Whois & Analysis for ledger.com

Bitcoin is both a cryptocurrency and an electronic payment system invented by an unidentified programmer, or group of programmers, under the name of Satoshi Nakamoto.

Bitcoin was introduced on 31 October 2008 to a cryptography mailing list, and released as open-source software in 2009.

The identity of Nakamoto remains unknown, though many have claimed to know it.

Ethereum is an open-source, public, blockchain-based distributed computing platform featuring smart contract (scripting) functionality.

It provides a decentralized Turing-complete virtual machine, the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which can execute scripts using an international network of public nodes.

Ethereum also provides a value token called "ether", which can be transferred between participants and is used to compensate participant nodes for computations performed.

Gas, an internal transaction pricing mechanism, is used to prevent spam on the network and allocate resources proportionally to the incentive offered by the request.

A cryptocurrency (or crypto currency) is a digital asset designed to work as a medium of exchange using cryptography to secure the transactions and to control the creation of additional units of the currency.

Cryptocurrencies are a subset of alternative currencies, or specifically of digital currencies.

Monero (XMR) is an open-source cryptocurrency created in April 2014 that focuses on privacy, decentralisation and scalability.

Unlike many cryptocurrencies that are derivatives of Bitcoin, Monero is based on the CryptoNote protocol and possesses significant algorithmic differences relating to blockchain obfuscation.

Monero has ongoing support from the community, and its modular code architecture has been praised by Wladimir J.

van der Laan, a Bitcoin Core maintainer.

Initially meeting little popularity with the general public, Monero experienced rapid growth in market capitalization (from US$5M to US$185M) and transaction volume during the year 2016, partly due to adoption by major darknet market AlphaBay at the end of summer 2016.

Ripple is a real-time gross settlement system (RTGS), currency exchange and remittance network by Ripple.

Also called the Ripple Transaction Protocol (RTXP) or Ripple protocol, it is built upon a distributed open source Internet protocol, consensus ledger and native currency called XRP (ripples).

Released in 2012, Ripple purports to enable "secure, instant and nearly free global financial transactions of any size with no chargebacks." It supports tokens representing fiat currency, cryptocurrency, commodity or any other unit of value such as frequent flier miles or mobile minutes.

At its core, Ripple is based around a shared, public database or ledger, which uses a consensus process that allows for payments, exchanges and remittance in a distributed process.