Will Bitcoin Cash ever be worth more than Ethereum?
Matthew What is Bitcoin?
In January 2009, an enigmatic figure named Satoshi Nakamoto executed an idea that he had laid out in a white paper — a peer-to-peer electronic cash system that could operate securely without a central authority. With Bitcoin, the idea of the cryptocurrency, or money without any physical form, was born.
What is Ethereum?
Ethereum is more than a cryptocurrency. Actually, Ethereum is not a cryptocurrency at all — Ether (ETH) is. Ethereum is the platform that Ether is based on, and many people get the 2 confused. But you don’t call Ether Ethereum just like you don’t call Bitcoin blockchain.
Similarities Between Bitcoin and Ethereum
Both Bitcoin and Ethereum are decentralized and do not issue stores of value through a central authority. They are both built on distributed ledger blockchain, which is ideally tamper-proof (tech experts with outrageously expensive gear can work around platform protections).
If you are working within an established, reputable crypto trading platform, you can likely trade both Bitcoin and Ether. Both currencies are so popular that they are often singled out for use in fiat-crypto exchanges to the exclusion of smaller coins.
Visit here to exchange Bitcoin, bitcoin to paypal
Differences Between Bitcoin and Ethereum
Bitcoin was built to do one thing well — provide a way for people to anonymously transfer value from one to another without a central banker. Ethereum built on the idea of the blockchain more than it copied Bitcoin as a currency. As a result, Ethereum is able to do many things well instead of just serve as a platform to give us a store of value token.
Ether can be used as a digital currency, but that is not its primary purpose. The Ethereum platform was built primarily to monetize operations of Ethereum smart contracts and dApps. Both Ethereum and Ether are so well received, however, that people have created use cases for the cryptocurrency outside of its core functionality.
The market cap of Bitcoin around the beginning of 2020 was around $150 billion. The Ether market cap is about 1/10 of that size, coming in at around $16 billion. However, just as many people hold Ether in a portfolio or digital wallet as Bitcoin — around 3 million. There are at least 7 million people in the U.S. using Bitcoin, with 42 million bitcoin wallets, but Ether is catching up and may pass Bitcoin in volume in the very near future.
Users in emerging markets, who are often overlooked in these statistics, likely inflate the numbers even more. Most of those users are likely centered around Bitcoin.
Ethereum is such a flexible platform that some people are actually starting to hold their Bitcoin on it instead of on the Bitcoin blockchain. This is known as a “tokenized bitcoin.” Ether cannot be held on the Bitcoin blockchain. However, Bitcoin is much more widely accepted as a cash replacement — there is even a Bitcoin search engine where you can find products to buy in Bitcoin.