Altcoins - what are they?

Altcoins – a brief introduction

Altcoins are alternatives to Bitcoin so any other cryptocurrency would be classed as an altcoin.The list of different altcoins is growing rapidly. You can make so many different currencies based on blockchain and that is really a great thing. Different altcoins can serve different purposes and solve different problems.

Why are there so many altcoins ?

As I already mentioned before different altcoins have different purposes. Alternate currencies normally thrive to solve a problem or accomplish something that Bitcoin cannot do. Developers are essentially not creating a new protocol or technologies but improving or just using some features that blockchain allows them to do. And the opportunities here are truly immense. A cryptocurrency is considered useful if it manages to achieve some of the following.

For example it could act as a keystore for things like domain registration. It could allow creation and transmittal of digital assets. It could also make demurrage or other prohibited changes available that Bitcoin doesn’t allow.

For example altcoins give us some more opportunities to create applications and platforms for smart contracting. Smart contracts will have a huge impact on how we do things nowadays. It can and will significantly increase productivity and help bring down costs in many different areas and is definitely a topic to keep your eye on. The technology is already there and also the development of it is very fast so we should be seeing results very soon. Just imagine how many benefits this will bring – for example it will make accounting so much easier and efficient and personal and small contracts would not have to be approved by a lawyer or notary. Just imagine how much time and money that would save.

You can view a list of different altcoins on here 

New altcoins

New altcoins and clones are emerging all the time. Sometimes it even seems hard to keep up with it. As I just mentioned smart contracts there’s a new altcoin, just released on September the 14th – Expanse. Expanse is a clone of Etherium and is a decentralised cryptographic information, application and contract platform. It differs from other altcoins as it is among the first that is democratically contained and managed by the community. The community can vote on new features and decide and discuss how to best use this platform collectively.

Different types of altcoins

Now as this list keeps growing rapidly let’s look at some examples of various coins and what makes them differ from each other.For example most coins have a market cap. Bitcoin’s market cap is 21 million, that number cannot be changed. Some altcoins however do not have a market cap like Tenebrix. Some work on supply and demand, like NuBits – when the demand goes up more NuBits will be created and added to the circulation. Some currencies are not mineable like Ripple, MaidSafeCoin, Stellar, NuShares, Litecoins, Dogecoin, ETH, BCN, LTC, BCN, XMR, DOGE, and many more. Some on the other hand are pre mined – Starcoin, Fuelcoin, Ambercoin etc.

There are so many different coins with different purposes and it is really great to see how they are growing and evolving.

We try to keep our platform up to date and give you the best and most relevant currencies to trade with. We have added many fantastic coins to the list of our tradeable currencies and there are many more to come.

Have a look at the currencies available on HitBTC.