Some interesting facts about the top 15 cryptocurrencies

Here are some interesting facts or history about the top 15 cryptocurrencies by market cap. A lot of it is taken from the wikipedia. Feel free to correct me if something's wrong.

Bitcoin (BTC):

The receiver of the first bitcoin transaction was cypherpunk Hal Finney, who had created the first reusable proof-of-work system (RPoW) in 2004. Finney downloaded the bitcoin software on its release date, and on 12 January 2009 received ten bitcoins from Nakamoto. In 2010, the first known commercial transaction using bitcoin occurred when programmer Laszlo Hanyecz bought two Papa John's pizzas for ₿10,000.

Ethereum (ETH):

In 2016, a hacker exploited a flaw in a third-party project called The DAO and stole $50 million of Ether. As a result, the Ethereum community voted to hard fork the blockchain to reverse the theft and Ethereum Classic (ETC) continued as the original chain.

Cardano (ADA):

The platform is named after Gerolamo Cardano and the cryptocurrency after Ada Lovelace.

Binance Coin (BNB):

BNB was launched through an initial coin offering in 2017, 11 days before the Binance cryptocurrency exchange went online. It was originally issued as an ERC-20 token running on the Ethereum network, with a total supply capped at 200 million coins, and 100 million BNBs offered in the ICO.

Tether (USDT):

Despite being "tethered" to USD, USDT sometimes lost a part of its price per coin. The biggest price drop happened on April 25, 2017, when the price almost got to 0.9 US dollars per coin. As a result traders sold USDT coins, making the price of USDT much lower. Some of the cryptocurrency exchanges (particularly those that implemented Tether as a USD alternative) experienced a rapid Bitcoin price uptrend. The same happened with other cryptocurrencies, traded in pairs with Tether.

Polkadot (DOT):

Gavin Wood was previously the Chief Technology Officer and is co-founder of the Ethereum Project. While developing Ethereum and developing the new Ethereum 2.0 specification that would include sharding, Dr. Wood and his team began pondering the sharding hurdles a blockchain would face. From initial conception to a white paper, it took him about four months to come up with a vision for a heterogeneous multi-chain framework, the Polkadot Protocol. Wood released the Polkadot white paper on November 14, 2016.

XRP:

A class action was filed against Ripple in May 2018 "alleging that it led a scheme to raise hundreds of millions of dollars through unregistered sales of its XRP tokens." According to the complaint, "the company created billions of coins 'out of thin air' and then profited by selling them to the public in 'what is essentially a never-ending initial coin offering'."

Chainlink (LINK):

The launch of the open-source cryptocurrency ChainLink was not successful. The fault was the mistake of the developers in informing investors and in carrying out collective cooperation, in order to raise money and other resources to finance this project. Thus, after the launch, the program worked only 10 minutes, but because of the failure of the company, users accused the creators of cheating.

Litecoin (LTC):

In May 2017, Litecoin became the first of the top 5 (by market cap) cryptocurrencies to adopt Segregated Witness. Later in May of the same year, the first Lightning Network transaction was completed through Litecoin, transferring 0.00000001 LTC from Zürich to San Francisco in under one second.

Bitcoin Cash (BCH):

In 2017 there were two factions of Bitcoin supporters: those that supported large blocks and those who preferred small blocks. The Bitcoin Cash faction favors the use of its currency as a medium of exchange for commerce, while the Bitcoin-supporting faction view Bitcoin's primary use as that of a store of value. Bitcoin Cash detractors call the cryptocurrency "Bcash", "Btrash", or "a scam", while its supporters maintain that "it is the pure form of Bitcoin"

Stellar (XLM):

Jed McCaleb is a co-founder of Stellar Development Foundation . Before the official launch, McCaleb formed a website called "Secret Bitcoin Project" seeking alpha testers. Also ,in 2000, McCaleb created e-Donkey which became one of the largest file-sharing networks in its time. He later created Mt. Gox, the first bitcoin exchange, which was subsequently sold and re-coded by its current owners.

USD Coin (USDC):

Unlike the most popular stablecoin Tether (USDT), creators of the USD Coin are obligated to provide full transparency and work with a range of financial institutions to maintain full reserves of the equivalent fiat currency. All USDC issuers are required to regularly report their USD holdings, which are then published by Grant Thornton LLP. All the monthly attestation reports can be found here.

Uniswap (UNI):

Uniswap was born out of an idea proposed in reddit in 2016 by Vitalik Buterin for a decentralized exchange (DEX) that would employ an on-chain automated market maker with certain unique characteristics. A year later Hayden Adams began working on turning this idea into a functional product. After receiving several grants as well as $100,000 from the Ethereum Foundation, Uniswap launched in November 2018.

NEM (XEM):

In January 2018, Coincheck exchange was hacked and approximately 500 million NEM tokens ($530 million) were stolen. The currency was transferred through a total of nineteen accounts, one of which was found to have no connection with the hacker. On March 12, the exchange announced reimbursements for the victims, some 260,000 holders.

Dogecoin (DOGE):

On January 19, 2014, a fundraiser was established by the Dogecoin community to raise $50,000 for the Jamaican Bobsled Team, which had qualified for, but could not afford to go to, the Sochi Winter Olympics. By the second day, $36,000 worth of Dogecoin was donated and the Dogecoin to bitcoin exchange rate rose by 50%.

EDIT: Some additional info about Cardano and Ada.

Gerolamo Cardano was an Italian polymath, whose interests and proficiencies ranged through those of mathematician, physician, biologist, physicist, chemist, astrologer, astronomer, philosopher, writer, and gambler. He was one of the most influential mathematicians of the Renaissance, and was one of the key figures in the foundation of probability and the earliest introducer of the binomial coefficients and the binomial theorem in the Western world. He wrote more than 200 works on science.

Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace was an English mathematician and writer, chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. She was the first to recognise that the machine had applications beyond pure calculation, and to have published the first algorithm intended to be carried out by such a machine. As a result, she is often regarded as one of the first computer programmers.

Edit 2: Maybe I got the Chainlink thing wrong, sorry about that. Apparently the launch was a success according to some comments.