{"id":34,"date":"2026-07-07T20:17:46","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T19:17:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bitadvent.com\/what-is-an-altcoin\/"},"modified":"2026-07-08T21:33:43","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T20:33:43","slug":"what-is-an-altcoin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitadvent.com\/ru\/what-is-an-altcoin\/","title":{"rendered":"What Is an Altcoin? A Plain-English Map of the Market"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Altcoin&#8221; is shorthand for any cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin. It is a broad, informal label that covers everything from established smart-contract platforms to tiny experimental tokens. Understanding the main categories is more useful than treating them all as one group.<\/p>\n<h2>The main categories<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Smart-contract platforms<\/strong> \u2014 networks like Ethereum, Solana and Cardano that let developers build applications.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Stablecoins<\/strong> \u2014 tokens that aim to hold a steady value, usually pegged to the US dollar.<\/li>\n<li><strong>DeFi tokens<\/strong> \u2014 governance or utility tokens for decentralised exchanges, lending and other financial apps.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Layer 2s and scaling tokens<\/strong> \u2014 networks that sit on top of a base chain to make transactions cheaper and faster.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Meme coins<\/strong> \u2014 tokens driven mostly by community and attention rather than a specific use case.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>How to weigh them<\/h2>\n<p>Altcoins vary enormously in maturity, security and liquidity. Larger, established projects have long track records and deep markets; newer tokens can move violently and, in some cases, fail entirely. Useful questions include: what problem does it solve, who is building it, how is supply distributed, and is there real usage behind the price?<\/p>\n<p>You can browse live prices and 7-day trends for the coins we track on our <a href=\"\/altcoins\/\">altcoins hub<\/a> and the full <a href=\"\/coins\/\">coin list<\/a>. Altcoins are higher-risk than Bitcoin. This is educational content, not financial advice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every crypto that is not Bitcoin is loosely called an altcoin. Here is how to think about the main categories and their trade-offs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":128,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-altcoins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitadvent.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitadvent.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitadvent.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitadvent.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitadvent.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bitadvent.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58,"href":"https:\/\/bitadvent.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions\/58"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitadvent.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitadvent.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitadvent.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitadvent.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}