Altcoin

An altcoin is any cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin. The word is a contraction of “alternative coin” and covers everything from major smart-contract platforms to small, speculative tokens.

How it works

Altcoins arose because Bitcoin was designed primarily as digital money, and developers wanted networks with different goals: programmable smart contracts, faster or cheaper transactions, stronger privacy, or specialised use cases. Some altcoins are independent Layer 1 blockchains, others are tokens issued on top of an existing platform, and some began as forks of Bitcoin’s own code.

Why it matters

Altcoins make up the large and diverse part of the market beyond Bitcoin, and they are where most experimentation happens. That diversity also means a wide range of quality and risk, from established networks to projects with little track record.

Example

Ethereum, Solana and XRP are all altcoins, as is every stablecoin and meme coin.