Altcoins Beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum: XRP, Solana, and the Wild West
Book: Cryptocurrency QuickStart Guide: The Simplified Beginner’s Guide to Digital Currencies, Bitcoin, and the Future of Decentralized Finance
Author: Jonathan Reichental
ISBN: 978-1-63610-041-8
Chapter: 6
Bitcoin and Ethereum together make up about 60% of crypto. That leaves nearly 20,000 other coins fighting over the rest. Reichental calls them altcoins, short for “alternative coins.” Anything that is not Bitcoin qualifies.
Twenty thousand sounds insane. It is. But this chapter is not a list dump. It is a guided tour of the coins that actually mattered when the book was written, plus the weird corners of crypto that beginners need to know exist.
Before diving in, Reichental gives two questions to ask about any altcoin:
- What is the real reason this coin might succeed?
- Can you spot those reasons in lesser-known coins before everyone else?
Keep those in your pocket. They will save you from a lot of bad bets.
The heavy hitters
XRP and RippleNet
XRP comes from Ripple Labs, a for-profit company serving banks and payment providers. The goal: faster, cheaper cross-border money transfers. Transactions settle in under five seconds. Fees are tiny (0.00001 XRP). Over 300 institutions across 40 countries use RippleNet.
The use case is clear. That is rare in altcoin land.
The controversy is also clear. Crypto purists hate that a private company controls so much of the story. XRP does not use proof-of-work or proof-of-stake. Selected validators confirm transactions through “Unique Node Lists.” Ripple Labs publishes recommended validator lists. That feels centralized to a lot of people.
RippleNet proves blockchain can solve real business problems. Whether XRP is “real crypto” depends on how much decentralization you demand.
Solana
Anatoly Yakovenko had a late-night idea in 2017: embed time itself into the blockchain. The result was proof-of-history, combined with proof-of-stake.
Timestamps on every transaction let Solana sequence events fast without long gaps between blocks. The white paper claims up to 710,000 transactions per second in theory. Real-world numbers are closer to 3,000 TPS. Still way ahead of Ethereum’s ~10 TPS.
The tradeoff: more processing means more outages. Solana has gone down more than some competitors. Speed is not free.
Cardano
Charles Hoskinson left Ethereum to build Cardano in 2017. ADA went from a $600 million market cap at launch to over $10 billion by year’s end. Named after mathematician Gerolamo Cardano and computing pioneer Ada Lovelace.
Cardano splits into two layers: one for tracking ADA transfers, one for smart contracts. The idea is better scalability than Ethereum’s single-layer design.
Three problems Cardano targets:
- Scalability through the two-layer split
- Interoperability through cross-chain bridges
- Sustainability via proof-of-stake (Ouroboros protocol), claimed to be four million times more energy efficient than Bitcoin
Cardano’s community publishes peer-reviewed research. That is unusual and either impressive or slow, depending on your patience.
Binance Coin (BNB)
BNB started as a utility token for discounted fees on the Binance exchange. Launched in 2017 at 10 cents. Peaked near $700 in 2021.
Founder Changpeng Zhao (“CZ”) built Binance into the world’s largest crypto exchange. BNB moved from Ethereum’s ERC-20 standard to its own blockchains: the BNB Beacon Chain and BNB Smart Chain (BSC), which runs smart contracts compatible with Ethereum.
Binance burns BNB regularly, sending coins to an address that can receive but never send. Fewer coins in circulation, theoretically higher price. Binance committed to burning 20% of quarterly profits for years. They later switched to an auto-burn tied to price and activity.
Burning done transparently is supply management. Burning done secretly to pump a scam coin is fraud. Know the difference.
Polkadot
Gavin Wood (Ethereum cofounder, Solidity creator) built Polkadot to connect blockchains. The relay chain is the hub. Parachains (up to about 100) plug into it for specific projects. Parachains get leased at auction for up to 96 weeks.
DOT tokens do triple duty: traded as currency, used for governance votes, and staked to mint new blocks through “nominated proof-of-stake.” Nominators pick validators. Validators mint blocks. Collators keep parachains in sync. Fishermen watch for bad behavior.
It is the most architecturally complex altcoin in the chapter. Also the most “internet of blockchains” energy.
The weird corners
Meme coins
Dogecoin started in 2013 as a joke about the Shiba Inu “Doge” meme. Two weeks later it had an $8 million market cap. Elon Musk tweets later, and suddenly everyone is paying attention.
Meme coins prove that value is partly belief. If people accept something as payment, it has value. That said, most meme coins die quietly.
Shitcoins
The term refers to coins with no purpose, plan, or value. Some people use it for every altcoin that is not BTC or ETH. Harsh but common in crypto Twitter.
Anyone can spin up a coin with basic software. Most should not exist.
Stablecoins
Stablecoins peg to fiat currency or assets like gold. They let you stay in crypto without riding Bitcoin’s volatility roller coaster.
Three main types:
- Fiat-collateralized (backed by real dollars in reserve)
- Crypto-collateralized (backed by other crypto)
- Non-collateralized (algorithmic, no backing)
Early traders used stablecoins to exit altcoin profits without converting to Bitcoin first. That saved fees and avoided extra volatility.
Regulators are watching hard. The US Treasury worries about bank runs on stablecoins and concentration of payment power. Central banks might launch their own digital currencies and eat stablecoins’ lunch.
CityCoins
Built on the Stacks protocol (smart contracts secured by Bitcoin). Miners send STX into a contract and receive CityCoin tokens. MiamiCoin sent 30% of mining rewards to the City of Miami. Miami made $7 million in 2021. Bitcoin’s 2022 drop cut those gains.
Imagine paying bus fare or concert tickets with your city’s coin. Cool idea. Early infrastructure.
How to make your own altcoin
Reichental lists four paths:
- Fork open-source code (like Bitcoin’s GitHub repo)
- Use a third-party wizard (WalletBuilders and similar)
- Hard-fork an existing chain (Bitcoin Cash model)
- Create an ERC-20 token on Ethereum (most common method)
Creating a coin is easy. Creating one worth owning is the hard part.
The Wild West reality
The altcoin market in 2021 grew from $965 billion to $2.6 trillion. Altcoins (everything except BTC) grew 550%. That is gold rush energy.
Not everyone strikes gold. Fraud, zero regulation, poor liquidity on small exchanges, and hype-driven boom-bust cycles are everywhere. Reichental compares it to the California gold rush: some get rich, many show up late with nothing.
The opportunity side is real too. Innovation is wide open. Coins that solve actual problems (fast payments, cross-chain bridges, city funding) keep appearing. The market rewards builders who deliver value to end users.
My honest take
This chapter overwhelmed me a little. Twenty thousand coins is too many to track. But the framework helps: look for a clear use case, check decentralization claims, watch who controls validators, and never confuse a meme with a business model.
I would not touch most altcoins. The ones with real infrastructure (XRP for payments, Solana for speed, Polkadot for interoperability) at least have a story beyond “number go up.”
The two questions from the top of the chapter are the whole game. If you cannot answer them for a coin someone shills you on Discord, pass.
Previous: Ethereum and Smart Contracts Explained
Next: Crypto Tokens and NFTs Explained