​ The 5 Strangest Cryptocurrencies on the Market

The beauty in Bitcoin is in its simplicity—it aims to provide a decentralized system with which people can pay and receive an unregulated and anonymous currency. However, Bitcoin is just the first cryptocurrency on the market; there are plenty of other cryptocurrencies that run off the same blockchain technology, each touting its own features and services.

So what are these features that other cryptocurrencies offer? While some cryptocurrencies like Litecoin aim to keep it simple, with cheaper fees and faster transaction times, other cryptocurrencies have decided to go for the more confusing routs, or are mired with controversial history. Here are the 5 strangest cryptocurrencies available on the market:

1) Dogecoin

Dogecoin began as a meme, featuring the Shiba Inu from the famous doge meme as its icon. However, even though it began as barely more than a joke, Dogecoin managed to survive for several years after starting in 2013. The coin came out with over 100 billion tokens, believing that it could be the payment system that Bitcoin couldn’t be with so many coins in circulation. These days, however, Dogecoin has become merged into Litecoin, due to a lack of technical support from a team of engineers.

2) NEM

NEM has been mired in controversy ever since its origin, however it is recognized as a legitimate coin in the greater crypto community these days. NEM began as a passion project by engineers from the Bitcointalk forum who were no longer supporting the NXT cryptocurrency which had initially connected them.

NEM was a hard fork from NXT, meaning it was just a single algorithm that differentiated it from NXT. What makes it different is the “importance” of the single node. Though it had a shaky start, many businesses in Japan now regularly use it with their legal cryptocurrency trading.

3) Unobtainium

One factor that grants Bitcoin its value is its scarcity—with just 21 million tokens of Bitcoin in circulation when all of them have been mined, the supply will never be able to meet the 1:1 ratio demand. This is the concept that Unobtainium is built off of, or UNO—it takes the initial idea of Bitcoin’s scarcity and evolves it. Unlike Bitcoin’s 21 million coins—which many believe to be already a low amount in a currency that intends to become aa global commodity—Unobtainium has only 250,000 UNO, which will take at least 300 years to complete its mining.

Some crypto enthusiasts think of Unbotainium as the “platinum” to Bitcoin’s “gold”, with no coins pre-mined before its launch and a low reward per block.

4) NXT

NXT is where NEM began, but NXT itself has its own crucial differences from many cryptocurrencies on the market. NXT was first released as the “Descendent of Bitcoin” in 2013, created by a software developer that has remained anonymous. Unlike Bitcoin, there is no mining to unlock the tokens; instead, it functions as an open-source payment network that automatically releases tokens after certain periods of time. This means that the token can’t be controlled by miners, making it more decentralized than Bitcoin.

NXT comes with a built-in marketplace and anonymous chat messaging and voting system, allowing users to create an entire economy and community on the NXT platform.

5) Zcash

Zcash or Zerocash is different from most other cryptocurrencies because it goes further in terms of cryptography. It has the highest anonymity possibilities out of all cryptocurrencies, as it removes all records of a transaction—names, amounts, times—except the fact that the transaction existed in the first place. It is the ultimate coin for users who believe in complete and untraceable anonymity.