There has been a lot of hype surrounding the different types of blockchain technologies and cryptocurrencies today. The increase in market capitalization and trade volumes of the cryptocurrency has surely surpassed a lot of organizations. Both Bitcoin and Ethereum have today become the world’s first cryptocurrencies unarguably. Therefore, it is very natural for all the experts to compare both of them.
Bitcoin-Billionaire.com believes that ethereum and bitcoin are quite similar to each other in a lot of aspects. Both of them are a type of virtual currencies that can be traded through online exchanges. These are then stored in the cryptocurrency wallets that are available in the market. Also, none of the authorities or central bank has issued or can regulate any of them. One of the most important things which are very common is the usage of blockchain technology for operation. However, there are still many differences between both of them. Below will take a closer look at the disparities of Ethereum and Bitcoin.
Ethereum Basics vs. Bitcoin Basics
Here we have described a few basic features of both these cryptocurrencies.
Ethereum
Blockchain technology has been used to develop applications that go far beyond just enabling digital currencies. Founded in 2015, Ethereum is today the biggest and well-established, autonomous, and open-ended software platform. The smart contracts of ethereum help in programming the transactions and deter third parties’ needs in different systems.
Ethereum has its programming language that runs on a blockchain and allows the developers to build and operate the distributed applications. It has a huge ability to perform a wide variety of applications that are controlled by Ether, which is its native cryptographic token. Ethereum introduced a sale of Ether in 2014, which got overall support. We can say that Ether is used for running commands by the developers to create and operate network applications.
Bitcoin Basics
Founded in the year 2009, Bitcoin did introduce cryptocurrency at first. It focuses on fixing the finance problems on the international level and has been called the ‘bank of people’. Bitcoin was brought in by Satoshi Nakamoto with a promise of providing a decentralized online currency. Even though Bitcoin isn’t the first attempt at such a cryptocurrency, it is the most profitable one. It has become a predecessor to all cryptocurrencies that have developed in the past few decades.
The concept of digital, decentralized currency has been gaining recognition among regulatory agencies and government agencies over the years. Though it is not formally accepted as a medium for payment, it still has somehow created its niche.
Key Differences
Let us now have a glance at the key differences between Etherum and Bitcoin.
- The currency issued by Bitcoin is 12.5 new bitcoins every 10 minutes, whereas Ethereum helps in creating a new Ether in 15 seconds.
- Payments on the Ethereum network include executable codes, while the data attached to Bitcoin network transactions are only for note-keeping purposes.
- Ethereum creates a new block every 15 seconds, while on the other hand, Bitcoin does the same after 10 minutes.
- The blocks of Bitcoin are of the size limited to 1MB, or we can say 8BM in case of Bitcoin cash. Ethereum’s blocks are sealed by the total overhead of all the operations in the block.
- Ethereum features valid blocks that have been outpaced by some other newly accepted block. Such accepted blocks are known as “uncles,” and their inclusion offers additional protection to the chain.
- However, more significantly, the Bitcoin and Ethereum networks are distinct in terms of their ultimate goals. However, Bitcoin was developed as an alternative to reserved national currencies. It aspires to be a medium of exchange between every seller and buyer. At the same time, Ethereum was created as a network to promote irreversible, conceptual contracts, and applications through its cryptocurrency.
- The hashtag algorithm of Bitcoin can operate along with the special-purpose hardware, which is called an application-specific integrated circuit (ASICs). The algorithm of Ethereum requires a large amount of memory to store the data. This makes it quite difficult to create an economical special-purpose chip. It enables the Ethereum to have much greater mining decentralization.
Conclusion
We can conclude that be it Ethereum or Bitcoin; both are equally valuable and important projects. Bitcoin and Ethereum are both valuable and highly critical ventures. Even if you’re not an investor/trader of the cryptocurrency, buying BTC or ETH tokens isn’t going to be wrong. Since both of them are very important for the crypto-community.
