Coins in Crypto: The Digital Assets

Coin is a cryptocurrency on its own blockchain or one unit of such cryptocurrency.

What is Coin?

Coins are cryptocurrencies that run on their own blockchain and do not rely on other coins. An individual unit of such a cryptocurrency can also be called a coin. Autonomous cryptocurrencies are commonly distinguished by this term from tokens that run on top of their parent blockchain platforms, such as Ethereum (ETH).

In January 2009, the first coin, bitcoin (BTC), appeared on the cryptocurrency market. It uses a decentralized, geographically distributed ledger called blockchain to keep track of all transactions occurring on the network, ensuring that no one can create new coins other than through the computationally intensive process of mining.

There are numerous coins based on proprietary blockchains developed from scratch, and some - so-called forks - are based on the blockchain of another, already existing coin.

For example, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Bitcoin Gold (BTG) are forks of Bitcoin and had the same blockchain when created. At the same time, they are still considered coins, i.e., independent cryptocurrencies, because their blockchain continued to function completely separate from the Bitcoin blockchain after the fork.

Some platforms, such as Ethereum and EOS (EOS), in contrast, allow people to create tokens, cryptocurrencies whose operation is entirely dependent on the parent blockchain and which would cease to be usable if the underlying platform ever failed.