An altcoin, or alternative coin, is pretty self-explanatory. An altcoin is every cryptocurrency alternative to Bitcoin – the first one. Altcoins may differ from Bitcoin in every possible way, such as mining mechanisms, coin-distribution methods or the ability to create decentralized applications.
Although Bitcoin is innovative and massively influential, it has some problems that developers are trying to fix with their own products. There is an altcoin that makes faster transactions, there is an altcoin that is less volatile, there is an altcoin that is more private and so on. There are more than one and a half thousand altcoins on the market at the day this text is written, according to coinmarketcap.com. Altcoins are playing a very important role by expanding boundaries of blockchain possibilities and the scope of applications.