Altcoins: What are they?

Bitcoin and its blockchain technology are already a trend. This new market, the cryptocurrency one, has been the headline during the past few years. The first digital coin is the Bitcoin and when it was launched in 2008 it introduced an entirely new paradigm. In the years following, there were hundreds of other coins introduced that often referred to as “altcoins” or an alternative to Bitcoin. They are known as substitutes because, to some extent, each altcoin is trying to replace or improve on the Bitcoin’s technology.
Altcoins represent the recent development of the cryptosphere and are an intriguing topic of the cryptocurrency environment. The main differences between different digital currencies are transactions speed, distribution method or hashing algorithm. Bitcoin’s success as the first peer-to-peer cryptocurrency paved the way for most of the coins that followed. Yet, most of the altcoins are peer-to-peer, involve a mining process and offer an inexpensive and swift way to carry online transactions. Altcoins have different proof-of-work algorithms and application improvements to increase user privacy.
Altcoins purpose is also to fill in the gaps where Bitcoin did not. Often these digital coins apply the idea of blockchain to tackle real-life issues and bring a positive contribution to society. Below we will discuss the 5 most popular altcoins and their contribution to the crypto space. Read the full article here
