Cryptocurrencies Alternative to Bitcoin

Bitcoin might be the name on everyone’s lips right now, but did you know that Bitcoin is merely the tip of the cryptocurrency iceberg? For those not in the know, cryptocurrencies are basically decentralized and anonymous (or, at least, pseudonymous) peer-to-peer digital currencies that implement cryptography as a central security feature. Cryptocurrency coins are “mined” with computers by solving complex mathematical equations called “hashes”.The success of Bitcoin has led to the development of many alternative cryptocurrencies, often called “altcoins”. Most of these alt coins offer their own take on the Bitcoin protocol, and are interesting in their own right. It helps, too, that most of these are still cheap and much easier to buy or mine.Of course, there’s no guarantee that any of these alt coins will ever be as successful or as valuable as Bitcoin, but if you’ve been kicking yourself for missing the Bitcoin boat, you could do worse than check out one (or more) of these 10 alt coins we are featuring in this post.

1.) Lite Coin

Introduced: October 2011Price: $13.78Total Supply: 24, 055, 992 LTCTotal Value: $331.5 millionThe most common way to describe Lite coin cryptocurrency is that it’s the silver to Bitcoin’s gold. Lite coin, like most alt coins, is based on the Bitcoin protocol, but it’s designed to make sure that mining is much cheaper and more democratic than Bitcoin.One of the ways Lite coin achieves this is by using a different cryptography protocol, scrypt, that can be decoded effectively using consumer-grade GPUs.

2.) Peer Coin

Introduced: August 2012Price: $2.09Total Supply: 20, 931, 643 PPCTotal Value: $43.6 millionPeer coin cryptocurrency is based on Bitcoin, but uses a different method to verify mined coins. Instead of solely relying on the proof-of-work (POW) system, which requires miners to solve hashes, Peer coin will eventually implement a proof-of-stake (POS) system.The POS system basically means that the more coins you have, the higher your chances of mining more coins. Peer coin does not have a fixed upper limit of coins, and is thus an inflationary currency.

3.) Name Coin

Introduced: April 2011Price: $2.69Total Supply: 7,514,992 NMCTotal Value: $20.2 millionName coin cryptocurrency was not designed as a currency instead, Namecoin’s main purpose is to control an alternative Domain Name System (DNS) for the .bit domain.By existing outside of the control of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which governs the DNS for all other domains, .bit domains can escape censorship.

4.) Quark Coin (Discontinued)

Introduced: July 2013Price: $0.069Total Supply: 246,484,913 QRKTotal Value: $16.9 millionQuark Coin cryptocurrency is definitely the alt coin for the security-conscious out there. Quark Coin implements nine rounds of hashing, choosing from six different hashing methods.Most cryptocurrencies only use one hash, and so Quark Coin as an inherent security advantage in this regard over other cryptocurrencies. Quark Coin uses CPU mining, and like Peer coin, does not have a hard cap on the number of total QRK.

5.) Prime Coin (Discontinued)

Introduced: 7 July 2013Price: $1.63Total Supply: 3,624,698 XPMTotal Value: $5.9 millionThe main difference between Prime coin and most alt coins is that the mining doesn’t involve solving hashes. Instead, Prime coin mining involves finding Cunningham chains, which are certain large sequences of prime numbers.These numbers are said to be more mathematically valuable than the hashes that are usually decoded in cryptocurrency mining, and are used in anything from number theory to public key cryptography.

6.) Nova Coin

Introduced: February 2013Price: $9.61Total Supply: 523,071 NVCTotal Value: $5 millionNova coin cryptocurrency is a fork of Peer coin, and thus shares Peercoin’s hybrid POW / POS system. However, Nova coin takes a leaf out of Lite coin’s book and uses scrypt hashing for its POW system.It also has a higher POS difficulty than Peer coin. Another interesting thing to note is that Nova coin has a maximum total supply of 2 billion NVC, although it is unlikely to ever reach this cap.

7.) Feather Coin

Introduced: April 2013Price: $0.19Total Supply: 26,645,550 FTCTotal Value: $4.9 millionFeather coin cryptocurrency is a direct derivative of Lite coin. It is overall very similar to Lite coin, but it has a number of differences that set it apart from its immediate predecessor. Feather coin adjusts its mining difficulty more often than Lite coin.Feather coin also implements Advanced Check pointing. Advanced Check pointing is a security measure designed to protect Feather coin against 51% attacks, which are often used maliciously to reverse cryptocurrency transactions.

8.) Zeta Coin (Discontinued)

Introduced: August 2013Price: $0.018Total Supply: 158,756,403 ZETTotal Value: $2.9 millionZeta coin cryptocurrency is another Bitcoin-derived alt coin, but it stakes its claim in two different ways. Firstly, it has a much quicker block rate than Bitcoin, which means that its transaction rate is 20 times that of Bitcoin. This quick transaction rate is matched by quick difficulty readjustment.Zeta coin is an inflationary cryptocurrency.

9.) Digital Coin (Discontinued)

Introduced: May 2013Price: $0.15Total Supply: 11,524,550 DGCTotal Value: $1.7 millionDigital coin is a Lite coin derivative that is meant to keep its value and be more stable than most cryptocurrencies. It does this by being optimized for performance and by re–targeting quickly to the mining environment. In addition, Digital coin’s block rewards reduce at a far slower rate than other cryptocurrencies.There are also a decent number of vendors that accept Digital coin, which is more than can be said about some other alt coins.

10.) Stable Coin

Introduced: June 2013Price: $0.045Total Supply: 8,751,555 SBCTotal Value: $389kOne interesting feature about Stable coin cryptocurrency is that has a built-in coin mixing service. This service ensures that Stable coin transactions are encrypted and untraceable. This is to ensure that Stable coin will not be vulnerable to attempts to regulate it and its transactions.In addition, Stable coin is actively taking steps to promote itself globally, and has even set up a Chinese-language website to promote Stable coin in China.

11.) Dodge Coin (Alternative)

Introduced: December 6, 2013Price: $0.5202Total Supply: 394,796.00B SHIBTotal Value: $67.4 BillionDoge coin cryptocurrency is based on the popular “doge” Internet meme and features a Shiba Inu on its logo. Doge coin was created in 2013 by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer. The open-source digital currency was created by Billy Markus from Portland, Oregon and Jackson Palmer from Sydney, Australia, and was forked from Lite coin in December 2013. Doge coin’s creators envisaged it as a fun, light hearted cryptocurrency that would have greater appeal beyond the core Bitcoin audience, since it was based on a dog meme. Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted several tweets on social media that Doge coin is his favorite coin.Note: All the figures are sourced from Crypto-Currency Market Capitalizations and are accurate at the time of writing.