Bitcoin is the first digital currency based on blockchain. It solved the double-spending problem and enabled peer-to-peer transactions on a large scale. Bitcoin was designed to work as a trustless digital currency that would function without government oversight or a central bank.
Bitcoin was developed by Satoshi Nakamoto, whose identity has never been confirmed and has become the subject of great intrigue. Bitcoin builds upon on other cryptographic and digital currency projects that came before it, but its use of blockchain made it more viable. Nakamoto originally released his white paper and open-source software on a cryptography forum. He mined the first block of the Bitcoin chain, called the genesis block in January 2009.
Bitcoins are created as a reward for a process known as mining. One of the core innovations of Bitcoin, is its consensus algorithm, which creates an incentive system that rewards miners for confirming transactions.
Hal Finney, who developed the first reusable proof-of-work system (RPOW), several years before, was the first Bitcoin adopter and received the first bitcoin transaction ever recorded on its blockchain.

Viacoin is an open source cryptocurrency based on the Bitcoin protocol. Viacoin has a 24 second block time and relatively fast transaction times. It can handle 175 transactions per second without scaling through Segwit or the Lightning Network. The fast transaction times make Viacoin a good option for sending micropayments. The platform also enables users to perform cross-chain atomic swaps between different cryptocurrencies, without a centralized exchange. Viacoin has an Auxiliary Proof-of-Work (AuxPoW) consensus mechanism that allows miners to mine multiple coins, that use the Scrypt algorithms, at the same time. Viacoin's smart contract platform, Rootstock, is compatible with Ethereum smart contracts.

BitcoinDark is a fork of Bitcoin with a poorly defined purpose and use case. BitcoinDark is based on the InstantDEX protocol, a decentralized exchange for BitcoinDark and other cryptocurrencies supported by the project. The platform is also supposed to include a Pegged Asset Exchange (PAX) to allow users to buy and sell pegged assets – including fiat currencies, commodities, ETFs, and stocks.
BitcoinDark is a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) currency that has gained a significant market cap, but the project has failed to show how its vision will be implemented or how it will add value compared to other blockchain projects.