15 years after the first altchain: Is any altcoin "better" than Bitcoin?

[TastyChillySauce00]

I really liked smart contract capable blockchain, I think it can do something that bitcoin can't but it isn't necessarily better than bitcoin because it comes with trade off. I do agree with your statement that every innovation that altcoin bring always have some kind of trade off from centralized proof of stake validator to less security. Bitcoin offers maximum security as a monetary layer that altcoin never come close, If we talked about liquidity and valuation, altcoin will be left in the dust.

Maybe the closest thing for altcoin to actually become contender to bitcoin was actually Ethereum when it was still proof of work, a combination of good decentralization and smart contract capability, remember when Ethereum dominance and market cap was a little bit more than half of bitcoin? that was quite something. After that, nothing seemingly come close.

[d5000]

There are coins with more advanced scripting capabilities and support, bringing huge ecosystems of tokens and NFTs with good and bad (I blame more the lack of regulations than the fact the software allowed doing the shitload of scam tokens).

Most of these tokens can also be implemented on the Bitcoin chain via OP_RETURN trickery. Or even more "rudimentary" techniques ("BRC-20", cough cough). It is possible even Dai could be implemented this way, Counterparty had a plan to make its tokens EVM compatible and "turing-complete" some years ago ...

(It is of course a valid question if this should really be done, considering the congestion even the rudimentary Ordinals tokens generated ... We'd better create a L2 for that ...)

Bitcoin seems to have the near-perfect finetuning

Exactly, that's also what I'm thinking. Perhaps the block time could be a little bit shorter considering current internet bandwidth/speed (e.g. close to Litecoin's), but otherwise, Satoshi (and the later devs) have found very good default values.

1. Solana: fast and cheap, and it provides the infrastructure for things that are not practical to be built on Bitcoin. The tradeoff is the hardware needed to run a node, which pushes it toward centralization, plus its history of outages. Useful, but not as secure or decentralized.

Agree, it's a quite big tradeoff in my opinion. In addition, as with so many coins, there's the premine issue which basically will mean a single team will have control forever (because others are simply not incentived).

3. Hyperliquid: it edges centralized exchanges on transparency and user control, but the validator set is small, so it's not fully decentralized.

I have not checked this one thoroughly and so I don't know if it's really a leap forward from other DEX tokens. But the problem of this kind of DEXes remain: most of the tokens are speculative, so the real world use cases are very limited. This may change with RWA/smart property tokens but they have their own set of problems (see below).

4. RWA / tokenized assets: real demand from institutions. It's good for crypto's image, but it doesn't make anything better than Bitcoin.

As I already wrote, these tokens do not add that much value in comparison to traditional derivatives. They're centralized and often you have even more counterparty risk than their traditional competitors. The only advantage is that in theory you can trade them on DEXes without any KYC. And that can be a significant advantage, depending on your needs, the regulations of your country, etc..

I think it would be a voting system in politics. I speak in the context of my own country, which is rife with collusion and fraud, even extending to presidential elections. [...] My idea involves using Ethereum smart contracts: the voting authority would mint a specific number of tokens based on eliglibe voters, with each token claimable only via fingerprint verification (though the exact mechanism remains to be determined). These tokens would serve as voting tickets; naturally, rigorous smart contract auditing would be essential to ensure the tokens actually reach the eligible voters.

Unfortunately blockchain voting does not really solve the transparency problem. For example, in the case of fingerprint verification, if you can't trust the authority who is in charge for the verification process, the blockchain will also not make the process more transparent. And then there is the privacy problem. Electronic voting in general is a very complex topic, it is often much better to simply improve manual voting techniques, also because you would have to ensure that every voter in every rural village has access to the blockchain and the places where you vote can't be "contamined" with malware for example ...

[asriloni]

In April 2011, the first altcoin, Namecoin, was launched. Terracoin, Litecoin and many others followed shortly after.

Honestly, i guess their claim about to be better than bitcoin are not entirely wrong as long as they can old problem faced by bitcoin at that time in term of scalability. I like bitcoin, but i'm not anti to the new tech developed to fix the old issues.

Many altcoins advertised themselves as "better than Bitcoin", or an "evolution of Bitcoin". In olden times (2015-17) I also believed some of these claims could be true and some altcoins would even put Bitcoin's leadership in danger. But now, in 2026, 15 years after the first altcoin was launched, I am a bit disappointed.

Ethereum claimed it could revolutionize the Internet as the "world computer", and we would see a "decentralized Uber" and whatnot. But what we see on Ethereum and other "smart contract chains" now primarily are tokens. And tokens of DEXes to speculate with other tokens. DeFi loans exist but you need to overcollateralize them. Coins like Ardor and later

What world computer means is that Web3 and millions of people are using it now. Bitcoin is also indirectly benefited from the existence of web3 too.

Arbitrum/Optimism promised to solve scaling, but the promise has not been delivered or the chains are totally centralized. Stablecoins are perhaps the altcoin type with most "real use cases", but most are centralized. RWAs are not really different from derivatives you can buy via an online broker or your bank.

This sounds bias when you talking about solving the scalling problem, then you deny it due to the decentralization, which obviously in the different context. What you forget is that L2 existence was to providing a temporary fix to the ethereum scalling problem, and it's not for the whole.

There are a few altcoin projects I still consider interesting. Monero and Grin as privacy coins for example,

Grin is dead. Monero is the only fully privacy coin that is still exist while it also has liquidity. 

Dai as a relatively decentralized stablecoin, and some layer 2 ideas which could act as a decentralized bridge (e.g. Threshold Network's tBTC). And Ethereum at least has the potential to generate some killer app, although currently I see none (well, Dai is perhaps the only one).

Not really, not until skymoney will close their conversion from DAI to USDS, then decide to put their support only for USDS, which their new brand stable coin after DAI. I remind you DAI is in sharing underlying with USDS.

[m2017]

The issue I have with centralized stablecoins is that they don't really have advantages over e-wallets (PayPal etc.) regarding payments.

This is because you are unaware of the specific situation in certain regions under sanctions (where PayPal has withdrawn from the market) as well as the lack of popularity of such e-wallets (which are also heavily regulated at the local level) in some areas.

They are centralized walled gardens (like PayPal - you can't pay someone with USDC if he only accepts USDT), you can be excluded/blocked (blacklist discussion), and there are even fees to convert them (PayPal hasn't).

The issues of centralization and closed ecosystems are addressed through exchanges, including P2P platforms, where stablecoins, fiat currencies, and local currencies can be easily exchanged.

Any centralized system, be it PayPal, a bank, or an exchange, has the power to block users and exclude them from the system. Yet, this doesn't deter people from using stablecoins, especially when they enable the transfer of funds from a sanctioned region to anywhere in the world.

Fees are inevitable, but they don't stop users, as the demand (or necessity) outweighs these "insignificant" costs.

This is also the reason why their main use case is transferring coins around between exchanges and DeFi.

You are overlooking P2P again. Stablecoins < - > local currency. Just because you use stablecoins as one method doesn't mean others won't use them at their own discretion.

Payment usage is mostly limited to countries with heavy Forex restrictions.

Who said it is used as a direct means of payment? People primarily use a transit route: local currency → stablecoins → local currency (usually non-cash) → payment for goods and services. In this scenario, stablecoins act as an intermediary (a medium of exchange) rather than a direct means of payment.

There are plenty of countries in the world with lax currency regulations. Or, alternatively, a gray zone where stablecoins remain invisible to regulators.

Some coins do adopt some innovations from others, like LTC which added MimbleWimble privacy.

However, this didn't help LTC much - neither in terms of privacy (after all, XMR remains the best in this regard) nor in terms of value (both its monetary cost and its "usefulness" to users).

[pooya87]

And if a breakthrough e.g. for scalability is found without the tradeoffs i mentioned, it is likely Bitcoin could adopt it too.

I think the opposite is true actually, meaning if a breakthrough were found it is unlikely for Bitcoin to adopt it because we've become too big and too divided to be able to go through any kind of major change specially one that most probably needs a hard-fork.

[Localhostspeed]

Considering how bitcoin has performed since it was created by Satoshi Nakamoto and the adoption it has gained, to answer your question, no altcoin is close to bitcoin talk more of being better than bitcoin. Bitcoin is the only coin that fixed what it was created for. I was never bothered when some people were pushing a narrative that altcoins are going to be better than bitcoin because I just knew that they were trying to lure people to invest in altcoins, and some people that were deceived by that statement are regretting it till today

I think altcoins are not even the problem but the system how altcoins are created and how they are manage. If you look at Litecoin and some altcoins that copied Bitcoin network, it was created out of money it was never because of the community. When Bitcoin was launched, it wasn't even value, no premine of any sort. But later, ICO became a national anthem thag everyone wanted to use to sell token, raise money and make everyone rich, the intentions were money and that is what kills altcoins.

Even today, if you check altcoins very well, the behavior is still there. Why should a meme coin existed and have billions of dollars worth. I'm not talking about doge coin since it was intentionally created for fun. As people realized it was the next thing that made people money. They could hide their criminalities in it and wouldn't get sue because it's for fun and now altcoins are not regards anymore.

[shield132]

Sadly the answer is a big fat NO!

Unlike some people I never thought any of the altcoins were going to be "better" than Bitcoin, least of all those who actually made such a claim. In fact whenever I saw them even compare themselves with Bitcoin (claiming to be doing something better) I considered it a red flag.
But I always hoped though. You should be able to find some of my ancient posts where I tell people that some day someone will come up with some new ideas that would lead to creation of something that is far better than Bitcoin and that would overtake bitcoin very easily. But that hasn't happened yet... I lost some of that hope though.

I think the problem is the monetary gains. The altcoin developers aren't creating a coin to solve a real world problem. Instead they create a coin to make some money. Satoshi never did that, which is why Bitcoin is so successful. He didn't run an Initial Coin Offering to raise funds. He never pre-mined bitcoin, he never had some magical stash to sell. The coins he mined early on are still untouched... all of that is because Satoshi created Bitcoin to solve a problem not to fill his own pocket.

We need that kind of mindset. That will bring innovation and the result will be "better than Bitcoin".

Maybe there isn't any altcoin that's universally better than Bitcoin but there are altcoins that outperform Bitcoin in a specific dimension. For example, Monero is the best coin for privacy, it's the only truly anonymous coin, while Bitcoin is pseudo-anonymous. When it comes to transactions' volume, speed and cheapness, other coins beat Bitcoin too, for example: Nano and Solana.
To sum up, I would take Bitcoin as the best general-purpose monetary cryptocurrency, with the most reviewed and conservatively developed code, e.g. it's the best because it's simple and battle-tested but when it comes to specific metrics, there are some others that shine.

[pooya87]

Maybe there isn't any altcoin that's universally better than Bitcoin but there are altcoins that outperform Bitcoin in a specific dimension. For example, Monero is the best coin for privacy, it's the only truly anonymous coin, while Bitcoin is pseudo-anonymous. When it comes to transactions' volume, speed and cheapness, other coins beat Bitcoin too, for example: Nano and Solana.

That's the thing though, OP already pointed this out too. They have already sacrificed something to gain some other feature and some times that sacrifice was a big one. For example Solana sacrificed trustless nature of a decentralized cryptocurrency and turned bitcoin's "verify, don't trust" model into a "trust, don't verify" model. At this point if you want to don't trust anybody on the Solana network and verify everything, you'd have to download hundreds of terabytes!

[d5000]

I like bitcoin, but i'm not anti to the new tech developed to fix the old issues.

Neither am I. I would even give an altcoin a chance which really solve them (as long as it isn't significantly premined -- this is my main bias ). But the solutions I've seen so far have disappointed me.

What world computer means is that Web3 and millions of people are using it now. Bitcoin is also indirectly benefited from the existence of web3 too.

I have looked into decentralized web concepts since 2016 or so. For most concepts related to "web3", you don't really need turing-complete smart contracts, often not even a blockchain ("decentralized storage" concepts for example exist also in blockchain-less platforms like ZeroNet or Nostr). You are welcome however to point me out to use cases where 1) a turing complete smart contract is needed and 2) it isn't related to DeFi speculation.

This sounds bias when you talking about solving the scalling problem, then you deny it due to the decentralization, which obviously in the different context. What you forget is that L2 existence was to providing a temporary fix to the ethereum scalling problem, and it's not for the whole.

Sorry I don't understand what you mean here. I'm not opposed to L2s. But the real existing L2 landscape is still quite poor. Even Vitalik has complained about the centralization of these solutions.

Grin is dead. Monero is the only fully privacy coin that is still exist while it also has liquidity.

I've also said that I don't care about popularity in this thread, what I'm interested in are also "overlooked" coins, although it is difficult to really find some worthwile ones. Grin's concept is technically different and interesting. Zcash of course can also be mentioned, but as it has a dev fee (which is basically a hidden premine), I'm biased against it

This is because you are unaware of the specific situation in certain regions under sanctions

I have mentioned this in my last answer to you (Forex restrictions).

In my country there were exchange restrictions during some time, and some people (up to 15% of the population according to some polls) started to use mainly USDT to some extent for the purpose to acquire foreign currencies. These use cases definitely exist. But they are quite niche use cases. After the exchange restrictions were lifted, stablecoin usage plummeted.

The problem for all these centralized solutions is: if the authorities become aware of them, they can ban or restrict them, as they can ban PayPal. And then it becomes usable only via P2P, which for most people is too complicated (unfortunately).

The issues of centralization and closed ecosystems are addressed through exchanges, including P2P platforms, where stablecoins, fiat currencies, and local currencies can be easily exchanged.

The point is that this adds friction, for example fees. Yes I know you can change USDT to USDC directly in Metamask for example. But you always lose a little bit. In my country in contrast there are several PayPal-like e-wallet solutions, and transfers between them are 100% free ... (they do charge merchant fees though, but that is another discussion )

Who said it is used as a direct means of payment? People primarily use a transit route: local currency → stablecoins → local currency (usually non-cash) → payment for goods and services.

I have only written that payment usage is restricted to countries with these restrictions. I have not talked about remittances / international transfers which is what you probably refer to here. Remittances may be the single most relevant stablecoin use case outside of the DeFi / exchange ecosystem. But even this doesn't seem to be really a massive use case. I just asked Gemini - stablecoins seem to be used for 3-4% of the remittance market.

I think however this is indeed a point for stablecoins where they do have some advantages but that doesn't make them "better than Bitcoin" (Remind: I've not said "altcoins / stablecoins are useless".)

[NeuroticFish]

Most of these tokens can also be implemented on the Bitcoin chain via OP_RETURN trickery. Or even more "rudimentary" techniques ("BRC-20", cough cough). It is possible even Dai could be implemented this way, Counterparty had a plan to make its tokens EVM compatible and "turing-complete" some years ago ...

(It is of course a valid question if this should really be done, considering the congestion even the rudimentary Ordinals tokens generated ... We'd better create a L2 for that ...)

For some reason people preferred other ways to create tokens, Bitcoin and counterparty was not a real focus. I don't know more on the topic, I've never got to focus and learn about those scripts. I am under the impression that back then one was able to do more and easier with scripts on Ethereum (and remember, back then Bitcoin also had the size of scripts limited).

I remember the days the tx fees on Bitcoin network have become incredibly high, I remember the days Ethereum fees were very high also. I can say that I am really happy that back then the tokens were on another chain (Eth), but imho Ethereum has its merit in that. But Ethereum' golden days are imho in the past. Many said that it will take Bitcoin's crown. Well, it didn't happen, and it was never close enough to that either.

Perhaps the block time could be a little bit shorter considering current internet bandwidth/speed (e.g. close to Litecoin's), but otherwise, Satoshi (and the later devs) have found very good default values.

Block time, script limit, tail emission, true anonymity, satoshi's coins, quantum protection and many others... there were plenty of ideas that maybe would have made Bitcoin better... or break the balance. Hard to say. Heck, even LN is contested by many (and I agree it's far from perfect), and it's clearly a step in the right direction. But every change, big or small, can break the balance. With some luck, that didn't happen yet.

[atookz]

I agree with that. But I could clarify:

I would also be interested in altcoin projects which have currently a weaker security (due to poor participation / mining / value) than Bitcoin, even if this makes is currently less usable -- but offer, in general, a mix of features which is better than Bitcoin's own feature mix.

For example, I could bring up the example of BCH. BCH has activated some opcodes (e.g. regarding covenants) which Bitcoin still is discussing, so it is in some way "better". OP_CAT for example was re-enabled.

But the tradeoff is that BCH was created after a minority chain split, which can be considered against the principles of the Bitcoin protocol. It is not forbidden, but (from my point of view) brings disadvantages to the whole consensus system creating bad incentives. And also the discussion of the usefulness of the covenant opcodes and possible vulnerabilities has not been concluded. And of course, BCH's "big block" policy brings its own set of problems.

It is basically the same thing with smart contract chains - they have lots of features, but the usefulness is still not really proven, as said in earlier posts.

There are other ideas like the reward calculation which may be "better" than Bitcoin's system with its halvings, for example enabling a more constant security budget. Also here, I would be interested in examples (and the reasoning behind it). Of course in this case also there are a lot of tradeoffs (the 21 million coin limit is quite attractive and popular as a "symbol for scarcity").

I understand what you mean, and I don't think we disagree that much. I don't think anything has surpassed Bitcoin so far, but I still find some altcoins with good features worth watching. That said, good features alone aren't enough, which is what my "even with better tech" line is for. If the security of a chain is poor, then the chain may look good on paper but actually be a hazardous place to invest.

BCH is just one such example. It has some features that Bitcoin is still discussing, and some disadvantages that you mentioned, but it also has a lot less hashrate. That's the kind of chain that's cheaper to attack, which is what happened to Ethereum Classic and Bitcoin Gold.

Same with smart contract chains. Having lots of features doesn't mean much until they're proven, and it takes time and security to prove them.

Interesting thought on rewards too! In theory, a steadier security budget makes sense, but it's a real tradeoff, as the 21 million coin cap is part of Bitcoin's appeal. Either way, Bitcoin launched without any ICO or premine, which gave it a head start that's hard to beat, even with better tech.

[henmark]

Considering how bitcoin has performed since it was created by Satoshi Nakamoto and the adoption it has gained, to answer your question, no altcoin is close to bitcoin talk more of being better than bitcoin. Bitcoin is the only coin that fixed what it was created for.

There are times that BTC is not doing well, or are lacking of something. This would be the reason on why altcoins are created. There is a line that separates the alt from BTC, so we can't say that there is an altcoin that is better than on Bitcoin. Each of them are better on their own category. We can only say that there is an alt that is close to BTC in terms of survivability. That would be Litecoin. In terms of size and usefulness, that would be Ethereum.

I was never bothered when some people were pushing a narrative that altcoins are going to be better than bitcoin because I just knew that they were trying to lure people to invest in altcoins, and some people that were deceived by that statement are regretting it till today

If on nowadays yeah. But let us admit it that on the past, we are kinda threatened with this. I remember there is even some alt which value had surpassed Bitcoin already. But I think that alt is just a pump and dump. It lacks on utility and that is why it is never seen again later on. For now, people are still threatened. Not only by alt this time but it is about the newer techs like that super/quantum computers, which said to cracked Bitcoin's security. Even AI's now are also messing up some cryptos.

[Lida93]

Many altcoins advertised themselves as "better than Bitcoin", or an "evolution of Bitcoin". In olden times (2015-17) I also believed some of these claims could be true and some altcoins would even put Bitcoin's leadership in danger. But now, in 2026, 15 years after the first altcoin was launched, I am a bit disappointed.

Look at how the electric bulb was first invented, it wasn't as perfect to the extent we've with current time electrical lightening bulbs that have now been developed as the years goes on.

Bitcoin at first was created with the purpose of an alternative currency to traditional money at the time, so certain other features which some of the altcoins that started to be created few years after bitcoin were now mainly focused on those features that they seemed to be unavailable with bitcoin in developing these altcoins. But in the long progression they have failed to maintain longevity for real life utility as some are even complex because a lot of them if not all are under central control, censorship, not decentralized which leaves them vulnerable to rug pulls, hack and manipulations. Unlike bitcoin that is completely decentralized and not controlled by it creator Satoshi but being run by a thousands of nodes all over the world. And this has made bitcoin resistance to hack

[jwinterm]

Does somebody think there is any altcoin project that is, on a whole, "better" than Bitcoin? If yes, please explain why you think the innovation is more relevant than possible tradeoffs like centralization. I'll discuss it in a fair manner and will honour good arguments.

Well Id rather say None actually but Id like to mention the inception of hyperliquid a noncustodial dex...

Hyperliquid is completely centralized. It's non-custodial like USDT, so not at all. It's one guy named Jeff running upgradeable smart contracts.

Anyway, I voted yes, just because it's a poorly defined question I like Grin and Monero for their privacy improvements, but Grin is the best due to its choice of emission curve. It is basically the only coin that has a slower (more fair) emission of coins than Bitcoin. I think a reasonable person can look at Bitcoin and say:

"The vast majority of the money supply was printed in the first decade, half of it in the first four,least well-known years, so especially that half was distributed to a very small number of geeks on a forum. I don't want anything to do with it."

Grin solves this with one grin per second forever, and it's also more lightweight than Bitcoin while also more private (though lacking any scripting capability).