What is an Altcoin?
The term Altcoin has various similar definitions. Stephanie Yang of The Wall Street Journal defined Altcoins as “alternative digital currencies”, while Paul Vigna, also of The Wall Street Journal, described Altcoins as alternative versions of bitcoin. In general, ‘Altcoin’ is indeed used to refer to cryptocurrencies that aren’t bitcoin. Apart from that, every Altcoin is in its essence decentralized and uses the blockchain in various ways.
What is an Altcoin Whitepaper?
When a company intends to launch a new cryptocurrency, they usually set out all the details in a Whitepaper. Technical, financial and commercial information about the project is explained in this document. Normally they aim to provide a document that explains in plain language what they’re planning to do, to attract investors and other interested parties. The Whitepaper is usually accompanied by a One Pager, he project summarized in one page, and a Position Paper, which details the competition and their (better) position in comparison with the competition. Just like the original Bitcoin Whitepaper, almost every Altcoin has a whitepaper, but some didn’t release one, for example Litecoin.
How to write an Altcoin Whitepaper?
A standard whitepaper on any cryptocurrency project contains the following elements:
- Introduction
- What is the problem you have encountered?
- How are you going so solve this problem?
- What is your (technical) solution to that problem? e.g “We are going to use blockchain to build a registry of whitepapers”
- What is the use of your cryptocurrency?
- How are you going to raise funds? For example, through an ICO, STO or IEO.
- How are you going to use these funds?
- What is the token allocation? Meaning, how many tokens are being sold to investors, used for marketing, paid to the team etc.
- What team is behind the project? What is their experience?
- What is the roadmap of your project?What are the development phases?
In short, the above elements will get you started with writing a whitepaper. Of course there are many other elements you could add, more info is always good!
In what format should a whitepaper be?
In our opinion, the best format for a whitepaper is the Bitcoin whitepaper format. It still is the best way to explain the technology behind your project and it looks clean and professional. The great thing is that you can highlight your whitepaper abstract on the first page, just like the example below, and use some keywords. The Ethereum white paper and Ripple white paper also used the same format. Don’t use too much colors, graphics etc., unless you are targeting a specific audience. In our experience, the biggest projects all have a clean looking whitepaper. Below an example of Ripple’s whitepaper, which is a great example of how much information you can give away on your first page in a clean overview.
Where to find Altcoin Whitepapers?
You came to the right place! Our whitepaper index contains 3000+ Altcoin whitepapers. You can find them in our Altcoin Whitepaper Database!