This "coin" stuff may be confusing if you are not familiar with algorithms and data structures. Let me explain what I know so far — 

There are many, many coins. People like to trade them, not unlike stocks or Pokémon cards. People also mine them, using their home computers or specialized hardware.

Coins are stored in wallets which can be hosted online, on your local computer, or on a sheet of paper.

It is hard to mine a coin on your own, and is like gambling, so people usually opt to join a pool (which typically use the stratum protocol to coordinate) — this rewards you for your work, even if you didn't find anything because you helped contribute with thousands of other people, some of whom did find blocks. The blocks are then split up, based on the pool's rules.

Some people rent hashing power from farms and either play the "blockchain lottery", trying to find blocks of coins on their own, or they point the farm at a pool, like a typical home miner — except they have a tremendously high amount of computational power available to them, if they're willing to pay for it.

Hope that helps clear things up.

• Wikileaks BTC: 1HB5XMLmzFVj8ALj6mfBsbifRoD4miY36v
• Internet Archive BTC: 1Archive1n2C579dMsAu3iC6tWzuQJz8dN
• The Pirate Bay BTC: 129TQVAroeehD9fZpzK51NdZGQT4TqifbG
• xkcd BTC: 14Tr4HaKkKuC1Lmpr2YMAuYVZRWqAdRTcr
• this repo BTC: 1Me2iXTJ91FYZhrGvaGaRDCBtnZ4KdxCug

• Coinbin.org — Human–friendly API for quickly getting coin data (exchange rates, predictions, &c.)
  • List of All Known Coins /coins
  • BTC Current Value /btc
  • BTC Daily Historical Value /btc/history
  • BTC / ETH Exchange Rate /btc/to/eth
  • 20.01 BTC Value /btc/20.01
  • 42 ETH Value in BTC /eth/42/to/btc
  • Supports all crypto–currencies.
• CoinMarketCap — Shows all currencies on a real-time dashboard.
• CoinScanner.co — Gives you multiple trade routes from 1 crypto to another.
• The Coin Perspective — Helps you put different coins in perspective, comparing marketcaps, supplies and prices.

• Overview of Cryptocurrencies — GitHub Repo.
• Map of Coins – Explore the visualized history of the cryptocurrencies, from their whitepapers up to present days.
• Mastering Bitcoin (ebook)
• Binance Academy — Open access education provided by Binance.
• Blockchain for humans — Ultra-simplified blockchain explanation (in construction).
• r/CryptoCurrency — Official subreddit about crypto-currencies and crypto-assets.
• Publications
  • Cryptoeconomics / The team at cryptoeconomics.com.au
  • Minessence / Vinny Lingham, Co-founder & CEO of Civic.com
  • CryptoOracle / Lou Kerner
  • CryptoCurrencyHub
  • Build Blockchain
  • Hackernoon's
    • Blockchain
    • Bitcoin
    • Coin & Crypto
    • Daniel Jeffries

Here's a list of WhatToMine.

• #: https://www.nicehash.com/ — Mine any algo (optimized for your GPU) & get paid in BTC.
• BTC: https://pool.bitcoin.com/
• ETH: https://eth.nanopool.org/
• SC: https://sia.nanopool.org/
• PASC: https://pasc.nanopool.org/
• XMR: https://xmr.nanopool.org/
• ZEC: https://zec.nanopool.org/
• ETC: https://etc.nanopool.org/
• ZCL: https://2miners.com/zcl-mining-pool
• ZEN: https://2miners.com/zen-mining-pool
• ZEC: https://2miners.com/zec-mining-pool

• NiceHash — Supports all popular algos, pay in BTC for raw throughput.
• Bitcoin.com Pool — I've heard good things.
• BitMain Hosted — Looks complicated and sketchy, but they offer hosted ASIC solutions.

Notice: the coin community frowns upon use of these services, as you are not in direct control of your coins — in fact, you don't own them at all — the service does — much like the way a standard bank operates.

Actual Hosted Coin Wallets:

• Cryptosteel — Made of steel!

• Binance — Exchange the world.
• Cryptopia — Wallets for all currencies, trading to/from all currencies.
• Shapeshift — The fastest exchange on Earth.
• Bittrex — Wallets for all currencies, trading to/from all currencies.
• Qvolta — Sell and buy crypto assets around the world for local payment methods.
• ExchangeRates.Pro — Price comparison of exchanges worldwide, including the P2P market.

• Sia UI — SC wallet, file hosting, storage.
• LBRY — LBRY wallet, media consumption & publishing platform.

• NiceHash Miner — Resells your GPU/CPU to miners for profit! Benchmarks all algos against your hardware, and automatically picks the most profitable configuration (adjustable).

• MacMiner — Wraps bfgminer, cgminer, and sgminer in a GUI.

• bfgminer — Modular ASIC/FPGA miner written in C, featuring overclocking, monitoring, fan speed control and remote interface capabilities.
• cgminer — ASIC and FPGA miner in C for Bitcoin.
• sgminer — Scrypt GPU miner.
• nheqminer — Equihash CPU & GPU miner.

• NVidia GTX 1080 TI OC — The most powerful consumer graphics card in the world.
• Asrock H110 Pro BTC+ Mining Motherboard — Can apparently host 12x PCI-E GPUs.

• Bit — Python’s fastest Bitcoin library with an API allowing transactions
  to be made in only 3 lines of code.
• bcoin — Bitcoin fullnode implementation written entirely in Node.js that you can even run in a browser, includes wallet, mempool, chain, and mining.
• Tezos — Self-healing blockchain.
• Tendermint — Byzantine fault-tolerant replicated state machines in any programming language.
• Cosmos — Network and a framework for interoperability between blockchains.
• Blockply — Collection of the most interesting and outstanding blockchain projects
• Blockchain demo — Web-based demonstration of blockchain concepts.

• Scrypt (Litecoin / LTC)
• SHA256 (Bitcoin / BTC)
• ScryptNF (Scrypt-Adaptive-Nfactor) (GPU Coin, GPUC)
• X11 (Dash / Darkcoin, Dashcoin, ASIC-Resistant)
• X13 (MaruCoin / MARU) (CPU/GPU)
• Keccak (MaxCoin / MAX)
• X15 (HTML5 Coin, HTML5)
• Nist5 (Talkcoin, TAC)
• NeoScrypt (Phoenixcoin (PXC), Imperialcoin (IPC), Feathercoin (FTC), UFOcoin (UFO), Guncoin (GUN), Bollywoodcoin (BDC), Orbitcoin (ORB), Halcyon (HAL))
• Lyra2RE (VertCoin / VTC, CryptoCoin)
• WhirlpoolX (Vanillacoin / VNL)
• Qubit (QuibitCoin / Q2C)
• Quark (QRK)
• Axiom (Axiom Coin / AXIOM)
• Lyra2REv2 (VertCoin / VTC)
• ScryptJaneNf16 (Diamond / DMD)
• Blake256r8 (Blake Coin / BLC)
• Blake256r14 (Blake Coin / BLC)
• Blake256r8vnl (Blake Coin / BLC)
• Hodl (HodlCoin / HODL)
• DaggerHashimoto (Ethereum / ETH)
• Decred (DCR)
• CryptoNight (XCN, CPU-only)
• Lbry (LBC)
• Equihash (Zcash / XEC, ZClassic, HUSH, Komodo)
• Pascal (PASC)
• X11Gost (SIBCoin / SIB)
• Sia (SC)
• Blake2s (NevaCoin, Netko Coin, Verge, TajCoin)
• Skunk (Signatum Coin / SIGT)

(others)

As of 2017-08-23:

btc
eth
xrp
ltc
etc
xem
miota
dash
bts
strat
xmr
zec
gnt
bcn
waves
steem
sc
icn
xlm
bcc
lsk
doge
rep
ans
fct
game
ardr
gno
maid
dgb
dcr
kmd
gbyte
bat
nxt
dgd
1st
veri
mgo
usdt
sngls
nmr
sys
btcd
pivx
ant
ubq
mcap
emc
ppc
ppy
ark
round
lkk
rlc
rdd
sjcx
qrl
mln
xas
lbc
amp
wings
nxs
leo
nmc
xcp
xvg
bay
edg
blk
omni
myst
xzc
nlg
via
burst
cfi
vtc
cloak
mona
xaur
eac
dice
grc
ybc
block
obits
nav
vsl
trst
pot
hmq
exp
gup
tkn
bash
xdn
edr
ioc
enrg
rads
note
nxc
shift
moon
wdc
unity
xel
qau
taas
bnt
xbc
sky
ion
snt
agrs
neos
qrk
zrc
vrc
dbix
storj
fun
eos
sls
mco
soar
swt
dbic
dct
adt
sib
pay
draco
chc
mtl
fair
uny
plu
daxx
qtum
san
grs
ppt
crw
wbb
mue
safex
ter
omg
plbt
net
cvc
xrl
bdl
b@
part
coe
skin
plr
nvc
etp
anc
bch
cmp
mny
stx
ico
neo
dtb
nlc2
gas
btm
bnb
dnt
bqx
adx
lun
frst
tix
dent
snm
eb3
zrx
oax
ixt
tcc
cat

If you'd like to donate towards my efforts in the open source world, you can use the following wallet addresses, and any contributions (no matter how small) will be deeply appreciated.

• BTC: 1Me2iXTJ91FYZhrGvaGaRDCBtnZ4KdxCug
• ETH: 0x1321Ec9c7550a7c44ef3e583930556c6557411d1
• LTC: Lbyje2eiSMPfE1Ux6BYJuzN9CS7Nj78Hpu
• LBC: bYDCRLb2Pcp1V25sRZs1LJkVnaddsNVCAQ
• SC: f23294ad70d2315f68a3265331508a44cd5363b8365f4ece91efd2365548b8f0760d34a8f884

Or, Say Thanks!

✨🍰✨