A cryptocurrency or kind of digital money that is unrelated to any other platform or blockchain. A coin’s primary characteristic is that it is a kind of money, while the name “coin” can also refer to a cryptocurrency asset that is not a token.
Coins are not designed to perform utility activities like representing votes within a community or indicating storage capacity on decentralized cloud storage, in contrast to cryptocurrency tokens. Instead, a coin functions as a native currency within a particular financial system and runs on its own independent blockchain. In a digital economic network, a currency is essentially employed as a medium of trade or a store of value. On the other hand, most blockchains function as a decentralized, distributed ledger that records and verifies every transaction. Therefore, their native currencies are only transferable within this specific network of users.
Depending on the state of the market, a coin can be exchanged for an agreed-upon value as a single unit of money. On rare occasions, it can be transferred privately or through a cryptocurrency exchange in exchange for another coin or token that is associated with a different blockchain (like peer-to-peer and OTC trades). Trading in coins and tokens can also be done through decentralized exchanges and atomic swaps.
