Altcoins
Last reviewed November 1, 2026
Anything that isn't Bitcoin gets called an altcoin. That covers large platforms like Ethereum and tokens that vanish a week after launch.
Listing sites such as CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko track tens of thousands of cryptocurrencies. Most of them matter to nobody. A small share have real users, active developers and several years of history.
So the label says nothing about quality, only that it isn't Bitcoin. What counts is what a project does and who gains from it.
Types of altcoin
Roughly four groups: coins of their own blockchains (Solana, Cardano, Avalanche), application tokens (Uniswap, Aave), stablecoins, and memecoins. There are also payment coins like Litecoin and infrastructure tokens like Chainlink.
Memecoins
Dogecoin began in 2013 as a joke about an internet meme. There are now thousands of memecoins with no technical purpose, running purely on attention. They can multiply in days and collapse just as fast. Many are minted in minutes on launch platforms, and a good share exist mainly to sell to whoever buys last.
Questions to ask first
Is there a product people actually use? Who holds the tokens, and when do locked allocations unlock? Is the code public and audited? Is it listed by regulated exchanges? The more questions without answers, the bigger the risk.
Tokenomics
Tokenomics are a token's economic rules: total supply, allocation, inflation and unlock schedule. When founders and early investors hold a large share that unlocks over time, it creates selling pressure. That is why fully diluted valuation (FDV), which counts every future token, often tells you more than market cap.