This is largely because mining Ethereum coins requires lots of high-speed memory, which ASICs lack. The algorithm also has built-in ASIC detection and will refuse to mine properly on them.

Ethereum developers have begun kicking around a series of ideas that could make the Ethereum network private at its core.

(1) One unit of a native cryptocurrency such as BTC on Bitcoin or ETH on Ethereum. Although a coin generally means the native crypto, it may casually refer to any crypto. For example, there are ...