There Are Dozens Of Digital Currencies That Are All Going Insane Right Now

In the past week, Bitcoin prices have climbed as much as 80%.

We just told you why another cryptocurrency, Litecoin, has been able to ride Bitcoin's digital coattails to a 400% gain over the same period.

But Litecoin is not alone. There are at least 30 other digital currencies vying for relevancy in 2013. The best list of the full galaxy of digital currencies comes from CoinMarketCap.com.

According to that site, Peercoin, which now has the third-largest market cap among digital currencies, is up 22% in the past 24 hours. Peercoin's main feature is that it's based on a protocol which, though different from Litecoin's, achieves the same effect of preempting mining cartels from forming and gaining too much control over prices.

Namecoin, with the fourth-largest market cap, is up 70% in the past 24 hours. Its principal attribute is that it exists outside the regular Internet and therefore beyond control of The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the Internet's regulatory body.

As you can see, the gains among the rest have been similarly parabolic.

This is just the top part of the page; we'll leave it up to you to explore the rest.