An altcoin is any digital cryptocurrency similar to Bitcoin. The term is said to mean “alternative to Bitcoin” and is used to describe any cryptocurrency that is not Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the most popular and widespread cryptocurrency. Altcoins are created by moving away from the Bitcoin consensus rules or by developing a new cryptocurrency from scratch. The Bitcoin market is highly competitive difficult and expensive for beginners and amateurs. On the other hand, most altcoins are much less popular, much less competitive, much cheaper and much more open to exploration.
The most popular altcoins use the same basic building blocks as Bitcoin. This approach is relatively easy to implement. Because Bitcoin is a free, open-source platform. When an altcoin is forked at the blockchain level, an alternative system of consensus rules must be used and the coin will have a completely different distributed ledger. The same is true for altcoins built from scratch.
Bitcoin is not great!
The system is powerfully designed, but it is the first widely used cryptocurrency. Therefore, as it becomes a large-scale crypto-commodity, we are beginning to recognize issues and challenges that were impossible to predict when Bitcoin was first designed and implemented. Many altcoins have been developed specifically to address concerns about Bitcoin’s future and long-term viability.
More than 5000 altcoins have been created since Bitcoin’s inception. They vary in popularity, price, and technical details. Litecoin, Dogecoin, Blackcoin, Tron, Chainlink, Vericoin, Polkadot, and NXT are just a few examples of altcoins.
You can invest very small amounts of money in altcoins in a wide-ranging portfolio and choose the coins that you think have the best chance for long-term success. Of course, the cryptocurrency market is volatile, so it pays to be aware of the risk.