Bitcoin Forum

Hi to you all,

I know this is quite a stupid question, but I've searched info everywhere and I'm always not sure about the difference... Here's my understanding:

There are lots of blockchains (code), each blockchain has its coin. The coin is the code based on the certain blockchain. Such as bitcoin, ether. The blockchain of bitcoin only can do money transactions, not smart contract. When projects need to build a contract between parties (a platform for freelancers, for example), they use the blockchain Ethereum.

Tokens, are the coins that don't have their own blockchain, they use the blockchain of others to build their program. But, my question is, in this case, why every token's dream is to be the "next bitcoin"? Since they don't have their own blockchain anyway, how could they ever be a coin?

Thank you guys in advance for helping me clear this up

A Token is typically an ERC20 based on the Ethereum blockchain which uses something called a 'smart contract' in order to provide something like a utility or dividend to it's owners. A coin is typically mineable and has it's own blockchain and it's simply used as a store of value and requires miners to operate and process transactions on it's blockchain, where as a token uses Ethereums miners to process it's transactions ans you pay a 'gas' fee per transaction to those miners.

Hope that helps clear some things up.

Thank you so much! This does clear things up.
So all the tokens are based on Ethereum? Why?

Yes, in fact, nothing complicated, tokens is a means of payment, which is based on a platform such as Ethereum or Waves or NEO, and coins are full-fledged projects with their own blockbuster, which are not based on anything.

Thank you!
I still can't understand, if so, why all the tokens do their promo with the sentense of "being the next bitcoin"? it's not even possible technically

A token is based off of another blockchain as typically a smart contract that provides some sort of utility, so ya, technically unless it has it's own blockchain, it can't be the "next bitcoin". Tokens are simply just utilizing blockchain technology in conjunction with their "bright" idea.

Ha, you have given a good question. Why some tokens call themselves "next Bitcoin", when they don't even have their own blockchain. I think the first reason is of course that most people aren't aware of difference between coins and tokens. Technical differences could be many, but the simple one, as you stated is that coins have their own blockchain and tokens don't. So these scammers take advantage of newbies' "lack of information".

Secondly when you add this word "Bitcoin" in any crypto project, then people get attracted towards it. They think they will buy these tokens for cheap prices and then after some time the prices will skyrocket like Bitcoin. Which of course never happens. Of course, there is an initial wave of pump, which ultimately goes down the drain!   
In summary, "next Bitcoin" = scam signal!

It should be added that by now there are tokens based also on a wide range of other platforms, like Waves, Stellar, Byteball, Neo, Stratis... and some of these blockchains, like Byteball, don't even have a blockchain, but for example a DAG instead.

maybe the intent of the dream to be the next bitcoin is ETH will be great like BTC and token erc20 will like alt, ;D