Bitcoin’s wild ride has gotten a huge amount of attention. But over the past two weeks, some of its crypto cousins, like litecoin and Bitcoin Cash, have muscled their way into the spotlight.

On Tuesday, for instance, bitcoin-services company Coinbase announced it would list and support Bitcoin Cash, which is an alternative version of bitcoin that launched on Aug. 1. The news sent prices of bitcoin down and Bitcoin Cash skyrocketing.

Plenty of people are confused enough about bitcoin. Alternatives to bitcoin, or “altcoins,” muddy the waters further. Here are answers to some basic questions about them.

Altcoins? What are altcoins?

Altcoin is a nickname given to currencies that are a variation on bitcoin. The way bitcoin itself was created encourages this. When bitcoin’s anonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto released bitcoin in 2009, he or she did it as an open-source software project. That means that, unlike say the code for Microsoft Windows, anybody could take the program, reconfigure it and launch their own version. Litecoin was the first to do this, in 2011.