There are more than 4000 cryptocurrencies in the market. Many come and go. It is hard to wrap your mind if you can’t categorize them into groups. This is a good start:
Store of Value
There's only one true asset in this category, and it's not one that intended to be here. Bitcoin was originally designed as digital currency, but insanely high transaction fees, changes in expectation over time, etc. have really morphed it into an asset more akin to gold or other asset stores. (AKA: It's an investment, not really for spending directly, and has limited other direct use.)
1 - Bitcoin Digital Currency
What Bitcoin originally wanted to be, this is a category filled with Bitcoin spin offs and new tech focused primarily on cheaper, faster transactions. The use cases range from every-day purchases to more massive actions such as major cross-border intra-bank transfers. ( It's worth noting about half of this list also offers smart contracts as well ( or plan to soon ), but thus far have been primarily notable for general transaction speed/currency use. )
5 - XRP
8 - Litecoin
10 - Bitcoin Cash
12 - Stellar
17 - Bitcoin SV
21 - Terra/Luna
24 - NEM
46 - Dash
48 - Decred
56 - Ziliqa
65 - DigiByte
74 - Nano
84 - Horizen Smart Contracts/Distributed Applications
This is going to be a long list. Smart contracts/dApps are pretty clearly the most exciting 'generic' use for Blockchain/Crypto Currencies by many people's viewpoint, opening the doors for a lot of unique applications and financial structures. Essentially everyone in this category is gunning for Ethereum's spot, and the competition is hot and heavy all the way down the top 100 list, with every entry trying to put their own spin on it.
2 - Ethereum
4 - Cardano
6 - Polkadot
18 - Eos
19 - Elrond
20 - Tron
27 - Tezos
29 - Avalanche
32 - NEO
34 - Solana
43 - Algorand
53 - Ethereum Classic
54 - Kusama
55 - Waves
59 - NEAR Protocol
63 - Hedera Hashgraph
71 - Celo
80 - Qtum
82 - Matic Network
90 - Fantom
95 - Energy Web Token
96 - IOST Stablecoins
These are tokens that attempt to stay pegged to some real world kind of value (generally USD) via various methods. Pretty straight forward, and mostly varies by what network/exchange you're on.
3 - Tether
13 - USD Coin
36 - Dai
40 - Binance USD
84 - HUSD
89 - Ampleforth ( Peg to USD is fairly weak )
91 - TrueUSD Exchange Tokens
These are tokens that primarily are associated with some kind of crypto-currency exchange, either Centralized(CEX) or Decentralized(DEX). A few of them also try to serve other purposes (Usually as Digital Currencies), but at heart being used as an exchange token is their most notable point, and they will largely rise and fall based on the success of their related exchange.
7 - Binance Coin
15 - Uniswap
33 - Huobi Token
38 - Sushiswap
39 - FTX Token
41 - Crypto.com Coin
44 - UNUS SED LEO
61 - Loopring
64 - SwissBorg
67 - THORChain
68 - Curve DAO Token
73 - PancakeSwap
76 - Voyager Token
81 - OKB
92 - Alpha Finanace Lab
100 - Bancor Alternative Exchange Tokens
These are tokens that are related to the crypto trading markets, but aren't really proper exchange tokens. Basically for exchange-esque activities, or offering only a specific, narrow type of alternative trading.
25 - Synthetix ( Options Trading )
52 - 0x ( DEX Aggregator )
42 - UMA ( Options Trading )
72 - 1inch ( DEX Aggregator )
78 - HedgeTrade ( Crypto Hedge Fund Trading )
87 - Kyber Network ( DEX Aggregator ) Extra-Blockchain Communication/Transfers
These tokens/networks exist primarily to solve the problem of communicating between different blockchain networks/the non-blockchain world, and the transfer of assets across said barriers. (Ex. The Oracle Problem)
9 - Chainlink
22 - Cosmos
60 - Ren
75 - ICON
77 - Quant
99 - Ravencoin Lending/Banking/Yield Farming
These tokens and networks focus around making trustless lending and banking (savings accounts) possible, and yield-farming via said lending. Generally speaking, they work via encouraging users to stake/lock up digital collateral from other networks into their own, giving the users the network's own tokens as the loan balance and/or paying the user tokens for other users borrowing their assets.
14 - Aave
28 - Maker
31 - Compound
45 - Celsius
47 - yearn.finance
58 - Nexo
97 - Venus Privacy Coins
Fairly self explanatory, these primarily exist to keep as much data about the network/transactions/wallets as anonymous as possible. They've obviously gotten a bad rep at times as being used often for illicit activities, but there's nothing inherently wrong with wanting privacy either.
23 - Monero 50 - Zcash 101 - Verge Other
These coins/tokens have largely unique use cases, that leave them without many/any direct competitors in the top 100. Whether they go up or down is going to be mostly based on if their use cases actually exist and if they can succeed in filling them correctly. A few of these are gunning towards long term moving into the more general categories, but at least currently book themselves as having a more narrow focus.
11 - Dogecoin ( Meme/Intro to Crypto )
26 - THETA ( Distributed Video Streaming )
30 - VeChain ( Supply Chain Logistics )
35 - IOTA ( Internet of Things Logistics )
37 - Filecoin ( Distributed File Hosting )
49 - The Graph ( Distributed Search Indexing )
51 - BitTorrent ( Blockchain-ifying the Bittorrent Protocol ) 57 - Revain ( Distributed Review Platform )
68 - OMG Network ( Cheaper ETH Transfers )
69 - Ontology ( Identity/Private Data Management )
70 - Basic Attention Token ( Web Advertisement/Marketing Replacement )
79 - Siacoin ( Distributed File Hosting )
85 - Reserve Rights ( Stablecoin counterbalance token )
88 - Stacks ( DApp extension onto the Bitcoin Network )
93 - Decentraland ( Distributed Virtual-Reality Platform )
94 - Ocean Protocol ( Data Monetization )
98 - Enjin Coin ( Video Game Items/In-Game Economy ) N/A - Wrapped Assets
These are 'wrapped' versions of other assets (Bitcoin) floating around other networks for use on said networks. There's generally limited reason to directly invest in these when you could invest in their more liquid base asset. (Ex. You'd only buy them to use them in some specific DApp/etc, not just hold them in a wallet generally)
16 - Wrapped Bitcoin
62 - renBTC
86 - Bitcoin BEP2 Source: Top_101_coins_grouped_by_usagepurpose. Check this out for latest info! Thanks to CrabCommander for doing such a great job!
Here is the living "Market/Tokens Map Database" - https://crypto.thewhyman.com/tokens by Electric Capital.