The Most Curious Digital Currencies
Cryptocurrencies’ importance in trading and investment is undeniable. However, besides Bitcoin, Ethereum, and maybe Dogecoin, what other virtual tokens have made their name as of lately? The answer to that lies in the depths of blockchain protocols and commercialism. After all, what makes a digital currency popular is public opinion, just as much as its potential to grow and sustain us as we sustain it, or provide an energy-efficient solution to the energy concerns born by the carbon footprint of proof-of-work protocols like BTC, ETH, and DOGE.
Woof-woof, trade me
Dogs have accompanied man for millennia. Around 14,220 years ago, a wolf-like dog was found buried with two humans. While we haven’t kept a tradition of creating tombs for our domesticated canine beasts as we have for our own family tree, our adoration for these creatures has remained unchanged throughout the centuries. Now, we see it protruding through the fabric of virtual currencies.
It is within that group of barking, tail-whipping, furry fellows that we get to see some of the most potent coins on the market.
Let’s focus on only one of them, currently the cutest pup in town – SHIBA INU. The SHIB started as continues to rise to new heights, and now it is worth $0.00007394 per coin.
Sun in your wallet, stars in your pocket
We know it‘s mind-blowing for some how solar panels can power up your whole house, but what about if through coin creation solar energy was being harvested? That is precisely what SolarCoin does. The more you power up your wallet with SLR tokens, the more energy you generate.
One SolarCoin equals 1 Mwh of energy. In other words, to receive it for free, you have to produce solar energy yourself. If you want to buy it, though, you would have to pay $0.05 per coin. The end goal – free solar energy for everyone. The first step – to incentivize solar electricity production and reduce regular electricity production costs. The period to take it – 40 years, much longer than the estimated average currency protocol life span of 27 years.
The sun is our solar system’s star and it shines blindingly bright, giving us the light and warmth needed to survive, to connect. A network of such stars that can connect us and unite cryptocurrencies together exists – its name is the Stellar network. All the currencies, both fiat and crypto, available for creation, transfer, and trading. One network to link them all.
As a system that has received donations from BlackRock and Google, in addition to its funding from Stripe, it is one of the most well-backed ideas of centralized decentralization. Its token is called Lumens (XLM) and its price is quite high, at $0.3575 and a market cap of $8,635,938,090. The algorithm making its consensus protocol fly through the sky is known as a federated byzantine agreement, or simply put, a low-power, energy-efficient alternative to the same network used by Bitcoin.
A future of security and sustainability
Going entirely green, having a carbon-neutral blockchain, using the first proof-of-commitment protocol based on available disk space, and so on – these are entirely viable solutions to securing a future that provides all of us with peace of mind that DeFi is safe for generations to come. Within those options there is a single large-scale decentralized platform that so far, with some ups and downs, has managed to grow consistently, and that is Cardano.
Ada, its cryptocurrency, is the fifth largest on the market, with a price of $2.02 and growing, and a cap of $67,148,326,119. Cardano’s proof-of-stake consensus algorithm and Ouroboros protocol have shown what security can be like in years to come.