Though Bitcoin was the first Cryptocurrency, many other cryptocurrencies have been launched using the open source code that Satoshi Nakamoto made available. Each cryptocurrency as modifications to the original code to give each it's own characteristics. The oldest cryptocurrencies were launched to correct faults in the original Bitcoin design, though some recent cryptocurrencies have been launched “just because”. New alt coins are being introduced at an astonishing rate - 26 new coins were launched in May 2013 alone.

Why are so many alt coins being launched? There is an element of “pump and dump” on the part of those doing the launches. And there is also the feeling among some that as Bitcoin mining is too expensive, the only way they can participate in the cryptocurrency world is to mine some of the new alt coins in the hope that one of them “makes it”. There is a germ of truth there - one of the coins may just stabilise to be used alongside bitcoins and may even surpass it - we are at the very early stages of cryptocurrency development.

Many people wonder “what's the difference between bitcoin and litecoin”, or devcoin or namecoin. This page is designed to provide the answers with a table that shows the differences between the cryptocurrencies at a glance.

Name Date Launched Transaction Fees Confirmation time Max. no. of coins Merged Mining Special Notes Bitcoin Jan 3rd 2009 Yes for transactions under 0.01BTC Minimum 10 minutes 21 million coins Yes The original cryptocoin. Litecoin Oct 7th 2011 Yes for transactions under 0.01LTC Minimum 2.5 minutes 84 million coins No Scrypt proof of work algo (memory intensive) Devcoin Aug 5th 2011 Yes 1 DVC Minimum 10 minutes No maximum Yes 90% of coins distributed to developers. 50,000 coins per block instead of 50 (they moved the decimal place) PPCoin Aug 19th 2012 Yes, 0.01PPC/1kb (but 0.01 at least) Minimum 10 minutes 2,000,000,000 PPC* No Based on proof of stake rather than proof of work Terracoin October 2012 Yes 120 seconds 42 million coins No Ability to get signed notifications of transactions Namecoin Apr 18th 2011 Yes Minimum 10 minutes 21 million coins Yes Distributed domain name system Freicoin Jun 2012 Yes - see notes Minimum 10 minutes 100 million coins Yes Demurage coin (continuous fee of 4.4% APR applied to all accounts which is distributed to the miners) Novacoin Feb 2013 Yes, 0.01PPC/1kb (but 0.01 at least) Minimum 10 minutes 2,000,000,000 NVC* No Scrypt proof of work, proof-of-stake. 65500 + 44500 coins instamined and publicly destroyed later ChnCoin May 2013 60 seconds 462 million No Scrypt proof of work 88 coins per block Launched by Chinese developers (should be pronounced "china coin") Ixcoin Aug 2011 Yes Minimum 10 minutes 21 million coins Yes 96 coins per block - also appears to have some pre-mining and no development work for some time. Advice to stay clear Feathercoin April 16th 2013 Yes Minimum 2.5 minutes 336 million coins No 200 coins per block. This is a scrypt fork of Litecoin. The coin came under a 51% attack. Feathercoin managed to defend against the attack thanks to automated mining pools which switched to mining the coin, diluting the attack.

PPCoin and NovaCoin have no deterministic emission limit. 2,000,000,000 coins is just a sanity checking threshold.

Related pages:

Where to spend your cryptocurrencies

Checklist of criteria to consider when investing in alt-coins





Cryptocurrency