I'm looking to create an alt-coin for a club I'm a part of. All the members of the club will be mining this currency - and we will use it for trade between members. It will also be a learning experience for everyone.

What is the fastest way for me to create this new alt-coin - and assuming everyone will be GPU mining - what would be the best alt-currency to base it off of (or would it be better to base it off of the original bitcoin)?

What programming skills would we need to re-use existing code?

Thanks for your help!


  • 1
    People who downvote, please add a comment explaining to the user why you think this is a bad question. This is especially important when the user is new to the site. Thanks! – D.H. - bitcoin.se Jul 20 '13 at 11:17

Try looking at these pages:

First, a "Complete Guide on How to Create a New Alt Coin" which, as the name says is a fairly step-by-step guide on how to create a new alt-coin.

Secondly, another thread started by someone who asked essentially the same question as yours: "How do you create an altcoin?"

The discussion which follows is a bunch of people discovering for themselves how to do it. Note that I haven't read through the entire thread (it's 15 pages long as of this posting), so I'm not sure if they ever successfully make an alt-coin or if they give up somewhere along the way. But it's an interesting read to see them figure things out and discover things together as a group.

And finally, A Psuedo [sic] Guide on how to Build an AltCoin, which doesn't go into as much detail as the Complete Guide linked above. In fact, it mostly just links to other threads on bitcointalk.org. That said, it may link to some information that answers some questions left from the other links.

  • 2
    Can you summarize what those links discuss? A link-only answer isn't terribly helpful. – user3930 Jul 18 '13 at 11:12

I would recommend a basic knowledge of C++, and to play with Litecoin source code. If you have compiled programs in Linux, you're on the right path.


Could you please elaborate on the general level of technical proficiency of your group, as well as the time commitment folks are willing to make?

Since you say that you are looking for the fastest way to create an alt coin, you could use a paid service like http://www.coingen.io/, which costs 0.05 BTC.

You could also consider using existing code but mining on an isolated network. This would be your own chain, although not technically your own coin.

You could also choose an obscure coin with very few miners (the bitcointalk forums has a sub-board for alternative cryptocurrencies where such coins abound).

I would leverage the bitcoin and bitcoin-dev freenode IRC channels during the process, as well as stack exchange (obviously!), as you encounter specific issues.

Austin's reply contains some very useful resources and summaries of what's involved with creating an alt coin. Be forewarned that it is a highly non-trivial endeavor. That being said, great idea for a club activity! Best of luck and enjoy yourselves!!

Your Answer

