There are the five top leaders of the cryptocurrency world you always hear about – their origin, their skeletons, and their right-now-positions. In this, we explore the five leading coins from their inception.
WRITTEN BY REBECCA LEIGHTONPUBLISHED ON JUNE 24, 2018
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Like football leagues, cryptocurrency generally has its fixed top team and the top rankers and their history and trajectory is always interesting to look into.
In this, we look not at the middle components of the current top five cryptocurrency’s stories, but rather at their own individual beginning point and what they are doing right now in the market comparatively.
Here, we take a look at what you would be holding if you had invested and left $1000 USD into EOS, Bitcoin Cash, Ripple, Ethereum or Bitcoin.
EOS
Currently, in the fifth ranking of top performing cryptocurrencies, EOS has just announced its new main blockchain platform. However, we are still looking at the time at which the token was released as an ERC-20 token for trading purposes.
The project, often compared to its older and previously housing counterpart network Ethereum, looks to tackle the scalability problems seen in Ethereum and alleviate issues such as congestion. The project gained a massive amount of attention during its initial coin offering, where it gained billions in USD and had a hugely successful token launch.
EOS was released for trading on Ethereum’s platform and began trading at a neat nearly to the dollar $1.01 USD on 1st July 2017, and at press time trades at $8.81 USD.
This means that if you had invested $1,000 USD in EOS on 1st July August of 2017, you’d have coined a tidy profit of $7,724.7 USD, with 815.9% return on the total investment.
Bitcoin Cash
Bitcoin’s first and most widely known fork, the Bitcoin Cash development team announced the release of the branched cryptocurrency nine years after the roots began in cryptocurrency.
The fork was born out from a team of developers who had an idea to solve some of the core problems that Bitcoin’s network faces, such as the scalability and transaction time. The fork was met with either love or hate and has since had a great deal of controversy around it.
Despite this – or maybe even owing to it – the fork has spiked a lot of attention and its value has risen with the popularity.
Bitcoin Cash was released as the first hard fork of Bitcoin in 2017 and began trading at a fairly weighty $413.10 (since it was already linked to the Bitcoin value) USD on 23rd August 2017, and at press time trades at $774.4 USD.
This means that if you had invested $1,000 USD in Bitcoin Cash – rather than recieve it through the hard fork – on 23rd August of 2017, you’d have made a profit of $874.7 USD, with an 87.47% return on the total investment.
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Ripple
In rank number three, we have a cryptocurrency which has been making waves in the field since it was released.
Ripple acts very differently from other digital currencies at a fundamental level and owing to this, it has boomed and gathered a wealth of support from users.
This token operates a network which is based on a shared public database and uses an agreement process between servers, either an individual user or a bank, in order to authorize transactions and ensure integrity on the blockchain’s network. Unlike other cryptocurrencies, Ripple cannot be mined which means that mining rigs cannot gain monopoly and users can easily involve themselves in investing.
The Ripple Protocol was released in 2014 and began trading at a slim $0.0059 USD on 4th August 2014, and at press time trades at $0.50 USD.
This means that if you had invested $1,000 USD in Ripple on 4th August of 2014, you’d have made a killer profit of $84,423.00 USD, with an 8,342.3% return on the total investment.
Ethereum
The second-ranked cryptocurrency misconceived as Bitcoin’s main competitor aims to offer different aspects as to Bitcoin’s platform, but using the same blockchain technology. Instead of a currency, Ethereum is hoping to succeed in offering a way around third-party investors so that users can look after themselves online.
At its birth, Ethereum blew up in popularity, since it was a brand concept in an already brand new field of innovation, and the rollercoaster rise has been meteoric, albeit with a few bumps here and there.
Ethereum began trading at $2.77 USD on 7th August 2015, and at press time trades at $477.7 USD.
This means that if you had invested $1,000 USD in Ethereum on 7th August of 2015, you’d have made a most delicious profit of $170,448.4 USD, with an equally tasty 17,144.8% return on investment.
Bitcoin
Bitcoin is the Mac-Daddy of cryptocurrency in terms of size, age, and loyal user-base. As the very first cryptocurrency the world saw, Bitcoin’s popularity has blown up time and again and can be likened to no other.
The original peer-to-peer virtual currency began life mysteriously with its creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, shrouded in anonymity since, although there is a great deal of conjecture, no-one has said that they honestly know who he is. Mystery aside, what we do know is that Bitcoin was once worth something and is now worth much, much (much) more than that and those who invested early would have scored big.
Just how big?
Well, Bitcoin began trading at $0.050 USD on 17th July 2010, and at press time trades at $6,148.20 USD.
If you had invested $1,000 USD in Bitcoin on 17th July of 2010, you’d have made an eye-watering profit of $124,180,579.5 USD, with a shattering 12,418,057.9% return on investment.
It almost hurts in hindsight to see what might have if you hadn’t.
A note on pricing: Given the number of operating cryptocurrency exchanges in 2014 through 2016 and price discrepancies (arbitrage) therein, different sources may reflect varying price levels. In this article, price data and initial trading dates are derived fromCoin2Any.