altcoin

Ethereum: Welcome to the Beginning

Vitalik Buterin's BitcoinTalk announcement of Ethereum on the Altcoins board, January 23, 2014. The principal Bitcoin-community-facing record of the Ethereum whitepaper publication.

Dogecoin launches as a meme — Markus and Palmer fork Litecoin (December 2013)

Markus and Palmer launched Dogecoin on December 6, 2013 as a Litecoin fork around the 'Doge' Shiba Inu meme. Initially a satire of crypto speculation, it grew into a top-10 cryptocurrency.

Litecoin launches as 'silver to Bitcoin's gold' — Charlie Lee forks Bitcoin with Scrypt PoW (October 2011)

Charlie Lee launched Litecoin on October 13, 2011 as a Bitcoin-codebase fork with Scrypt PoW, 2.5-minute blocks, and 84 M cap. He framed it as 'silver to Bitcoin's gold'.

Namecoin launches as the first altcoin — Vincent Durham realizes the BitDNS proposal (April 2011)

Vincent Durham launched Namecoin on April 18, 2011 — the first altcoin and first fork of the Bitcoin codebase. It implemented the BitDNS proposal as a decentralized name registration system.

Bitcoin's family tree: forks, altcoins, and the mainline Bitcoin that endured

Genealogy of every Bitcoin protocol fork that left a separate chain alive (Bitcoin Cash, SV, Gold) and the adjacent cryptocurrencies derived from Bitcoin (Namecoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin).