So you've heard about all the cool altcoins like Litecoin, Dogecoin and hell Steemit could be classified as an altcoin if you want to get technical. But how does one go about creating an altcoin and why would you do it? We're gonna be answering both of those questions right now.
So why would you even create an altcoin, I mean there are hundreds of other coins out there, so whats the point? Well, the point is really up to you. Some people do it to gain further insight on how these cryptocurrencies actually work, some people do it to see if it becomes huge like Monero or Ethereum, or some people just do it for fun. Like the creators of Dogecoin, for example, he never thought it would get anywhere and now it's pretty big for an altcoin. But ultimately the reason you would want to create an altcoin is really up to you.
Okay so now that we have the reasons why you would make an altcoin out of the way, let's go about how you would make an altcoin. First step is to get the source code of some other coin, now I would suggest using something like Litecoin or some other coin that is ASIC proof. The source code of most coins can easily be found by a simple google search. So first think of how your coin is going to be different than the source material. Let's start by a name. Let us call this coin for testing purposes SaladCoin, and have the symbol be SAL. You will also have to think of how the parameters of this coin will differ from the source. Like the block time, the difficulty retarget time, how many coins are rewarded per block, and how long you want the coin block reward to be halved.
Now here is the part that everyone is dreading (it's honestly not the part you should be dreading at all), the coding. Now we aren't really coding, we're just changing certain parameters to match our idea of our coin. So how does one go about this? Well, there's probably some complicated Linux way of doing this, but since I don't use Linux very often and I'm not too familiar with it, we shall be using Windows to change the code. Which means we go into every single file using notepad and we search for certain parameters and change them to our liking. For instance, since our test coin is named SaladCoin with the symbol being SAL, we search through all the code looking for the original coins name and symbol, in this case, Litecoin and LTC, but it all depends on what source code you use for your coin. Now I don't know personally any faster and less tedious ways of doing this but if you do know them use that instead of manually changing the code for every file.
Now after that you can start changing the parameters, which most of will be in one of two main files (at least on Litecoin.). You will be searching and changing code such as the block value, and others. Do a bit of looking in the code and you will find all of the parameters you want to change. And then you will have to create a genesis block. Annnnd you are done with the coding, for the most part. And now for compiling.
Now there are many ways of compiling your altcoin, which one is the best is honestly up to you. You can do it with Windows or Linux, and since the compiling process is very long and would take its own guide to explain, I'll leave a link on how to do it by someone who knows what they are talking about.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=149479.0
But before you compile your coin, there will be some stuff images for the wallet and such that you need to replace to make your coin look extra snazzy. It shouldn't take long to do this, the longest part will probably be what your coin looks like. After you're done making all of your images replace the images in the folder share, then pixmaps.
Now once your done compile then voila! Your altcoin is done and you're free to make whatever Ponzi scheme you want!