Hello, fellow Steemers!

I'm new to the Steemit community, but I have been working on creating short, simple, easy-to-understand descriptions for top cryptocurrencies. If you have any suggestions or edits, please provide feedback and I'll edit the descriptions. Let's start with the top 20, shall we? The goal is to keep the descriptions short and sweet. Just like you.

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1. Bitcoin (BTC)

Created in 2008, Bitcoin was the very first cryptocurrency. Bitcoin is community-managed and decentralized, which means it eliminates the middleman and transactions can happen directly (peer-to-peer). This allows you to exchange money without going through a bank.

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2. Ethereum (ETH)

Ethereum is a decentralized, distributed public blockchain network. You can create and run smart contracts with programmable applications. Highlights include: Turing-complete software (Ethereum Virtual Machine), zero downtime for applications, immutability, a censorship-proof network, and security.

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3. Ripple (XRP)

Ripple is a blockchain system that moves money quickly and dependably. Ripple was created for banks, payment providers, digital asset exchanges, and other companies.

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4. Litecoin (LTC)

Litecoin is nearly identical to Bitcoin as a peer-to-peer, decentralized network, but is designed to be less expensive and to have faster transactions (generating new blocks every 2.5 minutes).

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5. Bitcoin Cash (BCH)

Bitcoin Cash is a hard fork of Bitcoin. The fork was brought on by a debate over the scalability of digital currencies, which led to the creation of a new blockchain.

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6. Cardano (ADA)

Cardano is a security-focused, open-source blockchain for decentralized applications and smart contracts. Cardano is driven by peer-based research, and runs the Ada cryptocurrency.

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7. Ethereum Classic (ETC)

An Ethereum fork, created because of a difference of ideologies in the community over the DAO hard fork. Ethereum Classic is a decentralized, distributed public blockchain network that allows you to create and run smart contracts.

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8. Stellar (XLM)

Stellar is a nonprofit organization that’s building an open-source platform with accessible financial services for people with all levels of income. Stellar is working with banks to make money transfers possible via text message.

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9. NEO (NEO)

Based on Ethereum, NEO (formerly AntShares) is China’s first blockchain platform. The platform focuses on building smart contracts and digital identity.

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10. IOTA (MIOTA)

IOTA is a decentralized cryptocurrency that has no blocks, chains, or miners, and offers free, real-time micro-transactions. IOTA features fast transaction rates and future technology that will make transactions possible sans human involvement.

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11. Monero (XMR)

Monero is an open-sourced cryptocurrency with a primary focus on anonymity and private, secure transactions. Monero is untraceable, which means accounts and transactions are hidden from everyone but the person making the transaction.

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12. Dash (DASH)

Dash is an open-source, peer-to-peer digital money system aiming to be the go-to digital cash for the internet. Dash is designed for private, fast, and secure transactions.

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13. NEM (XEM)

NEM is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency that offers pre-made tools for developers and businesses that want to build/connect smart contract applications to the blockchain.

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14. Qtum (QTUM)

Qtum is an open-sourced, business-friendly blockchain project that is building a hybrid of Ethereum and Bitcoin. Qtum is designed for business smart contracts, and is competing with Ethereum to become a platform for decentralized apps.

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15. Lisk (LSK)

Lisk is an early-stage platform for developers to create their own blockchains and Javascript smart contract applications. Lisk is based on the Crypti code.

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16. Nano (NANO)

Nano, formerly RaiBlocks, is a low-latency cryptocurrency with block-lattice technology (each new account has its own blockchain). Key features of Nano include fast transactions, zero fees, and infinite scalability.

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17. Bitcoin Gold (BTG)

Created because of community disagreements, Bitcoin Gold is a fork of Bitcoin focusing on handling high volumes of transactions differently. Bitcoin Gold blocks ASIC mining, providing fair opportunities for ordinary users to mine with GPUs.

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18. ZCash (ZEC)

Zcash is an open-sourced, decentralized cryptocurrency that focuses on private transactions (hiding the sender, recipient, and value of transactions). Users are provided with the option of making a transaction public (for auditing) after-the-fact.

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19. Steem (STEEM)

Steemit is a Reddit-like social sharing platform that allows content creators and curators to monetize their posts, and gives publishers the opportunity to incentivize user engagement.

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20. Stratis (STRAT)

Stratis is a blockchain-as-a-service provider, or a platform for making (C#) smart contracts, and is also a consultant agency for blockchain management.