What are Altcoins?
Altcoins are represented as an alternative cryptocurrency that was launched after the huge success of Bitcoins. They are highlighted as the better substitute for Bitcoins. Altcoins has come up with aggressive advantages in a different way by targeting the disadvantages of Bitcoin. In simple language, excluding bitcoins, all coins are altcoins, which is short for the term alternative coin. Some of the most popular examples of Altcoins are Ripple, Ethereum, Litecoin, and so on.
All you need to know about Altcoins
Cryptocurrency has become widely popular and gaining profit trajectory all around the world. Bitcoin is considered the most popular crypto coin in the cryptocurrency market. However, Bitcoin is not the only currency available on the crypto market. There are many equally interesting alternatives to BTC, which are called ‘Altcoins’. They all have one thing in common they are digital currencies, with their Blockchain and value. Using this to their advantage, many other alternative cryptocurrencies are targeting drawbacks of Bitcoin and have emerged competitively.
The term Altcoin is made up of two words where ‘Alt’ stands for alternative and ‘Coin’ stands for cryptocurrency. Both the word Alt+Coin creates a crypto coin category which is a substitution of Bitcoin digital currency. It was seen that many other peer-to-peer Cryptocurrencies tried to copy Bitcoin after its success story.
Altcoins are based on a basic algorithm that is provided by Bitcoin. Most of the Altcoins are peer-to-peer and, require a mining process by which users can easily solve the difficult hurdles by cracking blocks and providing a safe and cheap way to carry out transactions.
Why are Altcoins created when Bitcoin is so valuable and widely used?
According to our research, unfortunately, Bitcoin is not so perfect due to its disadvantages. However, it was the first cryptocurrency and that made it popular and helped it gain a lot of attention. The altcoin was designed in an attempt to create Bitcoin’s better version. These different altcoins attempt to make their program either faster, smarter, or 100% anonymous. Since the creation of Bitcoin in 2009, there have been thousands of Altcoins created and each one of them claims to be better in some way. For Example: - Litecoin, promises superfast transactions and the fastest processing speed on their Blockchain. On the other hand ‘Dash’ coin is known for being 100% anonymous and secure. Ethereum has a Blockchain, which allows you to create smart contracts and create your tokens used in the ICO process.
The technical reason indicates that creators often want to improve a project; in this case, a new alternative was created to improve the drawbacks of Bitcoin. The big disadvantages of BTC are the high transaction fees, so many creators wanted to change that.
The second reason for creating Altcoin is simply because they want to make money on crypto, which is still developing. The cryptocurrency market is growing and multiplying capital. This is why many creators choose more projects to create their Altcoin.
What are the threats of Altcoins?
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The main threat is that it is practically impossible to control them because of their huge presence in the crypto market. This makes it riskier than the transaction with Bitcoin. All the other Altcoins and Bitcoins can be used by hackers. Therefore, such currencies have security issues. BTC is constantly being checked by its creators for its security purpose. Many Altcoins were designed after the success story of Bitcoin. Unfortunately, later they did not gain much popularity due to their lack of security which made way for criminal activities. Another threat that was identified is the liquidity of altcoins. The lack of an exchange rate link with other goods or fiat currencies makes Altcoin prices unstable.
