After searching the google for almost five minutes, I was unable to find a good overview of different categories of Cryptocurrency projects. Setting out, the goal was to find a quick overview of what is different categories were available so a person could pick projects from different categories to better distribute their investments. I have heard this stock investors talk about doing similar things with their portfolio's in the past.
Strong as my Google-Fu is, my searches were fruitless. So, I am going to take a crack at providing you with such a list. Obviously, I will not be listing coins, there are far too many for me to take that project on alone. However, if you see value in this and find a coin or project you feel strongly should be listed, please let me know about it in the comments below.
Undoubtably, someone will be irritated that I have placed project x in category y, please make your case in the comments below. I'm not opposed to making changes if they are warranted.
Categories
Currencies - Must have high degree of liquidity. Value is driven from use and scarcity (supply and demand).
Store of Value - not suitable for micro transactions
Privacy - projects with privacy built in
Other - Me too coins
Smart Contracts - Value is derived from contracts or other projects using the platform. Scarcity is maintained by burning small amounts of currency referred to as gas.
Social Media
Decentralized Organization / Business
Shared Distributed Computing
Processing
Storage
Peer to Peer Commerce - coins that enable person to person private transactions or exchanges
Settlement Networks - bank interests
Credit Cards
Government Funded and Other Coins Without Utility and/or Scarcity - disgusting I know (perhaps we should label these "True Sh^t Coins")
(Links to the following can be found by searching for the name or ticker symbol on https://coinmarketcap.com/)
Currencies
Store of Value
Name
Ticker Symbol
Notes
BitCoin
BTC
First mover advantage, slow with high transactions fees. Commonly used as the reserve / exchange currency
Privacy
Name
Ticker Symbol
Notes
DASH
DASH
Fast, has smart organization to pay developers/organization, master node holders and minors
Monero
XMR
Obscures details on Ledger
ZCash
ZEC
(pending)
ZenCash
ZEN
(pending) A fork of ZCash and ZClassic, private messaging and transactions
Other
Name
Ticker Symbol
Notes
LiteCoin
LTC
One of the First BitCoin Forks, adopts proposed solutions and processes transactions faster than BitCoin
Smart Contracts
Name
Ticker Symbol
Notes
Ethereum
ETH
First mover advantage
Ethereum Classic
ETC
Ethereum Fork
Ubiq
UBQ
Enterprise ready, stable fork of Ethereum
NEO
NEO
Formerly Ant Shares, developed in China with the aim to allow developers to create smart contracts with a variety of languages
Social Media / Ecosystem
Name
Ticker Symbol
Notes
Steem
STEEM
Exchange Currency for SteemIt.com
Steem Backed Dollars
SBD
Rewards Currency for SteemIt.com
Basic Attention Token
BAT
Currency to enable safe distributed advertisement, rewards viewers of advertisement and content producers
LBRY
LBC
Designed to reward content producers; a free, open, community-run digital marketplace
Decentralized Organization / Business
Name
Ticker Symbol
Notes
Aragon
ANT
Allows people to make digital organizations (built on Ethereum) includes it's own legal system.
Golem
GNT
Currently in development, will allow distributed GPU utilization in the near future
MaidSafe
MAID
Distributed Processing, Storage and Networking
Shift
SHIFT
Decentralized web
Sia
SC
Decentralized private cloud storage
StorJ
SJCX
Decentralized private cloud storage
iEx
RLC
Decentralized private cloud computing
SNOM
SNOM
Like Golem, but they are using current technologies.
Peer to Peer Commerce
Name
Ticker Symbol
Notes
Swarm City
SWT
Currently in development, Boardwalk was released in June 2017 allowing people to exchange SWT for goods and services
Chronobank
TIME
Recruitment and labor based cryptocurrency designed to eliminate the third parties.
Dividend Paying Investments
Name
Ticker Symbol
Notes
BlockChain Capital
BCAP
Like a mutual fund, token holders are rewarded from investments made into companies by VC investors.
DigixDAO
DGD
Allows holders to receive dividends when DGX (a soon to be released gold backed cryptocurrency is traded)
Iconomi
ICN
Invest and manage digital assets (semi centralized)
Melonport
MLN
Like Iconomi, only more decentralized and still under development.
Veritaseum
VERI
Enables peer to peer capitol markets
Settlement Networks
Name
Ticker Symbol
Notes
BitShares
BTS
Decentralized financial service, banking and exchange
Ripple
XRP
Banking industry settlement network (possible sh^t coin?)
TokenCard
TKN
an Ethereum based debit card that will allow you to spend numerous coins
Government Funded and Other Coins With No Utility (Sh^t Coins)
Name
Ticker Symbol
Notes
Unknown
UNKNOWN
Coming soon to an ICO / Exchange near you. Seriously, if you know of any sh^t coins, let me know and I will post them here to warn others
