Top 5 Altcoins to Watch in 2021

With the explosion of the whole cryptocurrency sphere in recent years, several altcoins to Bitcoin have developed and witnessed huge growth. The rise in smart contracts and decentralized financing is the reason behind altcoins getting more and more acceptance in the blockchain space.

While there’s a huge spectrum of alternate cryptocurrencies with their individual features and benefits, below are Top 5 Altcoins that are gaining immense popularity and come with great potential.

1. Litecoin

Released under the MIT/X11 licence, Litecoin is an open-source project that’s quite similar to Bitcoin when it comes to the technical specifications. In fact, it can be termed as a clone to the widely popular cryptocurrency, but Litecoin works faster than Bitcoin in confirming transactions. While Bitcoin takes 10 minutes,

Another difference is that Litecoin is associated with a supply cap of 84 million coins, which is four times more than Bitcoin, thereby establishing itself as the next best option in the eyes of investors. Litecoin surprisingly sticks to processing a block every 2.5 minutes. As of April 2, 2021 it witnessed a market capitalization of a whopping $13.8 billion.

2. Cardano

The fact that it’s one of the most affordable altcoins has made Cardano a major name in the market. It has two block-chains, wherein one block-chain handles regular ordinary transactions and the second is dedicated to smart contracts. Two different types of transactions don’t slow it down and Cardano remains scalable with its Ouroboros blockchain.

It runs on the Proof of Stake algorithms that has always been the aim for Ethereum, and is also termed as the Japanese Ethereum. February 2021 witnessed this altcoin hitting almost the $30.7 billion market capitalization.

3. Chainlink

With its tokens representing the majority of smart contract applications. Chainlink is aiming to bring the same to the real world as well. This altcoin carries real-world data into smart contracts. For example, it has enabled farmers to safeguard themselves against an unfavorable season.

The smart contracts worked up through this cryptocurrency release insurance claims if the different values mentioned in the contract like temperature, share price, or rainfall do not meet the standards. The moment the program gets the concerned weather data, instant payments are deployed. With numerous DeFi apps paying large amounts for using this token on their platforms, Chainlink surely comes with great potential in the future.

4. Ripple

Ripple is an altcoin attached to a block chain XRP that’s a payments platform enabling decentralized and quick remittances and currency exchange than regular wire transfers. It’s not a mineable altcoin, instead involves tokens being issued by human operators unlike Bitcoin that uses computer algorithms to resolve transactions.

Ripple is found to be a very viable alternative to the traditional wire transfer system, specifically for small transactions that are usually not managed by traditional exchanges. Recently, it has witnessed a steep increase in value.

5. Polkadot

A flagship cryptocurrency project by Web3 Foundation, Polkadot is developed to connect public and permission less networks, private and consortium chains, oracles, and technologies that will be launched in the future.

This altcoin facilitates a network that allows independent blockchains to exchange transactions and information through the Polkadot relay chain. Polkadot focuses on making it much simpler to build and connect decentralized services, applications, and institutions. The market cap for Polkadot exceeds a surprising $13.45 billion.