thanks for the kind replies, links & resources.

i am fascinated by the all altcoins and have become involved in mining them too on my desktop using linux vfio (since i am worried about malware with this stuff, so I don't use my windows machine!)

how is the altcoin stuff viewed by the bitcoin community? or is it the same community? the social stuff has been a bit hard to parse with all the greed that is flying around... ICOs, etc, really made a confusing situation more confusing.

looking forward to reading the resources you have given me and understanding more. cryptocurrency definitely has my attention now so best to truly try and understand it i suppose.

sincerely,
phosphor