Disclaimer: The altcoins mentioned in these articles are not being endorsed by Bitcoin Magazine. Please proceed with caution.
This overview is geared towards users who are new to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, and interested in mining.
“We need more than one coin for the world. Because one coin [would] centralize [the] crypto world.” user CoinBuzz
Overview
I believe there is a strong desire to recreate the times during early Bitcoin mining where the hardware required to solve a block was already owned or could easily be assembled at a low difficulty and get the full block reward. Some folks power down their miner when mining Bitcoins isn’t profitable. Others point their miners to altcoins.
Altcoins, for this series of articles, are defined as any cryptocurrency alternate to Bitcoin. This would include altcoins such as Litecoin, PPCoin, Terracoin, Freicoin, Primecoin, etc.
Some folks think altcoins really should be called “ScamCoins” because a lot of them don’t do what Bitcoin did… and that was bring a totally new paradigm to the table, create a decentralized currency that would be as valuable as its users saw fit. But some exclusive Bitcoin enthusiasts see altcoins as a waste of time. All copies of copies that don’t build on each other or add anything new or useful to the world. Here’s what Gavin Andressen, lead developer for Bitcoin, said about altcoins:
“Maybe altcoins will be an important safety valve in some future crypto-currency-dominated world. Maybe if there is lots of economic growth and some technical reason prevents the velocity of money from accelerating to match the increased demand for transactions people will use altcoins to fill the gap. Right now, I don’t see the altcoins fulfilling any unmet need, and I think they just divert engineering talent and potentially confuse customers who have a hard enough time understanding Bitcoin.”
I think this unmet need he referred to can be summed up with a few points:
Buyers think Bitcoin is too expensive and are psychologically satisfied by owning whole units of a cryptocurrency.
Miners want to try mining and solving blocks.
Developers want to release their own cryptocoins.
Buyers, Developers, and Miners want coins to solve non-financial problems.
Buyers, Developers, and Miners want exclusive coins that preserve the value of unused mining equipment.
Gavin does have a point and altcoins can rob talent and time away from Bitcoin. People could be creating new ways to earn Bitcoin and making new markets that are more profitable than mining. On the contrary, these new coins could serve to prove out techniques for verifying transactions and experiment with reward systems to see what people like best.
In some cases altcoin developers can band together with Bitcoin developers to solve a common problem. Altcoin developers could check in new ideas and bug fixes on coins that are low risk with a low value instead of affecting Bitcoin users. Bitcoin is currently valued just above 10 billion dollars as of today.
In the end, I think developers of Altcoins have proved that progressive steps can be made to provide unique currencies to the world. Experiment on the Bitcoin blockchain, fork Bitcoin or Litecoin, and try new ideas with digital currencies.
I will provide a list of coins based on the cryptsy.com market, which I believe is the largest altcoin market available. It also is a market that doesn’t have withdrawal minimums and as long as you have an amount that can cover the transaction fee you are free to exchange as much or as little currency as you want.
As of December 18th the following altcoins can be traded for Bitcoins, Litecoins, or Primecoins.
This table was compiled using these sources: bitcointalk, cryptocointalk, and cryptsy.
Coin Name | Announcement Page | Total Coins | Child Of | Premined? | Exchange Link 1 | Special Feature |
AndroidTokens (ADT) | 66 Billion | Litecoin | Yes, 1.32 Billion (2%) | Scrypt 30 second blocks Starting Block reward = 524288 ADT | ||
AlphaCoin (ALF) | 210 million | Litecoin | Not sure | Scrypt 4 confirmations per transaction | ||
AmericanCoin (AMC) | 168 million | Litecoin | Not sure | Scrypt Optimized for CPU | ||
AnonCoin (ANC) | 4.2 million | Bitcoin | Yes, used for faucet | Scrypt Supports i2p darknet Allows for choosing which specific coins to send. | ||
AsicCoin (ASC) | 675 million | Bitcoin | No | SHA256 1 coin per block maintenance fee. 3 sets of random bonus blocks | ||
BBQCoin (BQC) | 2 billion coins in 300 years | Litecoin | No | Scrypt 1 block per minute | ||
BitBar (BTB) | Not sure | RareCoin FairNova | No | Scrypt | ||
ByteCoin (BTE) | 21 million | Bitcoin | No | SHA256 Relaunched. Very similar to Bitcoin. | ||
BitGem (BTG) | Not sure, 3 BTGs per block | Novacoin Litecoin PPCoin | No | Scrypt,Coins attributes map to real world gem qualities. | ||
BottleCaps (CAP) | 47.4336 million | Novacoin | Yes | Scrypt | ||
CryptoBuck (BUK) | 10 million | Litecoin | Not sure | Scrypt TOR services First 300 blocks setup to prevent instamine. | ||
CryptogenicBullion (CGB) | 1 million with a .5% annual inflation | Novacoin | Yes, 9400 coins ( .94%) | Scrypt 5 confirmations 60 second block time | ||
CopperLark (CLR) | 27.2 million | Bitcoin | Yes | Cpu only, hashes with SHA-3 Noted as a “massively premined coin” | ||
Cosmocoin (CMC) | 100 million | Novacoin | No | Scrypt No fees Transaction comments | ||
CHNCoin (CNC) | 462.5 million | Litecoin | No | 60 second blocks, 5040 blocks to retarget difficulty. | ||
ColossusCoin (COL) | 550 billion | Infinitecoin | No | Proof of Stake (250 billion possible coins) | ||
CopperBars (CPR) | 512 million | No | Intended for CPU mining. 16 second blocks. | |||
CraftCoin (CRC) | 100 million | Litecoin | Yes, 1000 Blocks or 10k CraftCoins. | Scrypt, Designed for Minecraft, Can be used in-game. | ||
CasinoCoin (CSC) | 336 million | Litecoin | No | Early superblocks | ||
Doubloons (DBL) | 8 million coins or 5 years, whichever is first. | Litecoin | Yes, 1800 coins | 6.77 coins per block like 6.77 gms of gold in a real doubloon. | ||
DigitalCoin (DGC) | 200 million | Litecoin | Not sure | Block Time is 20 seconds 5 confirmations per transaction. | ||
DevCoin (DVC) | 21 billion | Bitcoin | No | 90% mined goes to devcoin foundation, 10% goes to miners. Merge Mined with Bitcoins. | ||
ElaCoin (ELC) | Not sure | Litecoin | Not sure | 2 minute block times Dynamic block rewards Bitcointalk lists the coin as dead | ||
ElephantCoin (ELP) | 340 million | Litecoin | Yes 1.36 million (.4%) | Random block rewards 20 second block time | ||
Emerald (EMD) | 31.499 million | Litecoin | Yes | Very scarce. 20 second block times | ||
EZCoin (EZC) | 84 million | Litecoin | No | 1 minute block target | ||
FlorinCoin (FLO) | 160 million | Litecoin | No | Allows a 140 character comment for each transaction. | ||
FreiCoin (FRC) | 100 million | Not sure | Not sure | Demurrage fees on stagnant hoarded money. | ||
Franko (FRK) | 11.22 million | Litecoin | No | 30 second block retargets. .25 block reward. | ||
FastCoin (FST) | 165.888 million | Litecoin | No | 12 sec blocks | ||
FeatherCoin (FTC) | 336 million | Litecoin | No | Block target is 2.5 minutes 4x more coins than Litecoin | ||
GrandCoin (GDC) | 1.42 billion | Litecoin | No | 45 second block time, 1000 coins per block. | ||
GlobalCoin (GLC) | 180 million | Litecoin | No | 40 second block target. Retarget every 600 blocks. | ||
HoboNickels (HBN) | 120 million | Novacoin | No | 2% Proof of Stake | ||
InfiniteCoin (IFC) | 90.6 billion | Litecoin | No | High block reward initially that drops exponentially. | ||
IXCoin (IXC) | 21 million | Bitcoin | Not sure. | Supposed to be fully mined by 2013. | ||
JunkCoin (JKC) | 107 million | Litecoin | Yes, 1 million coins. | Scrypt 1% chance of mining a triple reward block (100 coins). .01% chance of mining a quadruple reward block (1000 coins) currently has a low amount of nodes. Premined coins are claimed to be used for bounties. | ||
KrugerCoin (KGC) | about 265 million | Litecoin | Not sure | Scrypt 15 second block time, difficulty retarget 8.4 hours, 4 confirmations per transaction. See bitcoin talk for the latest nodes. | ||
Lucky7Coin (LK7) | 500 million | PPCoin | No | Scrypt Hash with seven or eight 7’s get 777 coins per block. See announcement for reward structure. 5% interest paid every 2 weeks. Difficulty retargets every block | ||
LuckyCoin (LKY) | 200 million | Junkcoin | No | Scrypt See the announcement for the random block reward structure and the client’s latest version number. | ||
LiteCoin (LTC) | 84 million | Bitcoin | Yes, Genesis, and the first two blocks (150 LTC) | First scrypt coin. POW validation. As of now, can only be GPU and CPU mined. | ||
MegaCoin (MEC) | 42 million | Litecoin | Not sure | Scrypt 2.5 million, difficulty retarget every 22.5 minutes. | ||
MemeCoin (MEM) | 200 million | Litecoin | Yes | Scrypt Users wanted more nodes. | ||
MinCoin (MNC) | 10 million | Litecoin | No | Scrypt 1 minute block targets | ||
MasterCoin (MST) | about 180 million | Litecoin | Yes | Not to be confused with the other Mastercoin. Users complain it isn’t unique enough. | ||
Nibble (NBL) | 21 million | Litecoin | No | Scrypt balanced to prevent unfair rewards to insta-mining and premining. | ||
NeoCoin (NEC) | 80 million | Novacoin | No | Scrypt QR code support Exponential moving average difficulty and reward adjustment | ||
NetCoin (NET) | about 320 million | Litecoin | Not sure | Scrypt Traded for Primecoin | ||
NameCoin (NMC) | 21 million | Merged Mined with Bitcoin | Not sure | Allows you to securely register and transfer arbitrary domain names (.bit) Attach values to the names Transact in Namecoins | ||
NoirBits (NRB) | 50 million | Litecoin | No | Scrypt Reversible transactions. 2 minute block time Community funded bounties | ||
NovaCoin (NVC) | 2 billion | PPCoin | Yes | Scrypt | ||
OrbitCoin (ORB) | 31 million | POW / POS based coin | Yes (66%) | “The most premined coin since MMMcoin” Autodetects new nodes Transaction messages | ||
PhilosopherStone (PHS) | 2 billion POS (8 million POW) | Novacoin | No | 3.44% interest based on POS. Random block generation. Supports transaction messages | ||
PPCoin (PPC) | 82 million | Bitcoin | No | Hybrid POW and POS Difficulty adjustment with every block. | ||
Protoshares (PTS) | 2 million, 1% inflation after 2 years. | Bitcoin | No | CPU only “As well as being an altcoin, ProtoShares is a way to own BitShares before they are launched. When BitShares is launched, its genesis block will award one BitShare for every ProtoShare held. “ Created by Invictus Innovations | ||
PayCoin (PYC) | 30 million | Novacoin | No | 3 coins per block 60 second block time 5 confirmations per transaction | ||
Quark (QRK) | 248 million | No, Designed to be mined in the first 6 months. | CPU only, 30 second block generation, mix of hashing functions used. | |||
RedCoin (RED) | 329 million | Litecoin | Yes, 1 million | Transaction messaging | ||
StableCoin (SBC) | 250 million | Litecoin | Yes, 1.25 million | 40 second block time Plans to build a coin mixing service | ||
Spots (SPT) | Not sure | SmallChange | No | .01% chance for a 205x block reward. | ||
SecureCoin (SRC) | 21 million | BItcoin YaCoin SifCoin DigitalCoin | No | Complex system of hashing functions CPU only | ||
SexCoin (SXC) | 250 million | Litecoin | Yes, 200 coins | Chance for a x3 or x50 block. 100 coins per block halve every 600k blocks | ||
TagCoin (TAG) | 100 million | Litecoin PPCoin | Yes, 9000 coins | Funded 5 million usd by Veresoft 4 minute blocks | ||
TekCoin (TEK) | 100 million | PPCoin | No | Transaction comments 1 coin per block 1 minute block | ||
Tickets (TIX) | 100 billion | CopperBars | No | CPU only First coin traded on the XPM market Random block rewards | ||
TerraCoin (TRC) | 42 million | Bitcoin | No | Had a 51% attack. | ||
WorldCoin (WDC) | 265.42 million | Litecoin | No | 30 second blocks 2 confirmations per transaction | ||
JouleCoin (XJO) | 45 million | Bitcoin | No | Transaction comments 45 second blocks Block Reward: 16 | ||
XenCoin (XNC | 2.1 billion coins | Litecoin | Yes, 105 million (5%) | 20 second blocks 6 confirmations per transaction | ||
PrimeCoin (XPM) | 999/sqrt (difficulty) | Novacoin Bitbar Yacoin Bitgem Bottlecaps CryptogenicBullion | No | CPU only Assists in high digit prime discovery aiding the field of mathematics. Proof of Work 1 minute blocks | ||
YaCoin (YAC) | 2 billion | Novacoin | No | CPU only for now. Proof of Work Supports coin control, which lets a user see transaction fees in advance, maximize proof of stake rewards, provide control of Coin Age, and more. | ||
ZetaCoin (ZET) | 160 million + inflation of 1 million per year afterwards. | Bitcoin | No | 30 second blocks. |
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