5 Biggest Digital Currencies in the World

2. Ethereum

Market Capitalization as of August 12: $204 billion

Ethereum is the second most popular coin. It was launched in 2015 by programmer Vitalik Buterin, a Canadian national with Russian origins. The Ethereum network is faster than the Bitcoin network and also focuses more on privacy and security concerns. The Ethereum network can host decentralized finance applications for usages such as brokerage, banking, and lending. The Ethereum network has also become popular as a way to create and sell non-fungible tokens, a unique digital creation representing ownership of an asset. 

Ethereum has been transitioning to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism in the past few months as it seeks to become more environmentally friendly. It also aims to become even faster, increasing transaction throughput by a method called sharding. The development work on the new Ethereum network is expected to be complete by 2023. The Ethereum network hosts user accounts and smart contracts, both of which can transact in the native Ether coin and are identified in the blockchain through the account address.