as payment ultimately failed.
9. Bitcoin Cash (BCH)
- Market capitalization: $12.4 billion
This peer-to-peer electronic payment system aims to become a decentralized and permissionless global payment system. Bitcoin Cash is an alternative to the original payment system Bitcoin, the world’s oldest cryptocurrency.
Created by a hard fork in the Bitcoin blockchain, Bitcoin Cash was launched in 2017, eight years after the original Bitcoin blockchain went live.
10. Polka dot (POINT)
- Market capitalization: $12.2 billion
This altcoin powers the Polkadot ecosystem, where developers can create blockchains for specific purposes as spokes connecting to the main Polkadot blockchain hub, says Max Thake, co-founder of peaq, a blockchain network built on Peas. DOT is the native token of Polkadot.
“(There is) sustained demand for DOT from projects aiming to build on Polkadot,” he says.
This altcoin offers better shared security and is a leader in developer activity and many projects, says James Wo, CEO of blockchain and cryptocurrency investment firm Digital Finance Group. But the project’s progress has been slow and it lacks flagship applications to boost its ecosystem, he says.