Bitcoin Forum

I'm curious how all these works. If I were to create my own altcoin similar to how Dogecoin was created, how do I go about doing so and what's stopping others from creating their own altcoin? Is Legal a factor or are there any other issues that might be stopping others from creating it?

I googled and got the following links from a thread on another platform:

• Complete Guide on How to Create a New Alt Coin (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=225690.0)
• A Pseudo Guide on how to Build an AltCoin (help fill in gaps) (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=193025.0)
  ^{- It's mostly composed of links to other sources.}

It appears you're missing the most basic thing: Before anything else, there has to be a need for another one of these so-called altcoins, then you could move to other things ^{[e.g. If it could solve some of the issues that others couldn't and etc...]}.

First step is deciding why your want to create a new altcoin. There are 3 reasons: scam people, create a useless shitcoin to pump and dump, create something useful that solves an actual problem in real world.

1. To scam people you have to do what hundreds of others do and create a token on one of these shit-platforms such as ethereum. Dump it on idiots and make money.
2. To create a garbage shitcoin you can copy bitcoin or any hyped up altcoin would work too, then change the name add a premine and publish it. Do some advertisement and dump it again.
3. To create something useful you first have to understand what cryptocurrencies are, how bitcoin works, have some working knowledge of cryptography and blockchain technology and finally the most important thing is to have an innovative idea that could expand the existing technology and possibly make it better. Then you have to spend at least a year working on the code, publish it and get others involved to finally be able to release a solid cryptocurrency that is worth using.

Reading "how to build" guides only helps you do 1 and 2 but not 3.

No one will be stopping anyone from creating a new altcoin. Everyone is free to create their own, it's listing their coin to the exchanges that will prevent them from scamming. Anyone may be able to create another coin but they will need a new Elon Musk to make it to the top 5 of the rank. Doge had been around for years, it's been accepted by online casinos for years. It's been achieved and started as shitcoin and maybe will end as shitcoin still despite being on top 5.

There are guides out there posted by other users so I am not going to say what I think is the reason why people aren't doing it is because it is a taxing work to do, not everyone has the drive to manage their altcoin and creating doesn't even guarantee that you are going to make it big since statistics show that most altcoins are not successful.

The difficulty is not how to create an altcoin but rather how to convince people to buy it --> increase the demand for it --> gain value.
Some people use illegal methods such as misleading advertising campaigns, fraud, listing on scam exchanges, pumping the price, and others, but it will lead to an increase in the price in the short term and soon the price returns to zero.

Currencies that solve real problems are the ones that are increasing in value despite the fact that their price is low at the moment.
If you are able to solve a real problem and be able to market your idea, then you can create your own Altcoin.

Follow SFR10's advice.
However look also on "Why" you want to make your own altcoins as well, because there are many carbon copy of the existing altcoins now these days that are just up to quick profits and just ended up getting dumped in the end.
About the legal factor, I am not sure how it goes to different countries.

You can create this kind of coin out of thin air just following instructions in the internet which due to crypto hype has grown plenty and actually every day people are releasing their own version of cryptocurrency it probably amounts to hundred new crypto each day but the question is, could they make it famous enough? could they get it listed in some popular exchange coin and not shady ones? if not then it'll become another coin that's forgotten almost immediately and if they could, good for them.
But honestly, most of people who created coin with no quirk or any unique technology at all just trying grab money or make some easy money  ::)

As Doge was just a clone of Litecoin which was a fork of Bitcoin, if you are a developer just copy the code change the name and a few values and you are good to go.
Zero cost, except a couple of days needed for an inexperienced blockchain dev.

This is Dogecoin, two days of plagiarising the Bitcoin code.

I'm still new to this technology and I'm trying my best to understand how everything works. Thank you so much. I will definitely check the link you sent

It's not necessarily about the technology. You need to provide a business use case and utility for a coin or token for it to be successful long term. That's why I like 0xMR. Not only is it used in two casinos and a DeFi platform, but it's also building an EVM privacy mixer.

No one can stop you if you decide to create a new coin, this is why we have more than 7k coins in the market right now and those are the ones that are listed in different websites since probably the number is larger than that, however my recommendation is that unless you actually have an idea that solves a problem that already exist or that could exist in the future do not bother as most likely no one is going to be interested to buy your coin.

Cryptocurrency is a decentralized currency, i don't think anybody can stop the people who want to create it.
If you want to make a new altcoin, just fork the repository from github and modify it to become the coin you want to create.
But that is easy, everyone can do that. The hard part is when you put the value to the coin with the project behind it, the real use cases of the coin, etc.. so the new altcoin will become valuable later. Otherwise, it will become shit coin like other new altcoins.

Definitely. I totally agree with what you said. The market is filled with shit coins. I've seen so many coins being abandoned and the value of it has dropped to 0. Received a few tokens as well which has 0 value to it.

No one actually stopping you mate. However you need to think what is your purpose creating such altcoin. If its gonna be a new project that have some added value on the market or people like the way it is then its good. If you ever gonna create one and for the sake of doing trade and earning through pump and dump scheme then it's not gonna work. You are gonna spend money on the tokens that can't have value. It is something planned carefully and also display a use case which is connected to the platform you are building.

Indeed, what gives value to a coin is not only the technology but the ecosystem and community built around the coin. You certainly have to offer something in terms of technology that the market lacks thus far. Otherwise impossible these days to successfully establish an alt coin.

That is the reason why many project fails. Even if they try hard or whether their project seems to be good, not all of them are becoming successful. Instead, they're failing and that's the reason even if they're published in the market and some exchanges have them then that doesn't mean that they're already successful. The volume, liquidity and community will be the voice of that project so if there's few with those, the project is a failure and that's why others are choosing not to make one.

It's possible to create another altcoin without significant knowledge or huge effort, and nothing is stopping anybody from doing it (which is why there are thousands of them). However, most tokens are just useless and worthless, so there's no need to make another one unless you can actually make a good one rather than a typical token. The purpose of this endeavor is very important, of course. Apart from scamming others or getting the hype and profiting from this, altcoins can be considered a marketing strategy (I worked briefly for a project that saw their token this way). I'm not sure if it's still the case, but a few years ago you could create a token, launch an ICO, start a bounty campaign and give people your worthless tokens for completing tasks like subscribing to your company's profiles and making posts in their community chats. From experience, I know that these simple things could give you thousands of followers, which sounds like a great marketing deal because you can give people as many tokens as you want to because they aren't worth anything to you. It's a dubious strategy, but I suspect that many companies saw it this way.

They're still doing it now. Airdrops are still going on and people are still required to follow and complete certain tasks, what's scummy about this is that after completing so many airdrops forms, I've never gotten a single airdrop tokens. Starting to suspect it's really just for show

You must have missed 2017, when new alts were created by a dozen daily, just like DEFI tokens are created today LOL. Some of them had new algorithms, some implemented another innovations, but most of them were just a copypasted version of other alts created with a simple reason - get them on an exchange and dump your premine. Very few of these alts are alive today.

Taking into account the OP is a newbie most likely he did in fact miss what happened during 2017, however people need to stop creating coins no one needs, we already have more coins than what we may need and this is giving a bad impression, after all if bitcoin is so great why we need so many altcoins? And the fact is that we do not need them but scammers and dumb developers still think they can get their way when very few people have been interested in those icos since 2017.

It actually is, I've subscribed to a few but didn't get anything in return. Many companies are taking this opportunity to gain followers since this move is the fastest way to gain a short term fame.

To create your own coin (not a token), it requires some programming knowledge as you'd most likely fork btc or ltc, and change few config paramas, and voila. It's cheap, easy to do, but a pain because you need nodes, etc..

To create your own token, you need to pay money, as deployment on mainnet is costly (around 1 ETH). But no need for infrastructure as ETH provides that.

That's if you're creating a token, if you're coming up with your own coin, to my knowledge, you don't have to pay anything

Tokens are easy to create. They say it takes about half an hour. However, now there are already more than nine thousand different altcoins and without their usefulness for society, it makes no sense to create additional ones. Now, thousands of altcoins have already become practically useless and unnecessary. Sometimes people put their money into them and thus actually throw them away, because after a while they disappear from the market forever.

Well, creating altcoins are kind of simple, nowadays, you don't even have to be a developer or know how to write codes to create your own coin, there are several platforms that will help you create your own altcoin with just a little fee.
But as it is, creating the altcoin isn't the main issue, the real issue is finding a use case for it, what is the essence of creating a coin that won't have any value?, so it's not just about creating the altcoin and having it listed on exchanges(this is if you are already rich), there have to be a good project backing your altcoin, there have to be a need for it, it has to solve a problem, this is where the value comes from, the problem it solves will give it value, and will cus many people to invest in it.

Just fork it from ethereum source if you want to make altcoin like ethereum, modify little bit and then you good to go. What stoping people to make it ? Adoption is the hardest part, especially if your altcoin does not offer new feature. " What's the reason people want to use your altcoin ?."

Anyone create their coins or tokens as their wish but not every coin created will be having value because the value comes from the demand so if you want to create a project then you need to know how you are going to create a demand for it which can be done in various ways and you also may need less to huge funds for the development of the project which also can be collected in many ways.

The creation may be easy. Would take only few hours to get familiar with because there are tutorials you can find via internet. However, what stopping people is how can they sell it to the public? Without strong foundation to begin with, would be hard for the "dev" to grow his coin. Without resources, it is hard for the coin to have longer lifespan in the market. But as you have seen, there are so many crap coins that were created, those were created by the devs who mostly thought of pocketing the funds from selling their coins.

not as easy as turning your palm..
making your own token must go through a stage that may be very simple but it needs a mature concept,
we have to plan our vision of what kind of token..
and moreover, we ourselves have to gather people who like us by creating a community so that the token movement can be seen by many people..

to create our own token is actually easy. what gets difficult is getting the project going.
you can see every one creating their token with their real name on the current BSC network. it is because the manufacture is very cheap. Back when the Ethereum network was cheap, we also saw many creating their own tokens.
That's why we have to be careful if we want to trade with a lot of tokens on FOMO by people in the crypto community.

Wrong. First of all Bitcoin has plenty of well known flaws. This isn't surprising, after all it's a father of all crypto. But if new alts wouldn't be developed implementing new features and technologies into their code I think the whole crypto world would be dull and remain in shade. Of course 99% of alts fail and this isn't surprising. But those remaining do make crypto better overall. And by the way, lots of good coins were developed without any ICO. 

Honestly creating your altcoin is not a problem, anyone can do that in under a week, all you need is a developer who has done it before and they will know what to do, you need a designer to help with your website, logos and banners. After that you can rule it over as one person and can get a bit of money. I have seen others do it, the problem is not the creating part, if your aim is to scam others and just take money, you could actually make a decent amount of money (well decent for my standards, someone else may not like it).

However if your wish is not to scam others, and you want to build something that is decent, it costs more and more and more and more money, even while you are earning money from the project, you are spending more than you earn to keep it alive, that's the problem. That is why there is really no reason anyone who wants to build a project with no proper amount of money should start one unless they aim to scam people.

To begin with, there are many articles online or even videos which can help one create a token, but you should know that, creating a token is one thing and attaching value to it is another. Also, many projects which turned out good has been copied by others, in most cases they do well so far hype is attached to the project while in some case they don't.
A good example is Dogecoin; when the hype got much, many developers started creating their own similar coins which of course they likened it to be the next Dogecoin thus creating hype and driving the price up, but what later happens is that, once Dogecoin is up, the others will follow suit and once it's down they will follow as well.
Lastly, one of the things which can stop people from copying a project and creating theirs is the work, coding etc involved.

Yes I agree with this. Most of the coins that survived the 2018 crash tends to have a lot more value to it and also projects like ADA and Polkadot are creating their own ecosystem which is not easy to do if someone wants to copy and make a quick profit out of it

You are looking at this the wrong way OP. You should be asking yourself, what problem am I trying to solve. If a token does not have any real world utility other than staking or mining, it won't make it long term. Take 0xMR for example, not only is it mineable but it can also be used for yield farming, on several casinos, and will be used as payment for mixing services.

You can create one anytime you like as long as you are complying with your country where you want to use your coin, but besides creating a coin of your own, where and how are you going to use it, usage and platform now are very important, gone are the days when investors are going to invest on coins even without usage and platform, it's not going to work now.