Even before Bitcoin existed, attempts had been made to develop cryptocurrencies that used a decentralized system. These previous attempts have failed because the development of Blockchain technology turned out to be a lot more difficult in reality than on paper. That was until an anonymous document was made public in 2008: Bitcoin – A Peer to Peer Electronic Cash System. By whom the document was placed is still not known to this day. All we do know is that the document uploader operates under the alias Satoshi Nakamoto. Since then, several people have claimed to have been Satoshi Nakamoto, but time and again it turned out that this was not the case. The real Satoshi Nakamoto has not yet been found. Origin of the Bitcoin
The founders of bitcoin have converted the concept of Satoshi Nakamoto into a functioning cryptocurrency. The Bitcoin was the first working cryptocurrency. Because Satoshi Nakamoto’s document is public and the code of Bitcoin can also be viewed by everyone (Open Source), several other cryptocurrencies were developed soon after the arrival of bitcoin. The first functional altcoin was the Namecoin, which was created to register domain names in a decentralized way. Since then, 1000+ other altcoins have been designed. The purpose of all these new coins is mainly to improve blockchain technology. For example, there are already altcoins that can handle transactions a lot faster, more sustainably and therefore cheaper than is the case with Bitcoin. Scalability is also a real problem with Bitcoin. Altcoins may be able to offer a solution for this in the near future.
Please note that not all altcoins are innovative. Some coins do not offer any added value and are set up to earn. Investments in a currency whose added value is unknown or the creators are anonymous is best avoided. Blockchain technology
The Blockchain was first described in the nineties. It then took until 2008 before Satoshi Nakamoto processed the descriptions into a complete concept. This concept by Satoshi Nakamoto was converted a year later by the creators of the Bitcoin into the first working Blockchain: the Bitcoin Ledger. This made Bitcoin the first party to use a working Blockchain.
Now Bitcoin is struggling with the necessary problems in this first Blockchain. For example, the Blockchain of Bitcoin has grown very fast, to almost 150GB in January 2018. In the long run, this growth is unsustainable and that will result in slow transactions, high transaction costs and extremely high energy consumption among Bitcoin miners. To counter this, several initiatives have already been launched, including that of the Lightning Network.De rise of altcoins.
After the arrival of the Bitcoin, it took some time before people realized the possibilities of new currencies and blockchain technology. Once this was clear, one altcoin after another was developed by different parties. Because the Bitcoin is an Open Source, it was no longer necessary for those who wanted to set up a new altcoin to reinvent the wheel. Still, the goal of most altcoins is not to be just a copy of the Bitcoin under a new name. Several altcoins improved the scripts to improve the technique. For example, Ripple chose to make blocks in the Blockchain dynamic instead of static, as is the case with Bitcoin. More and more altcoins are also opting for a form of pre-mining. This saves a lot of electricity because the coins no longer have to be mined. So, the goal of a good altcoin should be to help the technology move forward. Yet, unfortunately, there are many altcoins that offer nothing new besides a name change.
