Litecoin (LTC)
Market cap, as of Jan. 3: $13.95 billion
Performance over last 12 months, as of Jan. 3: +6,025%
Who created it? Former Google GOOGL, -0.77% employee (and now notable star in the crypto universe) Charlie Lee
Monero (XMR)
Market cap: $5.95 billion
Performance in 2017: +2,596%
Who created it? Much like bitcoin, Monero’s creator is anonymous.
Neo
Market cap: $5.86 billion
Performance in 2017: +83,570%
Who created it? Da Hongfei , CEO of Onchain and blockchain evangelist in China, along with co-founder Erik Zhang
Cardano (Ada)
Market cap: $20.21 billion
Performance in 2017 (since start of trading in October): +3,296%
Who created it? Blockchain developer Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK)
Ripple (XRP)
Market cap: $95.45 billion
Performance in 2017: +41,040%
Who created it? Web developer Ryan Fugger, businessman Chris Larsen and programmer Jed McCaleb
Iota (MIOTA)
Market cap: $11.10 billion
Performance in 2017 (since start of trading in June): +525%
Who created it? David Sønstebø, Sergey Ivancheglo, Dominik Schiener, and Dr. Serguei Popov, a team of entrepreneurs, mathematicians and developers
Bitcoin Cash
Market cap: $45.61 billion
Performance in 2017 (since start of trading in July): +623%
Who created it? Bitcoin Cash was created by a team of people who forked the bitcoin blockchain ledger. It is now controlled by multiple independent teams of developers.