In the previous chapter, we surveyed the history of money and discussed how bitcoin changes the paradigm for currency creation and distribution. We also saw how bitcoin transactions differ from transactions in a conventional fiat money system. The advent of Bitcoin has spawned a large number of cryptocurrencies which are similar in varying degrees to it. They differ from Bitcoin in their characteristics, such as the total number of coins that can be produced, the speed and manner in which transactions are consummated, as well as the manner in which the cryptocurrency reaches consensus as to which transactions are valid. Furthermore, as we will see subsequently in this chapter, many cryptocurrencies are designed to handle domain-specific use cases.
