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Bitcoin may have become a thing of fascination for the media very recently, but the digital currency actually celebrated its fifth birthday this month as its value hovered at around $1,000 per coin.
Bitcoin was never intended to be the one cryptocurrency to rule them all, because anyone can make their own version of it. The code which underpins the currency is released under what's known as an open-source licence. Anyone can use it themselves, and alter any aspect they want, in order to create a whole new currency.
A whole class of alternative crypto-currencies, based on the fundamental aspects of bitcoin, have been created over the past couple of years. The first and biggest of the "altcoins", called Litecoin, was created in 2011 to address some perceived flaws in the Bitcoin protocol.
Litecoin is much harder to build specialised "mining" machines for, which, according to its founders, prevents it from being dominated by a few rich miners. Additionally, it clears payments faster and has a much higher cap of 84m coins.
Since November 2011, Litecoin has tracked the value of Bitcoin fairly closely, but in December last year it spiked in value. Overnight, a Litecoin was worth 10 times what it had been before, and its total market cap now stands at $623m, around 16% of that of its parent.
Measuring press attention alone, Litecoin is surely eclipsed by another altcoin with a far more compelling hook: Dogecoin.
Whereas Litecoin requires an already deep understanding of cryptocurrencies to explain the ways in which it improves on Bitcoin, Dogecoin has simpler selling point: it's got a picture of a Shiba Inu dog on the front.
Read with a straight face, it's a triumph of marketing. Take a field which anyone can enter, and where the average user has little or no way to distinguish between competing examples; and then whack the most popular meme of 2013, Doge, on the front of your own. (Doge, for those of you still unaware, is a meme involving pictures of a confused-looking Shiba Inu with brightly coloured comic sans text surrounding it, spelling out in idiosyncratic broken English the animal's thoughts. Wow. Very internet. Such bafflement.)
Haha, well, there goes Cryptonium. I'm out.
Bitcoin was never intended to be the one cryptocurrency to rule them all, because anyone can make their own version of it. The code which underpins the currency is released under what's known as an open-source licence. Anyone can use it themselves, and alter any aspect they want, in order to create a whole new currency.
A whole class of alternative crypto-currencies, based on the fundamental aspects of bitcoin, have been created over the past couple of years. The first and biggest of the "altcoins", called Litecoin, was created in 2011 to address some perceived flaws in the Bitcoin protocol.
Litecoin is much harder to build specialised "mining" machines for, which, according to its founders, prevents it from being dominated by a few rich miners. Additionally, it clears payments faster and has a much higher cap of 84m coins.
Since November 2011, Litecoin has tracked the value of Bitcoin fairly closely, but in December last year it spiked in value. Overnight, a Litecoin was worth 10 times what it had been before, and its total market cap now stands at $623m, around 16% of that of its parent.
Measuring press attention alone, Litecoin is surely eclipsed by another altcoin with a far more compelling hook: Dogecoin.
Whereas Litecoin requires an already deep understanding of cryptocurrencies to explain the ways in which it improves on Bitcoin, Dogecoin has simpler selling point: it's got a picture of a Shiba Inu dog on the front.
Read with a straight face, it's a triumph of marketing. Take a field which anyone can enter, and where the average user has little or no way to distinguish between competing examples; and then whack the most popular meme of 2013, Doge, on the front of your own. (Doge, for those of you still unaware, is a meme involving pictures of a confused-looking Shiba Inu with brightly coloured comic sans text surrounding it, spelling out in idiosyncratic broken English the animal's thoughts. Wow. Very internet. Such bafflement.)
Bitcoin me: How to make your own digital currency
What can making your own currency teach you about the world of bitcoin? By Alex Hern
www.theguardian.com
Haha, well, there goes Cryptonium. I'm out.
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