Bitcoin is the first digital currency based on blockchain. It solved the double-spending problem and enabled peer-to-peer transactions on a large scale. Bitcoin was designed to work as a trustless digital currency that would function without government oversight or a central bank.
Bitcoin was developed by Satoshi Nakamoto, whose identity has never been confirmed and has become the subject of great intrigue. Bitcoin builds upon on other cryptographic and digital currency projects that came before it, but its use of blockchain made it more viable. Nakamoto originally released his white paper and open-source software on a cryptography forum. He mined the first block of the Bitcoin chain, called the genesis block in January 2009.
Bitcoins are created as a reward for a process known as mining. One of the core innovations of Bitcoin, is its consensus algorithm, which creates an incentive system that rewards miners for confirming transactions.
Hal Finney, who developed the first reusable proof-of-work system (RPOW), several years before, was the first Bitcoin adopter and received the first bitcoin transaction ever recorded on its blockchain.

Ripple is a real-time settlement and remittance network that is designed for the banking industry. Its settlement infrastructure technology has been adopted by a growing list of financial institutions looking to leverage the benefits of distributed ledgers. Ripple's real-time settlement network connects banks and enables cross border settlements and transactions in real-time. The current settlement infrastructure requires many intermediaries, and performing transactions take time and cost money. Ripple provides the underlying infrastructure for banks, and enables these transactions to be executed directly at almost no cost.

Digix is digital gold on the blockchain. By combining the historical stability of a valuable physical asset with the advantages of a distributed ledger, Digix allows users to benefit from the advantages of both commodities and digital tokens.
Digix has an innovative Proof of Asset (PoA) protocol that allows it it tokenize a physical asset. The PoA protocol tracks an asset through its chain of custody, and enables anyone to verify its existence without an intermediary. Since every DGX = 1 Gram of gold, their platform can be used as a secure and transparent digital marketplace for gold.
Digix is also behind DigixDAO, a platform that allows users to contribute to building a blockchain-based digital gold payment system. They hope to create a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that will participate in creating this platform. Instead of issuing shares, the organization will be run by DigixDAO token holders.