Can someone explain how there can be duplicate currency symbols ?

[nols]

Hi,

I suppose this is a question for the beginners section. I was investigating some crypto currencies, and then I noticed there were 2 coins in CoinMarketCap with the same symbol code (probably more):

- https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/arcticcoin/
- https://coinmarketcap.com/assets/arcade-token/

As you can see, both are using the symbol "ARC", is this normal? And won't this affect some websites/exchanges/wallets ?
Given the URL's of coinmarketcap, I see a difference between "currencies" and "assets", can anyone explain to me what the difference is, or how this difference is defined ?

Some exchanges use URL's like like: exchange.com/btc_sc for the pair BTC/SC. So what would happen if both ARC tokens would be on an exchange like this someday, or wouldn't this be possible ?

[TryNinja]

The developer of the coin is the one choosing which symbol he is going to use for his coin/token.

can anyone explain to me what the difference is, or how this difference is defined ?

The difference between those two you are talking about is that the ArcticCoin is an altcoin (currency) and Arcade is a Ethereum Token (asset), so while the token it's build inside the Ethereum platform, the Arctic altcoin has his own ecosystem.

Some exchanges use URL's like like: exchange.com/btc_sc for the pair BTC/SC. So what would happen if both ARC tokens would be on an exchange like this someday, or wouldn't this be possible ?

This could indeed cause some issues, but every exchange or service can and will choose how the coin is going to be listed in their website. So, I don't think this would cause too much trouble in the end.

[nols]

Thank you for your explanation.

I understand the part of the token, and I do believe this won't matter so much for now.

But to my knowledge we are getting more and more projects lately who also provide the feature to create custom tokens. By the amount of new tokens we are getting every week, I suppose in a few years there will be a lot. So if all these seperated tokens allow to choose the same symbol, this might become problematic after a while, no?

[odolvlobo]

As you can see, both are using the symbol "ARC", is this normal? And won't this affect some websites/exchanges/wallets ?

There are no official currency symbols for cryptocurrencies, so exchanges can use whatever symbols they want. If an exchange lists ArcticCoin and Arcade City, they will have to use a different symbol for one of them.

[pooya87]

it is the same story with bitcoin symbol. unless you check with a central database which is worldwide you are bound to end up with a duplicate symbol.
we know BTC as bitcoin and many exchanges list it as BTC but it violates the ISO 4217 currency code because it is starting with BT which is the country code of Bhutan so the universal ISO code is XBT!

all these altcoins choose an abbreviation on their own and based on what they like and never check any database so A LOT of these duplicates exist.

[DOGE12321]

Thank you for your explanation.

I understand the part of the token, and I do believe this won't matter so much for now.

But to my knowledge we are getting more and more projects lately who also provide the feature to create custom tokens. By the amount of new tokens we are getting every week, I suppose in a few years there will be a lot. So if all these seperated tokens allow to choose the same symbol, this might become problematic after a while, no?

To be honest, not many people other than the creators would care about such trivial projects. People only care about a couple of top cryptocurrencies in the charts. That is half the reason as to why Bitcoin is the most popular of the cryptocurrencies. If Bitcoin market cap was small, then no one would care much about it.

[BartS]

Thank you for your explanation.

I understand the part of the token, and I do believe this won't matter so much for now.

But to my knowledge we are getting more and more projects lately who also provide the feature to create custom tokens. By the amount of new tokens we are getting every week, I suppose in a few years there will be a lot. So if all these seperated tokens allow to choose the same symbol, this might become problematic after a while, no?

To be honest, not many people other than the creators would care about such trivial projects. People only care about a couple of top cryptocurrencies in the charts. That is half the reason as to why Bitcoin is the most popular of the cryptocurrencies. If Bitcoin market cap was small, then no one would care much about it.

Many people care about a lot of projects and not only about the top projects, for example the 41 coin at the moment is BitcoinDark, to be honest I have never heard of it but 122 million dollars are invested on it, so it is obvious many care about that project even if the majority does not.

[HabBear]

For example...BitcoinDark, to be honest I have never heard of it but 122 million dollars are invested on it, so it is obvious many care about that project even if the majority does not.

Are you sure about that? In the age where so many alt coins are created with their full volume of coins "available" from day 1 and the creators keeping majority of those coins, all they have to do is name a price for it to be released to the market and have people buy some at that price to warrant the exchange list price and then extrapolate that "market driven" price to the entire volume of coins.

No one actually paid for all those coins, people only paid for a small fraction. And given that there's no regulation in this  crypto-currency industry it's easy for people to create the numbers.

Call me out if I'm wrong, just thinking through how this would work realistically.

Here's the CoinMarketCap data on BitcoinDark: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoindark/#charts

They have 1.2M coins outstanding, yet the float in the earliest days was in the single to tens of thousands. That's it! And that was when the price was less than a Dollar per coin. Anyone could trade that kind of low volume. Now, in the last 2 months that volume has increased...I'm sure it's because many people are willing to bet on this one as they are the rest of the alts (for the hope of a quick spike).

A market cap of $122M does not equal the amount of money spent on the buying or investing in the coin.

[Sadlife]

There are no official symbols for any altcoin so the developers can choose what ever image they want. Some of those altcoins have implemented an hardfork that split into two coins that is both different currency that has their own platforms that means they work seperately like ETH and ETC has its own ecosystem. They are the same coin but has their own blockchain network, platform the arctic coin is different from the other altcoin that is an ETH token. Also the url's wont matter if they're going to build their sites. It's perfectly fine and normal cause most sites does them.

[BartS]

For example...BitcoinDark, to be honest I have never heard of it but 122 million dollars are invested on it, so it is obvious many care about that project even if the majority does not.

Are you sure about that? In the age where so many alt coins are created with their full volume of coins "available" from day 1 and the creators keeping majority of those coins, all they have to do is name a price for it to be released to the market and have people buy some at that price to warrant the exchange list price and then extrapolate that "market driven" price to the entire volume of coins.

No one actually paid for all those coins, people only paid for a small fraction. And given that there's no regulation in this  crypto-currency industry it's easy for people to create the numbers.

Call me out if I'm wrong, just thinking through how this would work realistically.

Here's the CoinMarketCap data on BitcoinDark: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoindark/#charts

They have 1.2M coins outstanding, yet the float in the earliest days was in the single to tens of thousands. That's it! And that was when the price was less than a Dollar per coin. Anyone could trade that kind of low volume. Now, in the last 2 months that volume has increased...I'm sure it's because many people are willing to bet on this one as they are the rest of the alts (for the hope of a quick spike).

A market cap of $122M does not equal the amount of money spent on the buying or investing in the coin.

Of course I’m not sure about that, but I do not have proof to assume the opposite so  for the time being I’m going to accept the information at coinmarketcao.com as true until otherwise stated.

[llx_magik]

I guess the OP is asking because one would think that there is a sort of system that is in place in the crypto world that prevents an altcoin from picking the same ticker as already existing ones.

[laurenB7742]

With coins, each developer gets to choose their individual logo, name, 3-digit trading code, and so forth. With the boom of Altcoins going very high right now we're seeing more of these than ever before.

[McCorneEva]

It can be, depending on the Exchange. You can now buy Ethereum and Litecoin much cheaper on the Waves platform. They just added those trading pairs recently and there isn't much liquidity yet - I was able to score ~ 6 BTC worth at 30% discount compared to mainstream exchanges. Look for ETH / Bitcoin and LTC / Bitcoin pairs. Just make sure you buy the right coin - must have a checkmark beside the three letter abbreviation -  There are many interesting opportunities like that lately with all the new exchanges and blockchains that don't have liquidity between each other and various pairs they trade.