Conclusion: Choose based on your risk appetite
The title of top cryptocurrency between BTC and ETH has been a hot debate for the past years.If we look at the market cap – BTC has been the leader since the beginning.However, ETH has advanced further as a blockchain with its multi-purpose platform that allows for more use cases, such as smart contracts and decentralized applications, when compared to BTC’s ledger.Additionally, there have been moments during the past year when ETH`s capitalization has approached BTC`s.
Therefore, the battle in terms of capitalization is still active, and we might see ETH as the top cryptocurrency one day.
Operation of BTC vs ETH
BTC uses a proof of work algorithm, while ETH is migrating to proof of stake (POS).
We will cover this more in-depth later on in the article so stay reading.Overall, this means that the ETH blockchain technology allows for less resource-intensive use of blockchain networks.Furthermore, the use of POS reduces costs.For this reason, ETH is frequently chosen as the crypto for transfers between exchanges.
Let’s dive deeper into the history of ETH and BTC and what are further differences between these two coins.Brief Overview/History of ETH vs BTC ETH network came into existence much later than BTC
BTC came into the world in 2008 and began to function in 2009 after it was released as the first publicly known public distributed ledger – also called a blockchain.Its founder was an unknown developer, who operated under the pseudonym, Satoshi Nakamoto.
On the other hand, the ETH network came into existence much later – on 30th July 2015 after several years of development by founder Vitalik Buterkin and his team.
ETH tokens were first distributed with a process called pre-mine and later on sparked massive interest from miners around the world.Later on, the process of mining created massive outrage in microchip production as well as sparked debates about the massive power usage that blockchain network maintenance creates.
Now cryptocurrencies were attractive not only for trading purposes but also for mining.ETH has developed faster over the years
Ever since the ETH network has developed faster than BTC, several new features have been introduced.
The main one being the ability to develop decentralized apps that later sparked a massive boom in the form of Initial Coin Offerings or ICO`s for short.The creation of decentralized application technology created massive interest around the world from investors and financial experts.Smart contract was the new buzzword, and ether was the way to go.
Now, not only trading and mining was interesting for cryptocurrency enthusiasts around the world.ICO`s created a massive industry with millions upon millions raised for projects that were in their initial stages – often without any real proof of concept.Anyone could participate in the next major project by usually transferring their cryptocurrencies to a specific ICO address that kept records on ETH`s blockchain to track investments.Hard fork for ETH created ETH Classic
The phenomenon of ICO`s and a large-scale hack of the chain caused a split in consensus for ETH miners and supporters.ETH founder Vitalik Buterin wanted to develop DAPP functionality further, while other supporters had a different opinion.This caused a split in ETH coin – ETH and ETH Classic (ETC) was created in a process called a hard fork.
Now anyone with ETH in their wallet had two coins for the price of one.
Additionally, miners could now be tuned to switch to mine the blockchain that offered the best reward at the time.ETH still the leader of altcoins
Since the split, the original ETH speed has continued to develop further, while ETC remains a proof of work blockchain with limited transaction speed in comparison.Therefore, the original ETH platform is still the king, as we can see in the total market cap and sentiment.
Both ETH and ETC can still be traded on practically every cryptocurrency exchange.Initially, some of the exchanges did not recognize this split.This caused some debates in the ecosystem for the need to create a decentralized exchange that allowed for free trading of any digital asset possible.
A split of BTC created BTC Cash (BCH)
A similar disagreement between the development community as with ETH caused a split of the BTC network.Some of the developers wanted increased transaction speed, while others were more concerned for the safety of each BTC transaction.
Therefore, BCH was created as a spin-off of BTC that allowed for faster block times and an increase in their block size limit, which resulted in reduced fees from one wallet or crypto exchange account to another.The increase in speed and decrease in transaction fees did drive a lot of money towards BTC Cash.BTC Cash – nice idea, but BTC is still the king
Some of the BTC miner power was switched to the BCH blockchain platform as it offered a better reward to any miner initially.Over time, the investors did choose the original BTC network as the go-to option.
This was further reflected in BTC price over the following years as it is still the king of the market when looking at the total market cap.
As we can see today, BTC is still the top virtual currency, while BCH is just another digital asset that was received as a bonus for holding BTC and waiting for the BTC price to increase.
Overall, the price did react bullishly to this event as everyone now had an additional coin on their exchange of choice.This caused even more interest in the technology and drove more fiat currency into the ecosystem.Exchanges to push Altcoin dominance further?
Later on, exchanges joined the ICO game and became an intermediary to increase security.Smart contracts were created to keep a store on what was invested.Further, ICO`s saw their market cap grow exponentially and further increased interest in digital currency.However, many ICO`s turned to be nothing more than pump and dump schemes.This caused distrust for the cryptocurrency world, and many started to debate whether blockchain is even needed.
ETH network saw its first major crisis – applications that promised to solve a lot turned out to let their investors down by not delivering promised features or even the platform itself.Which was first – BTC vs ETH? BTC is the most traded crypto across almost every exchange.
BTC was the first cryptocurrency created.To this day the cryptocurrency has remained the largest blockchain network by market capitalization.For now, BTC remains the leader and is the most traded crypto across almost every exchange as measure by the publicly available data across exchanges.Almost anyone across the world has heard or seen the famous slogan “Buy BTC”.What Is ETH? The ETH platform is one of today’s best-known decentralized blockchain technology solutions.
ETH (ETH), which is the digital coin that runs on the ETH platform is one of today’s best-known decentralized blockchain technology solutions that offers smart contracts functionality with the use of ETH tokens.
At first, it used a proof-of-work algorithm to sustain and validate its blockchain, however, that is slowly changing.ETH is transitioning into the staking algorithm.
Additionally, a process called sharding allows ETH blockchain to run several parallel cryptocurrency chains at once, increasing network throughput and speed.Therefore, ETH is set to increase in price over the upcoming years as the ecosystem rewards projects that bring extra significance to the ecosystem.Features of ETH.
