Bitcoin History Part 5: A Wild Altcoin Appears

It’s hard to imagine a time before cryptocurrency exchanges were stocked with hundreds of digital assets. A time before the pejorative “shitcoin” had been coined and there was no such metric as bitcoin dominance. But travel back to late 2010 and that’s exactly what you’d have found: a cryptosphere in which BTC was the only coin in town. But all that was about to change.

Also read: Bitcoin History Part 4: Casascius Creates Physical Bitcoins

Namecoin Is First Out the Blocks

Curiously, but perhaps not surprisingly, the inspiration for Namecoin came from Satoshi himself, though he had no hand in its development. Four months earlier, Bitcoin’s creator had essentially conceived the idea of Namecoin, writing, in a thread titled “BitDNS and Generalizing Bitcoin,” “While you are generating bitcoins, why not also get free domain names for the same work? If you currently generate 50 BTC per week, now you could get 50 BTC and some domain names too.” Satoshi went on to explain a technical proposal involving merkle trees that would eventually form the basis for Namecoin.

Moreover, Namecoin’s goal of serving as a decentralized domain registration system may have been partially inspired by Satoshi’s own experience of purchasing the bitcoin.org domain in 2008. With no anonymous cryptocurrency with which to pay, he was forced to use anonymouspeech.com, which enables services to be acquired using gift cards.

What’s in a Namecoin?

With over 2,000 cryptocurrencies now vying for supremacy, Namecoin can be credited with either starting the stampede or instigating the rot. Whatever one’s assessment of Namecoin and the plethora of altcoins that followed, NMC was pivotal in demonstrating that there is space in the cryptosphere for more than just one digital asset. Today there are multiple bitcoins and a panoply of shitcoins, but at a 97 percent reduction from its all-time high, Namecoin embodies the fate of all altcoins to date. As the history books show, Bitcoin is easily emulated but never bettered.