Hi guys, please share the use of altcoins. But please explain what is altcoins. How we can usually utilize?
Altcoins are cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin. Altcoins are alternatives to Bitcoin. They are cryptocurrencies that use a technology called blockchain that allows secure peer-to-peer transactions. Altcoins build on the success of Bitcoin by slightly changing the rules to appeal to different users.
How Do Altcoins Work?
Generally speaking, altcoins work much like the original Bitcoin. Using a private key, you can send a payment from your digital wallet to another user’s wallet. In a cryptocurrency such as these, there is a blockchain, or recording ledger, where the transactions are permanently and publicly recorded, so exchanges can’t be altered or denied after the fact. The blockchain is secured by mathematics proofs which confirm transactions in blocks.
Altcoin vs. Bitcoin
Altcoins don’t all follow the same rules as Bitcoin. For example, while Bitcoin will only ever mine, or produce, bitcoins every 10 minutes, an altcoin called Litecoin will produce coins every 2.5 minutes. This makes Litecoin able to process payments faster. Litecoin will also produce 84 million litecoins, whereas Bitcoin will only produce 21 million bitcoins.
Litecoin also uses a different set of rules for mining than bitcoin. Whereas bitcoins require costly hardware to mine, litecoins can be mined with common computer hardware.
Altcoins
The release of Bitcoin and its open-source code in 2008 paved the way for thousands of other cryptocurrencies to be created. These new coins have been dubbed ‘alternative coins’ or ‘altcoins’ as they are alternatives to Bitcoin.
While some do serve a similar purpose to Bitcoin, other cryptocurrency types such as altcoins actually encompass a wide range of different uses. For example, Ethereum (ETH), the world’s first programmable blockchain, enables developers to build and deploy decentralised applications (DApps) and smart contracts.