Altcoin

More Examples

Definition(s) from the Web

1. Altcoins are cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin. The majority of altcoins are forks of Bitcoin with small uninteresting changes. This page categorises different ways altcoins have modified Bitcoin. Many people prefer the term “shitcoin” to clearly distinguish all these altcoins from Bitcoin. This term has even been used in US Congress in 2019. The two main innovations in Bitcoin are its digital scarcity and its censorship resistance. For every altcoin you can point out that 1. it’s trying to copy Bitcoin and that 2. there’s a clear person or group of people in charge. Thus it’s very easy for someone else to copy an altcoin and try to push it with even more marketing efforts than the “original” altcoin. Additionally it’s relatively easy for government actors to interfere with the workings of an altcoin (such as Ethereum) by simply knocking on the doors of whoever is behind the altcoin. Some people are able to make money when trading altcoins, but for most people it’s much preferred to simply buy and hold bitcoin for the long run. A lot of people would have been much better off with this simple strategy. Many people think that they make money, but if you look at their total net worth in Bitcoin terms they lost both money and time by trading on so called shitcoin casinos. Source
2. Altcoin is the name of all cryptocurrency except Bitcoin. The first altcoins appeared in 2011. Their aim was to overcome all technical limitations that Bitcoin had. As of the beginning of December 2017, there are over one thousand altcoins existing in the world. The best alt coins have various prices from 0.01 USD till thousands of dollars. Source
3. Tokens, cryptocurrencies, and other types of digital assets that are not bitcoin are collectively known as alternative cryptocurrencies, typically shortened to “altcoins” or “alt coins”. Paul Vigna of The Wall Street Journal also described altcoins as “alternative versions of bitcoin” given its role as the model protocol for altcoin designers. The term is commonly used to describe coins and tokens created after bitcoin. The list of such cryptocurrencies can be found in the List of cryptocurrencies article. Altcoins often have underlying differences with bitcoin. For example, Litecoin aims to process a block every 2.5 minutes, rather than bitcoin’s 10 minutes which allows Litecoin to confirm transactions faster than bitcoin. Another example is Ethereum, which has smart contract functionality that allows decentralized applications to be run on its blockchain. Ethereum is the most-actively used blockchain in the world according to Bloomberg News and has the largest “following” of any altcoins according to the New York Times. Significant rallies across altcoin markets are often referred to as an “altseason” Source

See Also

Shitcoin