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Altcoins, coins, and tokens: What’s the difference?

Dissecting “crypto-speak.”
By Karl Montevirgen
Karl Montevirgen
Karl MontevirgenFinancial Writer

Karl Montevirgen is a professional freelance writer who specializes in the fields of finance, cryptomarkets, content strategy, and the arts. Karl works with several organizations in the equities, futures, physical metals, and blockchain industries. He holds FINRA Series 3 and Series 34 licenses in addition to a dual MFA in critical studies/writing and music composition from the California Institute of the Arts.

Fact-checked by Doug Ashburn
Doug Ashburn
Doug AshburnExecutive Editor, Britannica Money

Doug is a Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst who spent more than 20 years as a derivatives market maker and asset manager before “reincarnating” as a financial media professional a decade ago.

Before joining Britannica, Doug spent nearly six years managing content marketing projects for a dozen clients, including The Ticker Tape, TD Ameritrade’s market news and financial education site for retail investors. He has been a CAIA charter holder since 2006, and also held a Series 3 license during his years as a derivatives specialist.

Doug previously served as Regional Director for the Chicago region of PRMIA, the Professional Risk Managers’ International Association, and he also served as editor of Intelligent Risk, PRMIA’s quarterly member newsletter. He holds a BS from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an MBA from Illinois Institute of Technology, Stuart School of Business.

3D Coins stacks on weighing scales, financial management, financial analysis, money-saving and money exchange concept. 3d illustration
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There's a whole crypto universe beyond bitcoin.
© putilich—iStock/Getty Images

If you’re new to cryptocurrency and find “crypto-speak” a bit dizzying, it’s probably because both the technology and terms are still evolving, and definitions tend to morph over time. Even those who speak crypto may be unwittingly conflating terms because there aren’t many standardized definitions yet.

Key Points

  • The terms altcoins, coins, and tokens are technically distinguishable, but are frequently misused.
  • The context is often more important than the technical definition.
  • In general, a coin is a cryptocurrency that comes with its own dedicated blockchain, and a token is a cryptocurrency or crypto asset that runs on another cryptocurrency’s blockchain.

Take, for instance, the most basic terms identifying cryptocurrency: coins, altcoins, and tokens. Are they synonymous? According to many sources, they’re not. Yet they’re used synonymously in different contexts:

  • Some tokens are launched via initial coin offerings (ICOs), although they’re not technically coins. 
  • Some tokens are also considered altcoins, even though there’s a technical difference. 
  • One of the largest crypto exchanges considers all tokens to be altcoins, yet refers to all crypto assets as (technically) tokens.

Is your head spinning? That’s OK; even crypto pros don’t always get it right. 

Despite the difficulties in trying to tell crypto apples from crypto oranges—or whether there really is a difference—it helps to understand the basic lingo that’s being thrown around, even if the meanings change or remain uncertain. 

A semantic rabbit hole it may be. But here’s a guide to help you explore altcoins, coins, and tokens without falling in.

What is an altcoin?

If the entire cryptocurrency universe expanded from a single point, sort of like a big bang, that point of singularity would be Bitcoin, the first cryptocurrency. Every cryptocurrency that’s not the original Bitcoin is considered an “alternative” to it, hence an “alternative coin” or altcoin.

From this vantage point, an altcoin is every cryptocurrency that’s not Bitcoin. But there’s a caveat to this definition: Not everyone agrees with it.

Bitcoin was designed as an alternative to our everyday standard currency. Ethereum introduced another region to the blockchain universe: one that allowed for innovations such as smart contracts and decentralized applications (dapps) to flourish. 

Learn more about blockchain technology.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

This means that some crypto enthusiasts define an altcoin as any cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin and Ethereum. So “altcoin” refers to any crypto that’s not Bitcoin—or Bitcoin and Ethereum. But if you’re talking about any crypto in the context of its own blockchain network, you refer to them as “coins.”  

What is a coin?

A coin is a cryptocurrency that comes with its own dedicated and standalone blockchain. In other words, a coin is a specific blockchain’s native cryptocurrency.

For example, the Bitcoin network’s native coin is Bitcoin. Ethereum’s coin is called Ether. Ripple Labs’ coin is called XRP. They each have their own standalone blockchain networks.

Some blockchain networks can be used for other cryptocurrencies and other decentralized applications in addition to their own native coin. This is where things can get confusing, because some of them are called “coins” for the sake of convenience. But technically they’re “tokens.”

What is a token?

A token is a cryptocurrency or crypto asset that runs on another cryptocurrency’s blockchain. An example of a cryptocurrency token is USD Coin (USDC), a fiat-backed stablecoin that runs on the Ethereum blockchain. An example of a crypto asset token is a non-fungible token (NFT). Most NFTs run on blockchains built on the Ethereum network.

The bottom line

Distinguishing coins, altcoins, and tokens is a simple matter of definition. But those definitions aren’t universally accepted, and some are subject to change as the crypto universe evolves.

What truly defines a word or changes its definition is its usage. When you read or hear crypto-speak being slung around, pay attention to the context in which terms are used. As with any other emerging technology, crypto will eventually mature to the point where we’ll agree on a common language.

References