1 July 2022
By Roger Kennedy
roger@TheCork.ie
Cryptocurrencies have been all the rage in Ireland. Whether you’re looking to trade (not invest!) or buy goods and services or play online games. Here are the most popular cryptocurrencies out there right now.
Bitcoin
Bitcoins are the first and most popular cryptocurrency in Ireland. They’re also among the most valuable and most used cryptocurrencies in the world. Bitcoin is available as payment by many online casinos. Learn more about cryptocurrency betting with our smart betting guide.
In terms of mined coins (coins created by miners), Bitcoins make up 55% of all mined cryptocurrencies. This means that Bitcoin has been around long enough for many miners to get involved with creating coins using their computers. However, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t still plenty of other smaller cryptocurrencies being created too.
Bitcoin became popular by an unknown person or group under Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008 as an electronic payment system based on mathematical proof instead of trust. Transactions are made without any middlemen – meaning no banks.
Ripple (XRP)
Ripple provides global financial settlement solutions to enable the world to exchange value like it already exchanges information – giving rise to an Internet of Value (IoV).
Moreover, Ripple solutions lower the total cost of settlement by enabling banks to transact directly and with real-time certainty, optionally using the digital asset XRP to further reduce liquidity costs.
Banks around the world are partnering with Ripple to improve their cross-border payment offerings, and predict that commercial use of blockchain could eventually lead to 24-hour settlement times for certain transactions.
Litecoin (LTC)
Litecoin (LTC) is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency and open-source software project. Litecoin was released under the MIT/X11 license. The coin started in 2011 by Charlie Lee, an MIT graduate, and former Google engineer. It was a fork of the Bitcoin Core client that occurred on October 7th, 2011. Slight differences from bitcoin include:
- A decreased block generation time (2.5 minutes).
- Increased maximum number of coins (84 million Litecoins).
- Different hashing algorithms (Scrypt instead of SHA-256).
- A slightly modified GUI for its client GUI wallet application (Litecoin Core).
Bitcoin Cash (BCH)
Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is a cryptocurrency with a market capitalization of $7.9 billion, the second largest after Bitcoin. It was created in August 2017 as a fork of Bitcoin and has since become one of the most popular cryptocurrencies among traders and investors.
Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is a hard fork of Bitcoin, which means it shares its blockchain history with Bitcoin up until August 1, 2017, when it split into two separate blockchains: BCH and BTC.
The main difference between these two currencies is their transaction capacity. This is while BTC uses SegWit technology to increase its transaction speed, BCH is still using traditional blocks. This makes BCH faster but less secure compared to BTC.
Conclusion
Because crypto markets are so volatile, keeping your eye on the currency you think will succeed is essential. The good news is that we’ve got a list of some of the most promising cryptocurrencies currently available in Ireland.
Cryptocurrencies are all about decentralization, which means there isn’t one centralized authority controlling them. Instead, everyone who owns a cryptocurrency has a stake in running it fairly and smoothly