The Art of Crypto Currencies: A Comprehensive Analysis of Popular Crypto Currencies

Crypto Currencies have recently gained enormous popularity amongst the general public. With each passing day, more and more companies are radically accepting crypto currencies in their payment systems, paving way for an economic revolution. Currently more than 700 crypto-currencies are available at Coindesk alone for trade purposes. As of November 2016, the Crypto currencies hold a total market share of over 14 Billion USD [5]. With no centralized institution to monitor the movement of funds, Crypto currencies and their users are susceptible to multiple threats. In this paper we present an effort to explain the functionality of some of the most popular crypto currencies available in the online market. We present an analysis of the mining methodologies employed by these currencies to induce new currency into the market and how they compete with each other to provide fast, decentralized transactions to the users. We also share, some of the most dangerous attacks that can be placed on these crypto currencies and how the overall model of the crypto currencies mitigates these attacks. Towards the end, we will present taxonomy of the five highly popular crypto currencies and compare their features. Keywords—Crypto Currency; Bitcoin; Ripple; Litecoin; Dash coin; Stellar