According to CoinMarketCap, the total number of cryptocurrencies is 7,952 with a Total Market Cap of $533+ billion (as of December 11th 2020).

What does Market Cap mean?

Within the blockchain industry, the term Market Capitalization (or Market Cap) refers to a metric used that measures the relative size of a Cryptocurrency. It is calculated by multiplying the current market price of a particular coin or token with the number of coins currently in circulation.

Payment Currencies:

These assets are mainly for payments and are therefore called Payment Currencies.

For example, you could use payment currencies to pay for goods or services, pay your bills, cash out from digital currencies to local fiat currencies like the Canadian dollar, etc.

While every digital asset can theoretically be used to pay for things, merchant adoption or acceptance by providers of goods and services is more widespread for Payment Currencies. Popular and well-known Payment Currencies are Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin (LTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH).

Blockchain Economies:

Blockchain Economies, also known as blockchain platforms, take the functionality of blockchain technology further than just payments.

These platforms allow you to create your own digital assets (usually referred to as tokens), decentralized applications (Dapps), etc. in their platform.

Therefore, blockchain platforms become their own “Blockchain Economies” with different assets, applications, and more. Some Blockchain Economies you may have heard of include Ethereum (ETH), Ethereum Classic (ETC), EOS (EOS), and NEO (NEO).

Privacy Coins:

Some digital assets are created with a focus on privacy. In Privacy Coin transactions, only the sender and receiver know the number of coins transacted. Also, the balance of a Privacy Coin wallet address is only known by the owner of the wallet.

This is in contrast to blockchains like those of Bitcoin, which show transaction amounts for each transaction as well as wallet address balances. Some examples of Privacy Coins are ZCash (ZEC) and Monero (XMR).

Utility Tokens:

Utility Tokens are digital tokens that are used for a blockchain-based product or service. They run on a blockchain platform, or in other words, are part of a Blockchain Economy.

Most utility token are ERC20 tokens that run on the Ethereum blockchain but with the continued release of other blockchain platforms, other token types like TRC10 and TRC20 tokens have emerged as well. Some examples of a utility Token are Golem (GNT), Basic Attention Token (BAT), OmiseGo (OMG), and Ox (ZRX).

Stablecoins:

These assets are very popular among regular traders, as they always have the same price (or aim to), unlike other digital assets, which can fluctuate greatly in value.

Different Stablecoins follow different methods to maintain a stable price. Types of Stablecoins are Fiat-Collateralized Stablecoins, Crypto-Collateralized Stable coins. Example of Stablecoins include CADX, USD Coin (USDC) and Tether (USDT).