Altcoins.

Altcoins (alternative coins) are the name of all cryptocurrencies except bitcoin. Many popular cryptocurrencies (such as litecoin, USDT, BCH, etc.) are bitcoin hard forks

Altcoin developers primarily solve the problems that bitcoin has.

    Long transactions and high fees for small payments. With a small amount of payment, the bitcoin commission amount can reach up to 30-40%, but at the same time, for a large transaction, the commission can be tenths of a percent. The most popular solution is ripple. On average, the commission is about 1-4 rubles.

    Lack of anonymity. Since all transactions in the bitcoin network are transparent and anyone can view where and where money was sent (and then identify the identity of the wallet), bitcoin is not anonymous. Popular solutions: Dash, Monero, ZCash

    Complex and expensive mining. Approximately every four years, halving occurs on the bitcoin network (I recently published an article on this topic) and for this reason, miners should be combined into single pools, since the computing power of each individual miner is not enough to find the required hash. Pooling leads to the centralization of the network, and this contradicts the main idea of ​​Bitcoin (to be a decentralized network)

    Insufficient functionality. Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, its main task is to be a tool for settlement operations, and since transactions are long, expensive and not anonymous (and the network is centralized), Bitcoin becomes more like an ordinary bank, and not like an advanced technology in the field of finance. The most popular solution that adds new functionality to cryptocurrencies is Ethereum with smart contracts.

Stablecoins

it is the general name for cryptocurrencies that are stable. Their value is tied to physical assets (such as gold, oil) or backed by currency reserves (for example, the dollar). Stablecoins are needed in order not to withdraw fiat (traditional) money when trading on an exchange, since exchanges take a commission and because of this, all profit from trading can go to the exchange's commission. The most popular solution is USDT or Tether. There is also a token from the Binance exchange called BUSD. We will now talk about tokens.

1 gram of gold costs 55 $ or 55 USDT

Tokens

In fact, tokens are not cryptocurrencies, they are only a type of digital money, but since tokens are often touched upon with the topic of cryptocurrencies, many people do not distinguish between them. Now I will tell you about the main differences:

    the emission of tokens can be centralized and decentralized, (cryptocurrencies - only decentralized)

    verification of token transactions can be centralized and decentralized (cryptocurrencies - only decentralized)

    the price of tokens can be influenced by a very wide list of factors, in addition to supply and demand (issuance of additional tokens, pegging to other assets), the price of cryptocurrencies is fully regulated by the market

    tokens do not have to be launched on their own blockchain, while cryptocurrencies always have their own blockchain