Cryptocurrencies: Who Outperformed Bitcoin in January? – Eastern Daily News

To most people especially those not familiar with other altcoins when they come across the word cryptocurrency, they only think of Bitcoin. Well, this is understandable because Bitcoin is the most popular and the most commonly used cryptocurrency. Since its introduction eight years ago, Bitcoin has been growing at a rapid rate and iswidely referred to as the father of all cryptocurrencies. Other cryptocurrencies have been developed since then, though most of them are not well known. They are really providing real competition for Bitcoin. All these altcoins want a share of the market and, just like Bitcoin, use the blockchain platform.

There are hundreds of cryptocurrencies out there, so its almost impossible to know them all, but there are those that cant be ignored due to their increased number of users and their increased growth in value. Bitcoin has been doing fine so far this month (February 2017) with its price currently above $1,000. In January, however, things were not so good. At one time in January, its price dropped from $1,200, to about $987, in a matter of hours. According to this article, Bitcoin was able to pick itself up because it started the month at $963 and ended at $970 and has continued to grow in February.

Bithubprepared a list of the 20 best performing cryptocurrencies in the month of January 2017. As you can see on the list, Bitcoin performed okay. Looking at the best performers, starting with CounterParty (XCP); its an asset issuing platform. It announced last year that all the functionality of Ethereum will be available on the Bitcoin blockchain. This extended Bitcoins capabilities to include smart contracts. This cryptocurrency gained 70 percent in a month. Moving on to the second best Cryptocurrency performer in January Bitcrystals (BCY). This cryptocurrency acts as the currency in EverdreamSofts free-to-play game mobile game Spells of Genesis. This is an arcade-style game that embraces the blockchain technology in its story line and its economy. Bitcrystals gained 65 percent in January.

MaidSafeCoin (MAID) is the currency behind the MaidSafe network. In this network users can do a lot of things through a decentralized mesh network of computers, which includes creating and hosting websites and also storing private data. MaidSafeCoin grew by 47 percent in January. There are other Cryptocurrencies that were left off thislistdue to their smaller market share, but rose significantly on small volumes hece are worth mentioning. Pascal Coin (PASC) which grew by 10,765 percent, Byteball (GBYTE) grew by 244 percent and Golem (GNT) which grew by 192 percent.

Looking at how the fiat currency, in this case the USD, performed that month; as we have seen in recent years since the introduction of cryptocurrencies, fiat currencies cant match the cryptocurrencies in terms of growth. This is because, unlike digital currencies, they are affected by factors such as inflation and political developments. The US Dollar is reportedto have dropped by 2.6 percent in the month of January.

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Cryptocurrencies: Who Outperformed Bitcoin in January? - Eastern Daily News