Bitcoin uses peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority or banks; managing transactions and the issuing of bitcoins is carried out collectively by the network. Although other cryptocurrencies have come before, Bitcoin is the first decentralized cryptocurrency - Its reputation has spawned copies and evolution in the space.

With the largest variety of markets and the biggest value - having reached a peak of 18 billion USD - Bitcoin is here to stay. As with any new invention, there can be improvements or flaws in the initial model however the community and a team of dedicated developers are pushing to overcome any obstacle they come across. It is also the most traded cryptocurrency and one of the main entry points for all the other cryptocurrencies. The price is as unstable as always and it can go up or down by 10%-20% in a single day.

Bitcoin is an SHA-256 POW coin with 21,000,000 total minable coins. The block time is 10 minutes. See below for a full range of Bitcoin markets where you can trade US Dollars for Bitcoin, crypto to Bitcoin and many other fiat currencies too.

Ethereum is a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts: applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third party interference. In the Ethereum protocol and blockchain there is a price for each operation. The general idea is, in order to have things transferred or executed by the network, you have to consume or burn Gas. The cryptocurrency is called Ether and is used to pay for computation time and for transaction fees.

Ethereum is how the Internet was supposed to work. As long as you have enough funds to pay for your code to be run by the network, your contacts will always be up and running.

It was crowdfunded during August 2014 by fans all around the world. It is developed and maintained by ETHDEV with contributions from great minds across the globe. There is also an Ethereum foundation and there are multiple startups working with the Ethereum blockchain.

Ethereum is currently on the "Homestead" stage and all its related software is still considered Beta until the release of the next stage "Metropolis". 

The block explorer data bellow is freely provided by etherchain.org and etherscan.io. 

Ripple positions itself as a complement to, rather than a competitor with, Bitcoin - the site has a page dedicated to Ripple for bitcoiners. Ripple is a distributed network which means transactions occur immediately across the network - and as it is peer to peer - the network is resilient to systemic risk. Ripples aren't mined - unlike bitcoin and its peers - but each transaction destroys a small amount of XRP which adds a deflationary measure into the system. There are 100 billion XRP at present.

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is a hard forked version of the original Bitcoin. It is similar to bitcoin with regards to its protocol; Proof of Work SHA-256 hashing, 21,000,000 supply, same block times and reward system. However two main differences are the the blocksize limits, as of August 2017 Bitcoin has a 1MB blocksize limit whereas BCH proposes 8MB blocks. Also BCH will adjust the difficulty every 6 blocks as opposed to 2016 blocks as with Bitcoin.

Bitcoin Cash is a proposal from the viaBTC mining pool and the Bitmain mining group to carry out a UAHF (User Activated Hard Fork) on August 1st 12:20 pm UTC. They rejected the agreed consensus (aka BIP-91 or SegWit2x) and have decided to fork the original Bitcoin blockchain and create this new version called “Bitcoin Cash”. Bitcoin Cash can be claimed by BTC owners who have their private keys or store their Bitcoins on a service that will split BCH for the customer.

Specification

https://blockchair.com/

USDT is a cryptocurrency asset issued on the Bitcoin blockchain via the Omni Layer Protocol. Each USDT unit is backed by a U.S Dollar held in the reserves of the Tether Limited and can be redeemed through the Tether Platform. USDT can be transferred, stored, spent, just like bitcoins or any other cryptocurrency.

USDT and other Tether currencies were created to facilitate the transfer of national currencies, to provide users with a stable alternative to Bitcoin and to provide an alternative for exchange and wallet audits which are currently unreliable. USDT provides an alternative to Proof of Solvency methods by introducing a Proof of Reserves Process.

In the Tether Proof of Reserves system, the amount of USDT in circulations can be easily checked on the Bitcoin blockchain via the tools provided at Omnichest.info, while the corresponding total amount of USD held reserves is proved by publishing the bank balance and undergoing periodic audits by professionals.

Litecoin LTC - provides faster transaction confirmations (2.5 minutes on average) and uses a memory-hard, scrypt-based mining proof-of-work algorithm to target the regular computers and GPUs most people already have - which are its main differentials to Bitcoin. The Litecoin network is scheduled to produce 84 million currency units with a halving in reward every four years just like bitcoin. The coin was created by a Google employee, Charles Lee. Litecoin is in second spot to Bitcoin and has spawned numerous clones - however it has a solid base of support and dedicated development team.

The Litecoin project is currently maintained by a core group of 6 software developers, led by Charles Lee, with a large community that is growing in support.

In May 2017, Litecoin became the first of the Top 5 (By Market Cap) cryptocurrencies to implement the SegWit scaling solution. Later in May of the same year, the first Lightning Network transaction was completed through litecoin, transferring 0.00000001 LTC from Zurich to San Francisco in under one second.

EOS.IO is software that introduces a blockchain architecture designed to enable vertical and horizontal scaling of decentralized applications (the “EOS.IO Software”). This is achieved through an operating system-like construct upon which applications can be built. The software provides accounts, authentication, databases, asynchronous communication and the scheduling of applications across multiple CPU cores and/or clusters. The resulting technology is a blockchain architecture that has the potential to scale to millions of transactions per second, eliminates user fees and allows for quick and easy deployment of decentralized applications. For more information, please read the EOS.IO Technical White Paper.

The Binance Coin is an Ethereum-based token that allows users to receive a discount for any fees on the Binance platform, a pure cryptocurrency exchange that plans to create a decentralized exchange for blockchain assets. BNB also gives users access to special features and will be used to power the upcoming decentralized exchange.

Designed and developed by IOHK in conjunction with the University of Edinburgh, the University of Athens and the University of Connecticut, Cardano SL (or Cardano Settlement Layer) is a Proof of Stake cryptocurrency based on the Haskell implementation of the white paper “Ouroboros: A Provably Secure Proof of Stake Blockchain Protocol” by Aggelos Kiayias, Alexander Russell, Bernardo David and Roman Oliynykov.

Stellar is public infrastructure for money.

Supported by a nonprofit, Stellar brings the world together by increasing interoperability between diverse financial systems and currencies.

Stellar is a technology that enables money to move directly between people, companies and financial institutions as easily as email. This means more access for individuals, lower costs for banks, and more revenue for businesses. Help better the world’s financial infrastructure by participating in our community or by building on Stellar. 

Tron is a blockchain-based protocol for a free content entertainment system, allowing  each user to freely publish, store and own data, and in the decentralized autonomous form, decides the distribution, subscription and push of contents and enables content creators by releasing, circulating and dealing with digital assets, thus forming a decentralized content entertainment ecosystem. Tronix ix an ERC20 token based on the Ethereum blockchain, acting as the basic unit of account on the platform. 

Monero (XMR) is a cryptonight algorithm based alternative crypto currency. The coin is based on Proof of Work and has a block reward that varies smoothly. The difficulty retargets every block with a sixty second block target. 

Monero uses a Ring Signature system to protect your privacy, allowing users to make untraceable transactions.

Ethereum Classic is an attempt at keeping the Ethereum blockchain unaltered by the part of the community that opposed the hard fork and the return of The DAO funds. It started trading on Poloniex and is getting more and more traction.

The Ethereum Classic mission statement is:

"We believe in decentralized, censorship-resistant, permissionless blockchains. We believe in the original vision of Ethereum as a world computer you can't shut down, running irreversible smart contracts. We believe in a strong separation of concerns, where system forks are only possible in order to correct actual platform bugs, not to bail out failed contracts and special interests. We believe in censorship-resistant platform that can be actually trusted - by anyone."

Our block explorer data: total coins supply, total network hash rate, last block number and total difficulty are freely provided by https://gastracker.io/

In 2017, the Die Hard fork was implemented in ETC, removing the Ethereum difficulty bomb. Currently, there are no plans to move to Proof of Stake like Ethereum, although developers at the IOHK institute are developing a new PoS protocol for Ethereum Classic.

DigitalCash (DASH) uses a new chained hashing algorithm approach, with many new scientific hashing algorithms for the proof-of-work. DASH aims to be the first privacy-centric cryptographic currency with fully encrypted transactions and anonymous block transactions, this feature is called PrivateSend and can be found on the official Dashcore wallet.

PrivateSend mixes your DASH coins with other users who are also using this feature at the time, making your transactions untraceable. 

Users can also earn DigitalCash rewards by hosting a master node to help maintain the Blockchain. One must have a balance of at least 1000 DASH in order to host a Dash master node, this collateral is required to avoid 51% attacks on the network.

Click here for Masternode stats from masternodes.online.

The Huobi token is an ERC-20 token that allows users to receive a discount for any fees on the Huobi exchange. The HT tokens will be issued by an airdrop in which 60% of the tokens will be credit to the users' accounts, 20% will be used to support the platform operations and the last 20% will be used as an incentive to Huobi's team, with a freezing period of 4 years. In the future, the team plans to announce more benefits for the HT token holders.

NEO is a platform in which users can issue and trade assets. NEO has been rebranded from the original 'Antshares'. NEO tokenizes proofs of ownership of an asset and not the asset itself, thus taking into account all of the legal complications and obligations that may come with the transfer of shares, equity and assets.

NEO represent an ownership of the NEO platform and allows users to buy NEO (ANC) and to vote on protocol changes on the NEO blockchain. ANS are 100% premined and issued on the NEO's genesis block.

IOTA is an open-source distributed ledger protocol that goes 'beyond blockchain' through its core invention of the blockless ‘Tangle’. The IOTA Tangle is a quantum-proof Directed Acyclic Graph, with no fees on transactions & no fixed limit on how many transactions can be confirmed per second in the network. Instead, throughput grows in conjunction with activity in the network; the more activity, the faster the network. Unlike blockchain architecture, IOTA has no separation between users and validators; rather, validation is an intrinsic property of using the ledger, thus avoiding centralization. IOTA is initially focused on serving as the backbone of the emerging Internet-of-Things (IoT). For a more in depth look at the technical design of IOTA read their https://iota.org/IOTA_Whitepaper.pdf. 

Maker DAO is a decentralized autonomous organization on the Ethereum blockchain seeking to minimize the price volatility of its own stable token Dai against the IMF’s currency basket SDR. It's token, MKR is a speculative Ethereum based asset that backs the value of the dai, a stable price stable coin issued on Ethereum. Maker earns a continuous fee on all outstanding dai in return for governing the system and taking on the risk of bailouts. Maker’s income is funnelled to MKR owners through BuyBack program (Buy&Burn).

ZCash is a privacy driven cryptocurrency. It uses the Equihash as an algorithm, which is an asymmetric memory-hard Proof of Work algorithm based on the generalized birthday problem. It relies on high RAM requirements to bottleneck the generation of proofs and making ASIC development unfeasible. 

ZCash uses  zero-knowledge Succinct Non-interactive Arguments of Knowledge (zk-SNARKs) to ensure that all information (sender, reciever, ammount) is encrypted, without the possibility of double-spending. The only information that is revealed regarding transactions is the time in which they take place.

Block explorer data from https://explorer.zcha.in/

Ontology Network is a public infrastructure chain project and distributed trust collaboration platform. The blockchain/distributed ledger network combines distributed identity verification, data exchange, data collaboration, procedure protocols, communities, attestation, smart contract system support, and various industry-specific modules. The ONT is an NEO-based token that will serve as the utility token within the platform.

NEM is a peer-to-peer crypto platform. It is written in Java and JavaScript with 100% original source code. NEM has a stated goal of a wide distribution model and has introduced new features in blockchain technology in its proof-of-importance (POI) algorithm. NEM also features an integrated P2P secure and encrypted messaging system, multisignature accounts and an Eigentrust++ reputation system.

NEM has gone through extensive open alpha testing starting June 25, 2014, followed by lengthy and comprehensive beta testing starting on October 20, 2014. NEM finally launched on May 31, 2015.

The Basic Attention Token is an Ethereum-based token that can be used to obtain a variety of advertising and attention-based services on the Brave platform, a new Blockchain based digital advertising system. User attention is privately monitored in the Brave browser and publishers are rewarded accordingly with BATs. Users also get a share of BATs for participating.

A Bitcoin clone that has reached success through clever marketing. Over the past year well over a hundred new cryptocurrencies have been created but not many have instantly carved out a niche. Dogecoin has sponsored multiple high profile events such as Nascar teams and the winter olympics - even so there are few locations to use the coin - and instead it has become a de facto internet tipping currency. The coin has produced 100 billion units by the end of 2014 and is now producing roughly 5 billion units per year.

Decred is an open, progressive, and self-funding cryptocurrency with a system of community-based governance integrated into its blockchain. At its core is a hybridized proof-of-work proof-of-stake (PoW/PoS) consensus system that aims to strike a balance between PoW miners and PoS voters to create a more robust notion of consensus. The project is a result of the theoretical proposals brought by proof-of-activity (PoA) and MC2 in 2013. Decred development started in April, 2014 with a single developer and expanded to include developers from btcsuite shortly thereafter.

Decred is built in the spirit of open participation and we have provided below a full disclosure of the technical features of the system, wallets and mining, initial funding and distribution, project governance and development, and a group contribution timeline.

Decred opted for a different funding model in an attempt to shift the risk carried by supporters to the developers of the project. Instead of asking interested parties to fund the development of the software, the developers decided to pool funds together and carry the project to completion before making it public. The consensus was that this is an ethical path given the realities of funding software development, due to the fact that the developers alone carry the risk of the project failing, whereas in the past potential users were expected to pay for coins before any code was written. We felt this was unjust.

The development of Decred was funded by Company 0 and from the pockets of its developers individually. The cost of developing the project, in terms of developer pay, totals to approximately USD 250,000, which Company 0 paid to developers. An additional amount of approximately USD 165,000 has been allocated for unpaid work and individual purchases by developers. We felt that the most equitable way to handle compensation for these expenses was to perform a small premine as part of the project launch. The model is unusual in that no developer received any amount of coins for free - all coins owned by developers will either be purchased at a rate of USD 0.49 per coin from their own pockets or exchanged for work performed at the same rate.

The premine consists of 8% of the total supply of 21 million coins, meaning the premine consists of 1.68 million coins. Rather than allocating the entire premine to the bring-up costs, we decided to split the premine equally between compensation for bring-up and an "airdrop", where we freely give an equal amount of coins to a number of airdrop participants. This means Company 0 and its developers will have put roughly USD 415,000 into the bring-up since April, 2014 and receive 4% of the total supply, 840,000 coins (at USD 0.49 per coin). The remaining 4% will be spread evenly across a list of airdrop participants as part of an effort to build the Decred network and decentralize its distribution.  Coins held by Company 0 will be used to fund its ongoing work on open-source projects, such as Decred and btcsuite.

Giving away these coins in an airdrop allows us to accomplish several things at once for the project: enlarge the Decred network, further help decentralize the distribution of coins, and allow us to get coins into the hands of people who are interested in participating in the project. Decred is fundamentally about technological progress, so the airdrop will target individuals that have made contributions to advance technology in its various forms. The maximum number of airdrop participants is capped at 5,000 individuals, so we recommend registering sooner rather than later. These coins will be given away unconditionally and there is zero expectation of Decred receiving anything from you in return for these coins.

Sign up for the airdrop is currently open, but the airdrop registration will commence on January 4th, 2016. People who have been selected to participate in the airdrop will receive an email that contains a link to a web registration form. This form will require airdrop participants to enter an address to which their coins can be sent. Binaries and source code will be made available so that you can generate a wallet seed and an address for your airdrop coins. Once you have entered your receiving address into the airdrop webform and submitted it, you will receive your coins on the projected launch date.

Qtum is a decentralized blockchain platform with dApp and turing-coplete smart contract functionalities while still mantaining a an Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO) transaction model. Qtum employs a Proof of Stake consensus mechanism. QTUM is the underlying value token in the Qtum blockchain.

Bitcoin Gold is a fork of the Bitcoin blockchain that occurred at block 491407. It implements a new PoW algorithm, Equihash, which makes it ASIC-resistant and can only be mined by GPUs rigs. The purpose of Bitcoin Gold is to make mining decentralized again following Satoshi Nakamoto's vision of "1 CPU = 1 vote".

Prediction markets are widely considered the best forecasting tool. Augur is an open, global platform where anyone anywhere can create, monitor or trade in prediction markets about any topic. Think of it as an "Early Warning System'' with the most accurate event forecasts, a potential "Google Search", "Bloomberg Terminal" or "Reuters Terminal" for crowdsourced event forecasts.

The system plans to use the "Wisdom of Crowds'' ("collective intelligence'') via market incentives, "Long Tail'' dynamics and blockchain technology to securely generate a more accurate, robust and unfiltered array of dynamic event forecasts than any alternative can match.

Augur is decentralized, self-regulating, pseudonymous and autonomous. It offers the promise of markets without exposure to counterparty risk, principal-agent problems or central points of control, failure or censorship. No person is ever in direct control of someone else’s funds or in a position to single-handedly threaten the system’s integrity.

The software is comprised of smart contracts perpetually deployed on a blockchain network, which enables applications deployed to be immune to local outages while benefiting from the entire community's security. All interactions with markets are communicated as database transactions between unique accounts powered by immutable software instructions.

0x is an open protocol that facilitates the decentralized exchange of Ethereum-based tokens and assets. Developers can use 0x to build their own custom exchange apps with a wide variety of user-facing applications i.e. 0x OTC, a decentralized application that facilitates trustless over-the-counter trading of Ethereum-based tokens. 

The 0x token (ZRX) is used by Makers and Takers to pay transaction fees to Relayers (entities that host and maintain public order books). ZRX tokens are also used for decentralized governance over 0x protocol’s update mechanism which allows its underlying smart contracts to be replaced and improved over time.

Infinity Economics is a PoS cryptocurrency based on the SHA256.

Cryptonex platform is developed as international acquiring and is based on blockсhain technology. Safe system based on blockchain technology is protected against unauthorized access. Users can convert fiat money to any cryptocurrencies and tokens, as well as spend cryptocurrency with the help of bank cards and mobile applications with contactless payments. Cryptonex is developed as an open source code platform. To account property rights, cryptocurrency of the same name Cryptonex, ticker CNX is used.

OmiseGO is building a decentralized exchange, liquidity provider mechanism, clearinghouse messaging network, and asset-backed blockchain gateway. OmiseGO is not owned by any single one party. Instead, it is an open distributed network of validators which enforce behavior of all participants. It uses the mechanism of a protocol token to create a proof-of-stake blockchain to enable enforcement of market activity amongst participants.

Owning OMG tokens buys the right to validate this blockchain, within its consensus rules. Transaction fees on the network including payment, interchange, trading, and clearinghouse use, are given to non-faulty validators who enforce bonded contract states. The token will have value derived from the fees derived from this network, with the obligation/cost of providing validation to its users.

Holo is an ERC-20 token based on the Ethereum blockchain.

Bitcoin Diamond (BCD) is a fork of Bitcoin that will occur at the predetermined height of block 495866. It is a PoW/PoS cryptocurrency based on X13 algorithm.

Lisk is a crypto-currency and decentralized application platform. As a crypto-currency, much like Bitcoin and other alternatives, it provides a decentralized payment system and digital money network. The network itself, operates using a highly efficient Delegated-Proof-of-Stake (DPoS) consensus model, that is secured by 101 democratically elected delegates. The Lisk decentralized application platform, it's most powerful component, allows the deployment, distribution and monetisation of decentralized applications and custom blockchains (sidechains) onto the Lisk blockchain. The inflation rate is 5 LISK per block, which gets lowered by 1 every year until it reaches a stable block reward of 1 LISK per block. 

Lisk partnered with Microsoft to integrate Lisk into its Azure Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) program — meaning developers worldwide can develop, test, and deploy Lisk blockchain applications using Microsoft's Azure cloud computing platform and infrastructure.

Nano is designed to be a low latency, high throughput cryptocurrency. It builds on an analogy from the electrical engineering discipline by equating network consensus to arbiters circuits. This gives Nano an established and well researched modeling basis for how the system comes to a distributed, egalitarian, and efficient conclusion. In the Nano system, each account in the system has a block chain that is controlled only by them, all chains are replicated to all peers in the network, removing block intervals, mining, transaction fees.

Waves is a custom blockchain tokens platform designed for large-scale business and consumer adoption. Waves was created to make the benefits of blockchain technology accessible to ordinary businesses and end users. The platform launched in 2016 and was designed from the ground up to address the shortcomings of existing blockchain services. The result is an enterprise-ready platform that emphasises security, easy token operations (creation, transfer, exchange) and a straightforward user experience, as well as dealing with critical long-term issues such as speed and scalability.

BitMark has a total coin supply of 27.58 million BTM - difficulty retargetting each 720 blocks and a block reward of 20 BTM. 

A coin that has adopted the Bitcoin "21" figure but increased the supply to 21 billion - with over 5 algorithms to mine with (Scryt, Sha-256, Qubit, Skein, Groestl)  - in order to keep mining local and in the hands of many. A 60 second block target, a 0.5% premine and a block retarget every 2.4 hrs or 244 blocks.

DigiByte: Refers to the entire DigiByte network or a single monetary unit on the payment network. 21 billion DigiBytes will be created over 21 years.

Block: A grouping of all transactions sent over the DigiByte network within a 30 second time frame. Think of a block as an excel spreadsheet that lists the address location of all DigiBytes at a given point in time in history. New DigiBytes are brought into circulation as each block is discovered on the network through a process called mining.

Mining: Mining is how transactions are processed on the network. Anyone can become a miner by donating and using their desktop, laptop or mobile phone computing power to help process transactions on the DigiByte network.  DigiByte has made this process even easier with our 3 click mining software for beginners.

Blockchain: The DigiByte blockchain is the entire history of all blocks discovered on the network & therefore all transactions made on the network. Each block references the proceeding block all the way back to the beginning of the network to what is known as the genesis block. By linking blocks (spreadsheets) together an accurate, secure accounting of all up to date DigiByte ownership is made by decentralized consensus.

The ICON Project is a decentralized transactions network. The ICON Project aims to connect independent blockchains with different governance, so that they can transact with one another without intermediaries. ICX is a loopchain-based smart contract digital protocol that facilitates, verifies, and enacts a negotiated agreement between consenting parties within ICON.

Monacoin is a peer-to-peer payment network and digital currency based on an open source protocol.

- scrypt

- 1.5 minute block targets

- subsidy halves in 1051k blocks (~3 years)

- 105,120,000 total coins

- 50 coins per block

- DigiShield difficulty algorithm

Komodo is a privacy-centric cryptocurrency that combines the anonymity of ZCash with the security of Bitcoin. Using a new consensus mechanism developed by the Komodo team, delayed Proof of Work, Komodo blocks can be notarized using the Bitcoin blockchain. KMD is issued through an Equihash-based PoW protocol, and the new block information is sent to pre-voted notary nodes. These nodes insert the Komodo block information on the BTC blockchain by creating a custom transaction. This system ensures that in order to "hack" komodo, one would have to rewrite both chains.

Komodo uses Zero Knowledge Proofs to provide 100% anonymous transactions, that are now secured with Bitcoin's hash rate.

The Internet of Services (IOS) is an Ethereum-based platform that provides its users a way to exchange online services and digital goods. I also enables developers to deploy large scale dApps.

IOS token is an ERC20 token that serves as a medium of exchange on IOS' platform.

Sia is an actively developed decentralized storage platform. Users all over the world contribute disk storage from their computers to form a decentralized network.

Anybody with siacoins can rent storage from hosts on Sia. This is accomplish via "smart" storage contracts stored on the Sia blockchain. The smart contract provides a payment to the host only after the host has kept the file for a given amount of time. If the host loses the file, the host does not get paid.

The distrubuted nature of the Sia network enables many optimizations in latency, throughput, reliability, and security. The decentralized nature of the Sia network enables anyone with storage to get paid, lowering the barrier to entry and reducing the overall price of cloud storage.

The Sia cryptocurrency is live! You can rent storage using siacoins and hosts providing storage to the network receive compensation in the form of siacoins. The storage platform itself is still in beta, and only uploads that are 500mb or less in size are supported by the wallet.

Digix DAO is a new form of cryptographic asset in that it is a Decentralised Autonomous Organisation or DAO for short. DAO are basically Companies written in code that are there to perform a set of functions with holders of the tokens voting in relation to the number of tokens they hold. 

The Digix DAO gives users the right to profits in the trading of Digix tokens (DGX) which own the right to gold stored in vault in Singapore. So if people trade 20 gold bars per day - the Digix DAO token holders will have the profits of the commission from those trades distributed equally amongst themselves. 

Verge is a scrypt based alternative crypto currency trying to take the popularity of both Dogecoin and Bitcoin and combine it with the anonymous features of DASH. The block time is 30 seconds and the coin operates through Proof of Work.

VERGE prides itself on being a symbol of progression in the cryptocurrency world. It is a more secure, private, and evolving cryptocurrency that is backed by bitcoin, a ton of developer resources and privacy tools (located here!)

Steem.it is a blockchain-based social media platform where anyone can earn rewards by posting relevant content, curating quality content by upvoting and by holding Steem based currencies in a vest fund, which generates interest.

There are three main currencies in Steemit: Steem, Steem Power (SP) and Steem Backed Dollars (SBD).

Steem is liquid and can be bought in an exchange and converted into steem dollars or steem power.

Steem Power is basically Steem that is locked in a vesting fund for 3 months. Users can use steem power to upvote content and get curating rewards.

When a user upvotes content his steem power gets depleted and then slowly regenerated. Steem Power holders recieve interest from their holdings. The more Steem Power a voter has the more revenue he'll generate for himself (in form of SP) and for the content creator  (In SBD).

There is also an incentive to upvote content early, as the rewards are distributed according to time. The earliest votes gets the biggest share of the reward.

Steem Backed Dollars are there to protect content creators from volatitlity and can be traded for roughly 1 usd worth of steem, in order to cash out from steem. Converting Steem backed dollars into STEEM takes 5 days. Users also recieve interest from holding SBD. T

Steem is a proof of work currency with a scheduled blocktime of 3 seconds. Steem PoW mining is done in rounds of 63 seconds by 21 miners (witnesses). 19 of the miners are pre voted, one is the other with the most computational power, and the last one is selected from a queue of witnesses that did not get on the top 19 voted witnesses.

90% of the block reward is allocated to a vest fund to reward curators and PoW miners, the other 10% are made liquid in the form of steem and are used to reward content creators. Steem gets converted to Steem Backed Dollars and sent to the content creator.