Bitcoin dominates the crypto market despite 436 offshoots branching from its original code. CoinMarketCap lists more than 7,000 cryptocurrencies operating across a $325 billion market. Data from Map o
Bitcoin dominates the crypto market despite 436 offshoots branching from its original code. CoinMarketCap lists more than 7,000 cryptocurrencies operating across a $325 billion market. Data from Map of Coins, which tracks the genealogy of digital currencies, shows that 436 altcoins trace their roots directly to Bitcoin. Of those, 250 have collapsed. Bitcoin maintains dominance through both its developer base and a 58% share of the market cap.
Namecoin launched in 2011 as the first major fork, designed to create a blockchain platform for decentralized identity resistant to censorship. That early success triggered an altcoin boom. Within a decade, hundreds of coins spun off from Bitcoin's code.
Litecoin emerged as one of the first successful forks. Charlie Lee, who worked at Google, created it as a modification of Tenebrix, itself a Bitcoin fork. Traders now call Litecoin the "silver" to Bitcoin's "gold," and it ranks among the top ten cryptocurrencies by market value.
The contentious SegWit debate in 2017 produced the first major hard fork of Bitcoin. Disagreement over whether to implement the protocol change split the blockchain and created Bitcoin Cash. Today BCH holds a position in the top ten, though newer projects like Polkadot and ChainLink have drawn some attention from traders.
Since that 2017 fork, 46 Bitcoin variants have launched. Bitcoin's climb to $20,000 during the bull market spurred programmers to copy and modify Satoshi Nakamoto's code. Some developers chased quick profits. Most of these coins attracted minimal trading activity and faded away.
Traders can still buy a string of coins with "bitcoin" in the name: Bitcoin Diamond, Bitcoin Candy, Bitcoin God, Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin Pizza, and Quantum Bitcoin among them. Bitcoin SV came into being in 2018 when Bitcoin Cash itself underwent a hard fork, the product of another bitter dispute.
