Alternative coins

The Bitcoin software is open source and available to the public. From the public repository, many "alternative coins" have been created by copying the source code and re-configuring specific parameters. Each alt-coin can implement a different ruleset independent of any other alt-coin.

Generally, alt-coins implement different quantities for the total money supply or different block rates. For example, Litecoin has a total supply of 84 million coins and a mining rate of approximately two minutes.

Other alt-coins may implement a built-in inflation. For example, Friecoin has a built-in demurrage that's 5 percent per year. Basically, if you hold 1 Friecoin, it will be worth 5 percent less if you spend it one year later. This was used ...

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