DEFINITION of 'Altcoin'



"Altcoin" is a combination of two words: "alt" and "coin"; alt is short for alternative and coin signifies currency. Thus together they imply a category of cryptocurrency that is alternative to the digital currency Bitcoin. After the success story of Bitcoin, many other peer-to-peer digital currencies have emerged in an attempt to imitate that success.

Many of the altcoins are built up on the basic framework provided by Bitcoins. Thus most altcoins are peer-to-peer, involve a mining process and offer efficient and cheap ways to carry out transactions on the web. But even with many overlapping features, altcoins vary widely from each other. 

Even with many close competitors, Bitcoin is still leading the virtual currency pack. Newer and more innovative versions are getting launched that offer modifications in areas like transaction speed, privacy, proof-of-stake, DNS resolution and more. A few of them have gained popularity; the rest are lesser-known. Examples of altcoin include Litecoin, Dogecoin, Peercoin, Feathercoin, Zetacoin, Novacoin, etc. Litecoin is seen as the closest competitor to Bitcoin. 

  1. Bitcoin Mining

  2. Bitcoin

  3. Peer-To-Peer (Virtual Currency)

  4. Paper Wallet

    A paper wallet is an offline mechanism for storing Bitcoins. ...
  5. Litecoin

  6. Dogecoin

    Dogecoin is a peer-to-peer open source cryptocurrency and falls ...
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