With the origin of bitcoin in 2008, we have witnessed a rise in cryptocurrencies and the new variants that are available. With this rapid increase in the variations, we might see rise of some of the cryptocurrencies and the downfall of some of them. All these cryptocurrencies use blockchain technology which is quite helpful as it has an automatisierte Verfahren for creating a blockchain ledger which is the basic building block for all the cryptocurrencies. In this article, we will read about the features that these different cryptocurrencies offer:
- Bitcoin
One of the oldest and the first cryptocurrency discovered by Satoshi Nakamoto in the year 2008. Since the beginning of the cryptocurrency era, bitcoin has been one of the most popular and used digital currency.
On the plus side, bitcoin is the largest cryptocurrency in terms of market domination and trade. With a cap on production limit which is 21 million bitcoins are going to increase in value over time. As most of the stores and companies accept bitcoins as a payment method, it is much easier to deal with bitcoins rather than some other cryptocurrency. As bitcoin is the most popular cryptocurrency we see it is much easier to liquidate bitcoin into cash.
On the negative side, the high volatility of bitcoin is a serious issue for its buyers. We see dramatic price fluctuation in the price of bitcoins which increases the risk of investing in bitcoins. Moreover, slow transaction speed is another issue with bitcoin that might lead to its downfall in the future.
- Ethereum
Ethereum is the second most popular digital currency that is out there in the market. Contrary to bitcoin, ethereum enables its users to build DApps, smart contracts, and tokens. Which makes it really useful for businesses. With a much faster transaction rate of transfer ethereum is preferred over bitcoin. To use ethereum any user will need ether which is why this currency is self-sufficient and will never go out of the market.
On the downside, there are more ethereum coins than bitcoins making it less valuable than bitcoin. However, there is no limit cap on in production which is a great concern to its value.
- Ripple
Ripple is the currency designed by the banks in order to make their global transfers much faster. Ripple is also known as Banker’s coin. This is the best aspect for ripple as well, it is seen as a credible cryptocurrency which is going to get more popular over time. With its adoption in the finance world, we might witness the rise of ripple more than any other cryptocurrency.
However, as ripple is not decentralized, that data on its blockchain can be edited or deleted with much of a problem. This challenges the basic idea of introducing blockchain technology to the market.
- Litecoin
Litecoin is considered to a fork of bitcoin, which is why litecoin’s blockchain used to be a part of bitcoin’s blockchain. This is why litecoin is quite similar to bitcoin and is seen as an upgrade to the more traditional bitcoin. With its upgrade, litecoin started using lightning network tech making it much faster than bitcoin itself. Litecoin is also much cheaper than bitcoin making it a better alternative to bitcoin.
The problem with litecoin is that it offers just a slight improvement to bitcoin and if bitcoin decided to improve its transaction speed it might make litecoin absolutely obsolete.
