Bitcoin or altcoin?

Bitcoin, altcoin and stablecoin should not be confused, since these are digital assets, but they have significant differences. And in the xBitcoin Capex Club app here, there are 100+ digital assets that you need to differentiate in order to get the most out of investing in cryptocurrencies.

Forks and hard forks

Although digital currencies, which are cryptocurrencies, have the properties of fiat, they can be either regulated or unregulated. But cryptocurrencies are only a kind of digital currency. There are more than 19,000 different cryptocurrencies that have value in their own right. But bitcoin is not an altcoin or a token, because they are cryptocurrencies with different properties.

Bitcoin (BTC) is considered one of the first cryptocurrencies that appeared with the light hand of Satoshi Nakamoto. This cryptocurrency is also considered the first in terms of market capitalization among other digital assets. After so many years of existence, bitcoin is considered an alternative to fiat, because more and more countries offer to use bitcoin as a reliable means of payment.

But if the user does not have the desire or opportunity to purchase bitcoins, then you can look at altcoins. Altcoins are all those currencies that appeared after bitcoin. After 2008, the market is filled with various altcoins that are as valuable as bitcoin. The developers of altcoins took the BTC code as a basis.

As a result of the so-called forks (fork, branch), Litecoin (LTC) appeared, the creator of which is Charlie Lee. Then DogeCoin (DOGE) appeared in the ranking of top altcoins, which often pumps Elon Musk with his statements. But there are also hard forks, updates to the main network, which resulted in Bitcoin Cash (BСH) and Bitcoin Gold (BTG).

But not everything is so simple. After all, there are altcoins that are generally different from the tasks that the developers of bitcoin and altcoins, implemented on the BTC blockchain, set themselves. These altcoins include Ethereum (ETH). But this is not only an altcoin, but also a programmable blockchain, on which developers can present their own decentralized applications (DApps) and smart contracts. It is the world’s first programmable blockchain developed by Vitalik Buterin. 

It is his name that is inextricably linked with ETH or ether. There is also IOTA, which is related to the Internet of Things (IoT). IOTA is related to The Tangle’s own distributed ledger technology, which is used only in this cryptocurrency.

Is BTC considered a stablecoin?

The value of cryptocurrencies is constantly changing, which repels many holders of cryptocurrencies, as it is associated with the risk of losing a huge amount of money. But the holders of cryptocurrencies do not give up so easily, and they waited for the stablecoin to appear. BTC is originally a decentralized system, so the developers of cryptocurrencies have tried to imagine a currency whose value is pegged to fiat or gold, or other cryptocurrencies. This is an attempt to bring some stability to the cryptocurrency market.