BITCOIN’S BIGGEST RIVAL
By: Blockchain Inchained
Tags: Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, Mining, Ethereum, Bitcoin

Cryptocurrencies have been a buzz over the past few years. And undoubtedly they are becoming the currency of the future. And Bitcoin is topping the list by being the number one currency in the world. Ethereum is another cryptocurrency which holds number 2 rank in the cryptocurrency list. It came into existence in 2013 and was launched in 2015. The initial years were not successful and pleasing as its price was below $10. But in 2017, Ethereum’s price suddenly exploded. And in January 2018, Ethereum had its value at peak with a worth of $1,400. Although its value decreased after that to around $700 but it still is a great cryptocurrency platform and will surely surpass bitcoin in the near future.

Although bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency the world had had. And after its birth, around 1,500 other cryptocurrencies have come into existence. All of them tried to provide the clients with features that bitcoin failed to offer. Some cryptocurrencies succeeded in this motive and provided an improved transaction time and cost. But Ethereum has some other aims. They planned to improve upon the Bitcoin’s basic credentials.

Bitcoin is a virtual currency having a value similar to gold, but is bound to this function only by its design. But Ethereum along with being a virtual currency also supports a software platform allowing application to be built and to run without the support of a third party.

Bitcoin is the very first cryptocurrency to start the decentralisation, which means there won’t be any third party like bank or government or any institution in between the client and the customer; all other cryptocurrencies follow the same path. But Ethereum along with following the decentralisation technique of traditional banks, it decentralises the whole of internet. It is more versatile and more advanced than Bitcoins in the block chain technology. It also allows anyone to create their decentralised apps on their platform.

This feature of creating own decentralised apps and running them opens up a whole new domain of potential for the businesses to use case specific applications. It makes them move towards a more connected future. Ethereum has the potential to escalate all the levels of business interactions. Ethereum is given a nick name of “world computer” as it completely cuts out the third parties. A day may come when you can be able transfer anything on Ethereum ranging from online data to property deeds of a house. Not only this, the Ethereum platform also has the power and skill to ground many major innovations in applications in the near future.

And one more reason that Ethereum may surpass Bitcoin is the unlimited supply of ETH, the Ethereum token whereas the Bitcoin token BTC have an limited produce. Bitcoin’s in built language being stask-based and stateless that means you cannot express a loop hereby. While Ethereum in built language is Turing-complete that provides you with a facility of coding anything you want. Moreover, the block time in Bitcoin is set to 10 min which is 14 to 15 seconds for Ethereum( by using Ghost protocol). Ethereum uses Ethash, memory hard hashing algorithm, which militates against the use of ASICS.

Ethereum make use of smart contracts which you can use for many purposes. Ethereum is 3 year old while Bitcoin being 9 year old, yet Ethereum is far developed than Bitcoin. All these features are at a very low transaction fees as compared to Bitcoin. Along with having low transaction fees, they are very quick too. So, undoubtedly, could become the most valuable cryptocurrency in the world.