Altcoin

An altcoin is any cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin — the word is short for "alternative coin." The term dates from the early years of crypto, when every new project positioned itself as an alternative to Bitcoin, and it still covers everything from major platforms to tiny experimental tokens.

Altcoins vary enormously in purpose and quality. Some, like Ether (ETH) or Solana (SOL), power large smart-contract platforms with substantial developer ecosystems. Others are stablecoins pegged to the dollar, governance tokens for decentralized applications, or meme coins with no function beyond community and speculation. For example, Litecoin, launched in 2011 as a faster variant of Bitcoin's code, was one of the first altcoins; today thousands of altcoins exist, most with little trading activity or lasting use.

A common misconception is that a low price per coin makes an altcoin "cheap" compared with Bitcoin; what matters is market capitalization — price multiplied by supply — since a token costing a fraction of a cent can still be expensive in aggregate if trillions of units exist. Usage of the term is drifting: some people now exclude Ethereum when they say altcoin, but the traditional definition remains everything that is not Bitcoin. Altcoins typically carry higher risk and sharper price swings than Bitcoin, rising and falling more dramatically across market cycles.