Litecoin (LTC)

Market cap, as of Jan. 3: $13.95 billion

Performance over last 12 months, as of Jan. 3: +6,025%

Who created it? Former Google GOOGL, -0.77% employee (and now notable star in the crypto universe) Charlie Lee

Monero (XMR)

Market cap: $5.95 billion

Performance in 2017: +2,596%

Who created it? Much like bitcoin, Monero’s creator is anonymous.

Neo

Market cap: $5.86 billion

Performance in 2017: +83,570%

Who created it? Da Hongfei , CEO of Onchain and blockchain evangelist in China, along with co-founder Erik Zhang

Cardano (Ada)

Market cap: $20.21 billion

Performance in 2017 (since start of trading in October): +3,296%

Who created it? Blockchain developer Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK)

Ripple (XRP)

Market cap: $95.45 billion

Performance in 2017: +41,040%

Who created it? Web developer Ryan Fugger, businessman Chris Larsen and programmer Jed McCaleb

Iota (MIOTA)

Market cap: $11.10 billion
Performance in 2017 (since start of trading in June): +525%

Who created it? David Sønstebø, Sergey Ivancheglo, Dominik Schiener, and Dr. Serguei Popov, a team of entrepreneurs, mathematicians and developers

Bitcoin Cash

Market cap: $45.61 billion

Performance in 2017 (since start of trading in July): +623%

Who created it? Bitcoin Cash was created by a team of people who forked the bitcoin blockchain ledger. It is now controlled by multiple independent teams of developers.