Altcoins are basically another type of cryptocurrency that was launched after the roaring success of Bitcoin. In general, they are selling themselves as a smarter alternative to Bitcoins. Altcoin is referring to all types of cryptocurrencies aside from Bitcoin. And as of early months of 2020, there were already 5000 or more cryptocurrencies.
And as per CoinMarketCap, altcoins takes over 34 percent of total market for cryptocurrency in February 2020.
Altcoins and its Types
Altcoins keep on evolving and as such, there are more distinctive categories do emerge. Few of the primary kinds of Altcoins do include the following:
- Utility Tokens
- Security Tokens
- Stablecoins and;
- Mining-based cryptocurrencies
Thereโs some movement too that separates majority of these concepts from altcoins. If such trend continues, then Altcoin may refer just to mining-based cryptocurrencies which is far from Bitcoin in the long run.
1st Gen Iterations
Earliest well-known altcoin known to man is the Namecoin which was actually based on Bitcoin code and utilizes same proof-of-work algorithm. Similar to Bitcoin, the Namecoin has a limit of 21 million coins. It was initially introduced in 2011 of April and followed the steps of Bitcoin by creating less visible user domains.