Whenever there was any talk about cryptocurrency, we always heard about Bitcoins. However, it is not the only cryptocurrency that is out there. Ethereum is the other cryptocurrency related project that has a lot of very attractive features for the people. It has seen a lot of growth over the years. It might surprise you that in 2017 the value of Ethereum grew over 13,000 percent. (Authority link:).
Although, the first thing that we need to understand about Ethereum is that it is not just a digital currency. In fact, it is a platform that has so many other aspects and is based on blockchain. It has its own currency named ether, and it offers other features like smart contracts and the Ethereum Virtual Machine.
Ethereum was first proposed by Vitalik Buterin in 2013. It was funded through an online crowdsale which happened between July and August of 2014. On 30th July 2015, it went live with 11.9 million coins mined already, a number amounting to 13 percent of the total supply.
Ethereum gambling is quite popular because the nature of ether makes it very hard for scams to happen. The decentralized nature of the blockchain ensures that your money remains totally safe and won’t be taken away without your permission.
Smart Contracts:
Compared with traditional contracts, the smart contracts are very attractive because of its aspect of security. It uses blockchain stored applications for the facilitation and negotiation of all these contracts. The decentralized aspect of the blockchain is what makes it so appealing, because it is extremely difficult for censorship or fraud to occur through this way. The Ethereum’s cryptocurrency ether powers these smart contract applications. Like other cryptocurrencies Ether is also held in its Ethereum Wallet.
It also gives you the option of creating digital tokens which can be employed to represent assets, virtual shares and much more. You will need to copy a code from the Ethereum’s website and then you can use your tokens for several purposes. You will have the freedom to possess either a specific number of tokens in circulation or a fluctuating number based on already determined rules.
Difference between Bitcoin and Ethereum:
There are many differences between Bitcoin and Ethereum although they look like the same. While Bitcoin has the average block time of about 10 minutes, Ethereum tries to be around 12 seconds which is far lesser time. This is due to the GHOST protocol of Ethereum. It is important to remember that faster block time is associated with quicker confirmations.
One main difference between the two cryptocurrencies is monetary supply also. If we talk about bitcoin, majority of bitcoins have already been mined-more than two thirds. On the other hand, Ethereum will have mined about the half of the coins because it raised its launch capital with a pre-sale.
The costing of their transactions is also very different. Ethereum’s cost of transactions depends on their storage needs, complexity and bandwidth usage, while the Bitcoin transactions are limited by the block size.
One advantage that Ethereum has over Bitcoin is that it has its own Turing complete internal code, which Bitcoin does not have. This means that anything could be calculated. While it also should be said that this complexity makes it more vulnerable to cyber attacks from which bitcoin is safe.
While both Bitcoin and Ethereum might look the same, but they are very different projects with very different intentions. While bitcoin is pitching itself as an alternate currency, Ethereum aims to facilitate peer to peer contracts and applications through its created currency Ether. This is why, Ethereum is more focused about smart contract applications while Bitcoin has been successful to emerge as a stable digital currency.
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