There are four most important cryptocurrencies viz Bitcoin (BTC), Ripple (XRP), Ethereum (ETH), and IOTA (MIOTA) as per KPMG’s insight blog titled, “Cryptocurrencies: Do they matter to corporate treasuries?”

One of the Big Four auditors KPMG is a network of professional service firms that provides tax, advisory, and financial audit services. With large companies like Bosch, Volkswagen, Santander, and BMW jumping on the “crypto-bandwagon” KPMG try to answer the importance corporate treasuries should be attaching to crypto coins.

Talking about cryptocurrencies, it states they are created on a decentralized basis by the user community with a limited supply. Additionally, by waiving central institutions, they make real-time payments with practically no fees in a secure manner possible.

“There are about 1,5001 different cryptocurrencies, of which bitcoin, Ripple, Ethereum and IOTA are the four most important.”

Assessing the Top Fours

Explaining about the leading cryptocurrency, the author Christoph Polus, Manager, Finance Advisory covers the basic aspects of how exactly Bitcoin network works. It further touches upon the criticisms against Bitcoin because of its “unwieldy money (or coin) creation and transaction handling process.”

Pointing out the drawbacks associated with the flagship cryptocurrency, the author notes the comparatively slow transaction processing and the power consumptions which last year has been put at an estimated 130 TWh.

“Bitcoin plays a pioneering ideological and technological role and demonstrates that cryptocurrencies are essentially technically feasible.”

From the corporate and treasury perspective, the author says “bitcoins are not necessarily the focus of attention.” However, he does state that in developing countries where corruption is rife and currency system is unstable, BTC has a possible application scenario.

However, there are certain limitations to that as noted by the author, in terms of legal issues, fundamental attributes of money, technical and scaling problems and the fact that “governments and central banks are not about to give up their monopoly of money creation just like that.”

“Ripple aims in particular to revolutionise international payment transactions and to compete with the SWIFT network.”

Moving on to Ripple (XRP), it states how Ripple aims is to execute low cost and secure financial transactions in real-time. A direct competitor to SWIFT, it has already garnered the support of industry heavyweights like Santander and SEB.

The author states Ripple solution can be a “serious alternative” to real time payments at low cost whose success depends heavily on the adoption by the banking sector at large.

“Ethereum serves not so much as a pure digital currency, but primarily as a platform on which two parties can enter into smart contracts.”

As for Ethereum, Plous notes, the application scenario for Ethereum smart contracts ranges from insurance trade, logistics processed to financial matters where these contracts can solve the “inherent problem” of trust.

“IOTA is one of the most innovative cryptocurrencies at the present time.”

IOTA’s aim is to become the established currency on the Internet of Things (IoT) for autonomous payments between machines and for the automated exchanges of goods and services. It has also been stated that due to Tangle, IOTA network can process more transaction simultaneously and faster compared to other cryptos.

The author wraps up by saying corporates need to focus on the technology that underpins cryptos and it needs to be done without delay as “the gap between the leading edge and the status quo is widening all the time.”

Pretty incredible feedback coming from a premier presence such as KPMG. While everyone is focusing on the bitcoin price and its future value, how good is it to see such a strong breakdown of the main components of what crypto assets are bringing and showcasing to the world of tomorrow.

Bitcoin’s price is $27,785.24 BTC/USD exchange rate today. The real-time BTC market cap of $538.69 Billion currently ranks #1 with a chart dominance at 62.37%, daily trading volume of $3.17 Billion and live coin value change of BTC -0.39 in the last 24 hours.