Ultimate Guide to Altcoins for Beginners

Investing in crypto without the knowledge of Altcoin can be disappointing, but this guide will explain what it means and the top 10 Altcoins to invest in.

By The 'Staunch

Bitcoin is not the only cryptocurrency available in the market.

Each of these alternative cryptocurrencies to Bitcoin comes with their unique differences, functionalities and purposes.

Bitcoin has a tremendous impact on the world economy, including financial transactions that are being carried out in different parts of the world.

As a result of the impact, many have tried following Satoshi Nakamoto’s footsteps, with an attempt to create their own cryptocurrency.

Hence, there are thousands of different cryptocurrencies, which effectively, is making BTC a catalyst of the crypto world.

These alternate cryptocurrency coins to Bitcoin are referred to as, ‘Altcoins’.

As a cryptocurrency investor, investing only in Bitcoin may not be a good strategy, because these these new altcoins do increase in value.

In this article, I will explain everything you need to know, and the best Altcoins you should consider investing in.

Altcoin explained

Altcoins are those cryptocurrency tokens aside the popularly established Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH).

The term itself was formed from two words: ‘alt’ and ‘coin’, which simply mean ‘alternative cryptocurrencies’.

These are generally marketed as being strong alternatives to the popularly known crypto-coins, as they seem to tackle its limitations.

Despite that selling point, altcoins are still competing against Bitcoin, and must have competitive advantage to succeed.

Many altcoins are built using the basic framework of Bitcoin, giving most of them that much-desired aspect of being P2P (i.e. Peer-to-peer).

Also, much like Bitcoin, they aim to provide a cheap and efficient means of transaction.

Altcoins vs Bitcoin

In general, altcoins work very similarly to Bitcoin, but there are minor differences between these alternatives.

BitcoinAltcoins
Bitcoin and Ethereum are the most popular and widespread cryptocurrencies.Altcoins are much less popular.
The market is extremely competitive and very expensive.They are less expensive, and can be mined by beginners with cheap CPUs.
They are very few in numbers compared to Altcoins.There are thousands of different Altcoins.

Types of Altcoins

As altcoins evolved over the years, categories within the ‘Altcoin’ umbrella also emerged, as there are some movement toward separating most of these concepts.

Below are a few different kinds of altcoins that have been created over the years:

Mining-based Altcoins

These type follows the mining aspect of Bitcoin, which is the process where-by new coins are created by solving cryptographic equations.

Some of these alternate crypto-coins on the market are mining-based, including the our popular Ethereum.

Security tokens

They are that similar to traditional stocks, in the sense that; they often give dividends like: ownership of a business and pay-outs.

They’re often launched in an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) and are linked to businesses.

Utility tokens

Utility tokens are sometimes sold on ICOs as well, but unlike security tokens, they provide a claim on services.

The main difference between security token and utility token is that security tokens pass the Howey Test, while utility tokens do not.

Stablecoins

The intention of Stablecoin establishment is to cancel out the volatility that comes in while keeping your financial value in digital currencies.

They cancel out the volatility by keeping value of a coin to real-life assets.

Tether is a popular example of a Stablecoin, but there are other Stablecoins in the crypto-market.

How to find Altcoin prices

There are several tools to follow up with the prices of different Altcoins, and my favourite tool is CoinMarketCap.

Finding altcoin price is similar to tracking the price of Bitcoin on the internet.

This service displays a complete list of different crypto assets available in the market, and with their respective prices.

How do I buy Altcoin?

Altcoins are available on many cryptocurrency exchanges in the market to buy any Altcoin of your choice.

How do I invest in Altcoin?

Altcoins are risky, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth investing in.

It may be useful to first of all divide your portfolio into small chunks – especially when you intend to speculate on new coins.

What is the first Altcoin?

The very first altcoin released to the public was actually Namecoin, announced in April 2011.

Namecoin was actively used and mined even till today.

It was based on the Bitcoin code, and used the same proof-of-work algorithm – just like BTC, Namecoin is limited to 21 million coins.

Which exchange has most altcoins?

Binance seems to have a large database of altcoin so far, as they keep adding new crypto-coins in their marketplace.

Which is not an Altcoin?

Ethereum now has a blockchain that is entirely independent of Bitcoin influence to an extent.

Nonetheless, alternative cryptocurrencies launched after these two can be known as ‘Altcoins’.

What are cheap altcoins?

These altcoins only worth pennies in value, in which their prices usually stays under one dollar.

They are also known as penny cryptocurrencies in the exchange market.

What are the top 10 Altcoins for long term investment?

The top 10 Altcoins to buy for the long-term are; Binance coin (BNB), Tron (TRX), Litecoin (LTC), Ripple (XRP), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Dash Coin (DASH), Ethereum Classic (ETC), Monero (XLM), Steem IT (STEEM) and US Dollar-Tether (USDT).

These can also be considered as the top 10 Altcoins for next bull run, depending on your budget.

Final thoughts

Plenty of altcoins are beginning to make wave, since many cryptocurrencies are currently on the crypto market.

However, Bitcoin is still the top-father dog of all cryptocurrencies.

It will only be a matter of time, before people find the next big cryptocurrency like BTC an Ethereum to invest in.

About the 'Staunch

Henry is the founder of Crypto Staunch. He studied accounting and finance at Godfrey Okoye University, but became a Cryptopreneur to pursue his interest in learning digital currency and asset investment. Since 2018, Henry Kings has writing about Crypto, DeFi & NFT to help other people get started in the space. His publications has been featured in Binance Square, Digest Africa, Tech Economy, International Business Times, CoinDesk and many other top Crypto media outlets.

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About The 'Staunch

Henry is the founder of Crypto Staunch. He studied accounting and finance at Godfrey Okoye University, but became a Cryptopreneur to pursue his interest in learning digital currency and asset investment. Since 2018, Henry Kings has writing about Crypto, DeFi & NFT to help other people get started in the space. His publications has been featured in Binance Square, Digest Africa, Tech Economy, International Business Times, CoinDesk and many other top Crypto media outlets.