Coin

What Are Coins?

Coins are digital currencies that function on their own blockchains and are not dependent on any other coins. A coin can also refer to a single unit of such cryptocurrency. This term is used to differentiate independent cryptocurrencies from tokens, which operate on top of their parent blockchain platforms, like Ethereum (ETH).

The very first coin in the cryptocurrency market was Bitcoin (BTC), which was launched in January 2009. It utilizes a decentralized and geographically distributed ledger, known as the blockchain, to record all transactions occurring on its network. This ensures that no one can create new coins through any means other than the computationally-intensive process of mining.

Since then, numerous new coins have emerged. Some of them are built on their own blockchains, created from scratch. Others, known as forks, are based on the blockchain of an existing coin. For instance, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Bitcoin Gold (BTG) are forks of Bitcoin. However, they are still considered coins because their blockchains continued to operate independently from Bitcoin’s after the fork.

In contrast, certain platforms like Ethereum and EOS (EOS) enable the creation of tokens. These are cryptocurrencies that rely entirely on the operation of the parent blockchain. If the underlying platform were to cease functioning, these tokens would also become unusable.