Not necessarily.  The notion that a project must "fork the BTC ledger" to avoid being classified as an altcoin is an oversimplification.  IMO $Kas operates on a higher consensus principle than #Bitcoin by enhancing POW with BlockDAG.
IMO an altcoin is a cryptographic peoject that deviates from Satoshi's, core principles without fundamentally improving upon its consensus model.
#Kas #Bitcoin