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What are the First Cryptocurrencies?
11 May 17:44
- Bitcoin (BTC): First mined in January of 2009.
- Namecoin (NMC): Mined in April of 2011.
- Litecoin (LTC): Mined in October of 2011.
- Ripple (XRP): Launched in June of 2012.
- Bytecoin (BCN): Launched in July of 2012.
But every market or innovation, no matter how large it gets, has a humble beginning. Since cryptocurrencies had a start, there were definitely several projects that paved the way to the potential tens of thousands that we have today. So what were the first cryptocurrencies?
In this article, we provide a summary of the first cryptocurrencies and what came of those that have faded into obscurity.
Bitcoin (BTC)
Bitcoin’s logo changed three times in a year, until developers settled on the current orange version.
Source: CoinGecko
The obvious first mention of this list, Bitcoin was the very first cryptocurrency ever created, whose project also involved the creation of the very first blockchain system to accompany it. Bitcoin’s whitepaper was released on October 31st of 2008, detailing the frameworks behind its “peer to peer digital cash” and the properties behind the need for a proofless system called “blockchain.” Although the report references several academics in the fields of cryptography and mathematics, its true founders - or single founder - remain unknown, as they went by the alias of Satoshi Nakamoto.
The first Bitcoin block was mined months later, on January 12th of 2009. The rest is history, as Bitcoin is to this day not only the top crypto in the world, but a remarkable entry point of an entirely new financial market that continues to disrupt previous concepts of finance and personal ownership.
Source: Shutterstock
Quite likely the most unknown project on this list, Namecoin was founded in April of 2011 as a fork from Bitcoin - fork being a separation from a blockchain where, from that point forward, new implementations are conceived that aren’t related to its originating network. Similarly to Bitcoin, it also has a limited supply of 21 million tokens, but the main difference is that Namecoin was able to store data directly into the blockchain - something that is now common ground for countless projects.
Being the very first project with the goal of blockchain-stored data, Namecoin encountered several challenges throughout its development and struggled to maintain its relevance as the crypto market evolved and new projects took the lead with similar goals. Its latest update was in January of 2021, also coinciding with its last block mined with millions left to go. Over the past 11 years, Namecoin maintained a small but faithful community under a current market cap that is too small to be followed by coin-tracking websites.
Source: Fox Bit
A cryptocurrency that is still relevant to this day, with a market cap of roughly $8.2 billion dollars at the time of writing, not many are aware that Litecoin was also one of the first digital assets ever. Created in October of 2011 by Google employee and computer scientist Charlie Lee, Litecoin was conceived as a fork of the Bitcoin network.
Charlie Lee’s vision was to create a very similar digital currency but one that was much faster than Bitcoin, a matter that is to this day the source of many new projects looking to create the next ultimate crypto with light-speed transactions. From its first block mined, Litecoin was already beating its superior; generating a block was 2.5 times faster than Bitcoin and require less hardware power, which became attractive to many miners as they did not need to have powerful computers to do so.
However, Litecoin never got the adoption that Bitcoin head, as the first crypto would always lead in popularity for newcomers to the ecosystem and media outlets mentioned across the world. It also lost plenty of steam during the 2017 bull run, when Charlie Lee sold all his Litecoin holdings - thus creating major concerns and complaints from investors and fans.
Ripple (XRP)
Source: Business Wire
The second most impressive feat of market relevance, behind Bitcoin, has to go to Ripple. Present in the top 10 most valuable cryptocurrencies for as long as anyone can remember, many are not aware that Ripple was also one of the first digital assets conceived.
It’s also the first cryptocurrency that was not a crypto at all when first conceived. Although the crypto project was founded in June of 2012, its history began 8 years earlier in 2004 when software developer Ryan Fugger founded a payment systems company called Ripplepay, which was actually peer-to-peer and not reliable on a centralized agency. Ryan’s vision, however, wanted to be even more centralized. After selling Ripplepay in 2012, he created a foundation to develop a digital currency. Under the name “OpenCoin,” which was later renamed to RippleLabs, he created the cryptocurrency Ripple using Ripplepay’s source code.
Bytecoin (BCN)
Founded in July of 2012, Bytecoin was developed by anonymous contributors whose identities remain unknown, as was used under a new crypto standard of anonymity at the time which would allow investors to conduct completely untraceable transactions - named the CryptoNote ledger.
But things start getting a bit strange, as most Bytecoin investors and enthusiasts can’t reach an agreement as to when the project was truly founded. That’s because CryptoNote’s whitepaper first came out in 2013, while Bytecoin’s first blocks were mined in July of 2012 - supposedly. Although there is allegedly no conceivable way for Bytecoin’s block mining data to be falsified, many speculate as to how Bytecoin was able to integrate the CryptoNote ledger before it was even conceived. The official report, nonetheless, is that it was founded in 2012.
Despite the disagreement, Bytecoin’s history continues to this day as a relevant piece of the puzzle for privacy coins - and a parallel inspiration to the foundation of monero (XMR), the top privacy coin available today. At the time of this writing, Bytecoin’s investors remain active but humble, as the crypto holds a market cap of $42 million dollars.
Author: Gate.io Researcher Victor Bastos
* This article represents only the views of the researcher and does not constitute any investment suggestions.
*Gate.io reserves all rights to this article. Reposting of the article will be permitted provided Gate.io is referenced. In all other cases, legal action will be taken due to copyright infringement.
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