Your time is important so I'll just get down to the point, these are the top 10 Crypto Currencies by size (Market Cap) and how they performed in 2017 along with a brief description & commentary:
1. Bitcoin
The Gran Daddy of them all.
2. Ripple
Enterprise Focused Blockchain & Currency, a competitor with Bitcoin for payment processing with a reputation for regulatory compliance. My read is that Bitcoin is failing to capture those spaces, hence the valuation.
3. Ethereum
Cryptocurrency & Blockchain with an embedded computer, how cool is that ! it also allows a ton of new Blockchain applications.
4. Bitcoin Cash
Bitcoin Cash, the bastard son of Bitcoin was born out of a Hard Fork, if you had Bitcoin you were entitled to have some Bitcoin Cash, in essence making it a sort of dividend turn competitor, its blockchain being somehow more scalable.
5. Cardano
Car who ? The fifth performer of 2017 is Cardano, a project still in development whose aim seems to be a mix of Ripple and Ethereum backed by scientific research ?
6. Litecoin
Litecoin, silver to Bitcoins gold had a great year, interestingly, the founder cashed out this year.
7. Iota
Iota's blockchain's twist and purpose is to be the backbone of the internet of things, it's blockchain technology is also a feature, although it has yet to see a killer app or project.
8. NEM
The best way I can describe Nem is that it extracts features from various blockchains and presents them in a developer and business environment, mostly geared towards building Blockchain applications.
9. Stellar
Stellars focus is on payments and keeping fees low and transactions fast, the currency is called lumens (XLM) btw
10. Dash
A payment focused project with payment specific features like instant payments and private transactions, also a DAO or decentralized autonomous organization.
I'll go over the numbers and make some forecasts in a future post, till then.
Thanks for reading !