What is an Altcoin – All You Need to Know About Bitcoin Alternatives from Coding compiler.
What is Altcoin?
The world’s first cryptocurrency is Bitcoin – it was created in 2009 based on the blockchain technology. The purpose of the development was to create an independent, decentralized digital payment system and electronic currency.
By the way, Bitcoin was originally called simply digital currency, the term “cryptocurrency” appeared only in 2011 with the filing of the magazine Forbes.
At the same time, the idea of creating electronic payment systems based on the blockchain was picked up by other enthusiasts. They identified a number of technical flaws in Bitcoin and set the goal of improving this technology.
As a result, alternative projects to Bitcoin with similar ideas and functionality began to appear. The very first such coin is Namecoin, which is used to create alternative root DNS addresses. Such projects were secretly called Altcoins, based on a play on words (Alternative – alternative, and Coin – coin). Subsequently, the name stuck and spread widely. Sometimes also used the abbreviation – viola (viola cryptocurrency).
In this way: Altcoin is any existing cryptocurrency, with the exception of Bitcoin.