Alternative clients, coins, &

chains
Beyond Bitcoin

What are Altcoins?

Any non-bitcoin backed blockchain token is referred to as an altcoin. Im sure
people who favor these coins dont appreciate the term altcoin or altcoiner but
currently there isnt an accepted better term.
Altcoin are the tokens used by altchains that are blockchains separate from the
bitcoin blockchain.
These tokens and chains can have slightly or radically different rules than Bitcoin
and they can be made to accomplish similar or totally different goals.
New Alts can be made with whimsy as well, in Japan creating tokens for fun is
becoming a popular social activity, these tokens can be tied to the blockchain.

Why are Altcoins in Demand?

The likely answer is greed of course.
Bitcoin is not completely flexible, some coins don't like the idea of a static number
of coins and want a system that inflates forever, some coins don't care about
being decentralized and want a centralized solution, some coins are trying
something totally different like being pegged to fiat
Unfortunately the vast majority of those creating altcoins have used the concept to
scam people out of their money which has sullied the concept of an altcoin so that
it is almost a dirty word

Altcoins Keep Pressure on Bitcoin

As the first cryptocurrency, the one with the biggest network effect, the biggest
network share, and the most development behind it why would competition be
good?
With the invention of cryptocurrencies there have to be some that are the most
well known and used; if Bitcoin doesnt keep adapting to growth and threats with
development another crypto will take its place.
This competition is a threat to the value of btc and as there is heavy investment in
btc there are many that dont want their value threatened. The result of this is
stronger development due to consequences of inaction.

Altcoins are Good for Bitcoin

Altcoins also enable new changes to be tried without risking the most valuable
blockchain. If a change is successful on an altchain it may receive greater
consideration for addition to the mainchain.
If altcoins can be 2-way-pegged to btc, as is the ultimate goal of the sidechain
proposal, then any successful altcoin would also benefit bitcoin. Infact in such an
environment all cryptos could be tied together.
These altchains and altcoins can be made for very specific situations or custom
designed for a new way to use and transact.

What Coins are out there and what the Difference?

There are many coins and most of them worthless, but some have good or novel
ideas.
For everything in Bitcoin that has a setting or is performed by something, a new
coin can be made that has a different setting or goes about something in a new
way.
POW: consensus tool or algorithm: SHA, Scrypt, , hardware
CPU/GPU/ASIC/Mixed mining,
Total coins, rate of block generation, rate of halving, rate of difficulty adjustment, if
blocks are pre-mined, do they use POW/ POS/mix,

Well Known Alts

An outdated comparison of cryptos
A view of their prices and market cap
See code forks
This bubble chart shows all cryptocoins and their total trading volume summarized
of all exchanges for the last 24 hours on it. The volume is denominated in BTC.

Litecoin
An early fork of Bitcoin it was and is very similar. In the past it had been referred to
as the silver to bitcoins gold but the rising popularity of other cryptos threaten that.
A cryptocurrency designed to be ASIC resistant which it did not turn out to be. It
uses Scrypt instead of SHA-256.
Litecoin blocks get generated four times as fast and as it is so similar to bitcoin the
result is that there are ~84 million eventual coins.
Launched October 7th 2011 and using the sign LTE.

Ethereum
Ether is the token used by Ethereum which is a Turing complete blockchain.
The sale of Ether in August 2014 gave funding for the development and launch of the protocol in
July 2015.
Ethereum is intended to complement the Bitcoin blockchain not compete with it.
It may allow more powerful smart contract to use the blockchain directly and not through a second
layer as would be needed with the Bitcoin blockchain.
It has received much scrutiny and funding from banks recently for its potential to reduce overhead
by streamlining processes.
A highly publicised hack or unintended interpretation of a smart contract caused the community to
become divided over the decision to fork the code and recover the stolen funds however on July
20, 2016 a hard fork succeeded on the ethereum.

Dodgecoin
Created as an easy and fun alternative to Bitcoin on December 6th 2013, most
considered it something of a joke currency more for fun than profit or use..
Using the Super Shibe meme as a mascot which has a picture of a Shiba Inus
dog or DOGE.
The Dogecoin community, through a dogecoin foundation, donated over $30,000
to bring the Jamaican bobsled team to the 2014 Sochi Olympics in Russia. They
even had a NASCAR painted for it.

Dash
Dash, formerly known as Darkcoin and before that XCoin.
Dash is a crypto with transaction anonymity as a high priority, this increases the
fungibility of the coins.
Many txs are lumped into one before being output, complicating attempts to follow.
Eleven different hash functions are chained to create an algorithm known as X11
which is used as the POW algorithm.
Dash uses a decentralized governance scheme with masternodes getting to vote
and getting approval from their peers.

Monero
A privacy and fungibility focused token that uses ring signatures to increase
transaction anonymity.
Based on the CryptoNote protocol and not the Bitcoin protocol, transactions
cannot be followed through the blockchain.
Monero uses a POW that utilizes a memory function and not a CPU one, leading
to ASIC resistance.
Launched April 18th 2014 and using the sign MNR

Monero Coin Creation

MaidSafe Coin
MAIDMassive Array of Internet Disks+SAFE (Secure Access For Everyone)
network
MaidSafe aims to decentralize the internet by distributing the previously
centralized function. A global internet with privacy and without censorship.
Uses Omni-layer token Maidsafecoin, which are later to be converted to
SafeCoins.
Launched April 22, 2014 and using the sign MAID.

Factom
According to the Factom website, Factom is a distributed, decentralized protocol
running on top of Bitcoin.
The company aims to help reduce reliance on centralized databases. They can
take documents and put them into a hash function and put that hash function into
the Bitcoin blockchain.
Timestamping records in an unadulterated way and providing easy access to
them. They can prove the existence of certain documents at times in the past and
allow the poor to prove ownership.

Ripple
Ripple uses the sign XRP for its ripples.
RipplePay came out in 2004 based on an idea of people paying each other and
having less reliance on banks.
In 2012 they changed their protocol to deal with some perceived problems in
Bitcoin, also changing their name to OpenCoin. In 2013 changed again to Ripple
Labs Inc.
Ripple requires nodes that move money in and out, known as gateways, to
perform KYC/AML checks in some circumstances and possesses many of the
problems that decentralization solves.

Steem
In July 2014 steem.
In only a few days it rocketed to the 3rd most valuable digital currency based on a
value over $3, however over half the coins were premined.
In short order $85,000 worth of steem was emptied from around 250 user account,
this was noticed quickly and the site was temporarily shut down and accounts
restored.

Sources
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/400uqd/given_bitcoins_adoptionmarket_cap_whats_the_point/
http://p2sh.info/
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Comparison_of_cryptocurrencies
http://www.cryptocoinsinfo.com/
https://www.cryptocoincharts.info/coins/graphicalComparison
http://www.coinwarz.com/cryptocurrency
http://www.coinwarz.com/charts/difficulty-charts
http://altcoins.wiki/
https://bitinfocharts.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogecoin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptocurrency
https://litecoin.org/
https://litecoin.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litecoin
https://litecoin.info/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum
http://www.coindesk.com/16-blockchain-tech-predictions-2016/
http://www.coindesk.com/technology/smart-contracts-news/ethereum/
https://www.dash.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash_(cryptocurrency)
http://cointelegraph.com/news/darkcoin-is-now-dash-and-not-a-moment-too-soon
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=421615.0
https://getmonero.org/home
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=583449.0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monero_(cryptocurrency)
https://github.com/monero-project/bitmonero
http://monero.org/

http://maidsafe.net/safecoin.html
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=577149.0
https://safenetwork.wiki/en/FAQ
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2mkyrg/we_are_the_founders_of_factom_see_our_white_paper/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/36j6z6/ama_we_are_factom_working_on_land_title_projects/
https://www.factom.com/tether-factom-announce-collaboration/
http://factom.org/
https://www.factom.com/
https://github.com/FactomProject/
https://www.weusecoins.com/what-is-factom/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CryptoNote
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_bound_function
https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/factom-price-soars-integration-microsofts-azure-blockchain/
https://www.weusecoins.com/what-is-factom/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastercoin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripple_(payment_protocol)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripple_(company)
http://www.omnilayer.org/
Problems with the DAO https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4oi2ta/i_think_thedao_is_getting_drained_right_now/
http://vessenes.com/more-ethereum-attacks-race-to-empty-is-the-real-deal/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11921216
Lots of ether were drained to here from the DAO https://etherchain.org/account/0x304a554a310c7e546dfe434669c62820b7d83490
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-06-17/bitcoins-largest-competitor-hacked-over-59-million-ethers-stolen-ongoing-attack
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/12/steem-digital-currency-steemit-value-soars
https://blockchain.info/tx/af32bb06f12f2ae5fdb7face7cd272be67c923e86b7a66a76ded02d954c2f94d

Apparently false signed message by DAO hacker https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4oo1wv/signed_message_from_the_ethereum_hacker/

Intheoreum - joke on ethers DAO crash http://intheoreum.org/#welcome
Steem hacked https://coinidol.com/85000-usd-worth-of-steem-dollars-stolen-during-cyber-attack/
https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4os7l5/the_big_thedao_heist_faq/
http://fintechist.com/steemit-suffers-attack-reimburses-affected-users/
https://steemit.com/
https://steem.io/
https://coinreport.net/tag/steem-dollars/
Ether hard fork http://fork.ethstats.net/ s/4tjzi4/time_to_upgrade_your_client_whether_you_are_pro/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4tr3lz/1920000/
Ether is not code above all https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4trp8w/ethereum_is_worthless_now_no_it_isnt/