Bitcoin vs. Ethereum: What's the Difference?
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By NATHAN REIFF
Reviewed By SOMER ANDERSON
Updated Jun 16, 2020
Bitcoin vs. Ethereum: An Overview
Ether (ETH), the cryptocurrency of the Ethereum network, is arguably the second most popular digital token after bitcoin (BTC). Indeed, as the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, comparisons between Ether and BTC are only natural.
Ether and bitcoin are similar in many ways: each is a digital currency traded via online exchanges and stored in various types of cryptocurrency wallets. Both of these tokens are decentralized, meaning that they are not issued or regulated by a central bank or other authority. Both make use of the distributed ledger technology known as blockchain. However, there are also many crucial distinctions between the two most popular cryptocurrencies by market cap. Below, we'll take a closer look at the similarities and differences between bitcoin and ether.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Bitcoin signaled the emergence of a radically new form of digital money that operates outside the control of any government or corporation.
With time, people began to realize that one of the underlying innovations of bitcoin, the blockchain, could be utilized for other purposes.
Ethereum proposed to utilize blockchain technology not only for maintaining a decentralized payment network but also for storing computer code which can be used to power tamper-proof decentralized financial contracts and applications.
Ethereum applications and contracts are powered by ether, the Ethereum network’s currency.
Ether was intended to complement rather than compete with bitcoin, but it has nonetheless emerged as a competitor on cryptocurrency exchanges.
Bitcoin Basics
Bitcoin was launched in January of 2009. It introduced a novel idea set out in a white paper by the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto—bitcoin offers the promise of an online currency that is secured without any central authority, unlike government-issued currencies. There are no physical bitcoins, only balances associated with a cryptographically secured public ledger. Although bitcoin was not the first attempts at an online currency of this type, it was the most successful in its early efforts, and it has come to be known as a predecessor in some way to virtually all cryptocurrencies which have been developed over the past decade.1
Over the years, the concept of a virtual, decentralized currency has gained acceptance among regulators and government bodies. Although it isn’t a formally recognized medium of payment or store of value, cryptocurrency has managed to carve out a niche for itself and continues to coexist with the financial system despite being regularly scrutinized and debated.
At the start of the cryptocurrency boom in 2017, Bitcoin’s market value accounted for close to 87% of the total cryptocurrency market.
Ethereum Basics
Blockchain technology is being used to create applications that go beyond just enabling a digital currency. Launched in July of 2015, Ethereum is the largest and most well-established, open-ended decentralized software platform.
Ethereum enables the deployment of smart contracts and decentralized applications (dapps) to be built and run without any downtime, fraud, control or interference from a third party. Ethereum comes complete with its own programming language which runs on a blockchain, enabling developers to build and run distributed applications.
The potential applications of Ethereum are wide-ranging and are powered by its native cryptographic token, ether (commonly abbreviated as ETH). In 2014, Ethereum launched a presale for ether, which received an overwhelming response. Ether is like the fuel for running commands on the Ethereum platform and is used by developers to build and run applications on the platform.
Ether is used mainly for two purposes—it is traded as a digital currency on exchanges in the same fashion as other cryptocurrencies, and it is used on the Ethereum network to run applications. According to Ethereum, “people all over the world use ETH to make payments, as a store of value, or as collateral.”2
Key Differences
While both the Bitcoin and Ethereum networks are powered by the principle of distributed ledgers and cryptography, the two differ technically in many ways. For example, transactions on the Ethereum network may contain executable code, while data affixed to Bitcoin network transactions are generally only for keeping notes. Other differences include block time (an ether transaction is confirmed in seconds compared to minutes for bitcoin) and the algorithms that they run on (Ethereum uses ethash while Bitcoin uses SHA-256).
More importantly, though, the Bitcoin and Ethereum networks are different with respect to their overall aims. While bitcoin was created as an alternative to national currencies and thus aspires to be a medium of exchange and a store of value, Ethereum was intended as a platform to facilitate immutable, programmatic contracts, and applications via its own currency.
BTC and ETH are both digital currencies, but the primary purpose of ether is not to establish itself as an alternative monetary system, but rather to facilitate and monetize the operation of the Ethereum smart contract and decentralized application (dapp) platform.
Ethereum is another use-case for a blockchain that supports the Bitcoin network, and theoretically should not really compete with Bitcoin. However, the popularity of ether has pushed it into competition with all cryptocurrencies, especially from the perspective of traders. For most of its history since the mid-2015 launch, ether has been close behind bitcoin on rankings of the top cryptocurrencies by market cap. That being said, it's important to keep in mind that the ether ecosystem is much smaller than bitcoin's: as of January 2020, ether's market cap was just under $16 billion, while bitcoin's is nearly 10 times that at more than $147 billion.
Now, you’re all set up. Good for you. But you will stand little chance of success mining bitcoins unless you work with other people, by joining a bitcoin mining pool for example. Editor’s Note: I no longer consider this particularly applicable to Bitcoin because its usage has primarily shifted to being a store of value rather than medium of exchange, but back in 2017, it was one of my frameworks for analyzing it when it was less clear that it would shift in that direction. This approach mainly values it as a medium of exchange, which still makes it worthwhile to be familiar with.While ECDSA is indeed not secure under quantum computing, quantum computers don't yet exist and probably won't for a while. The DWAVE system often written about in the press is, even if all their claims are true, not a quantum computer of a kind that could be used for cryptography. Bitcoin's security, when used properly with a new address on each transaction, depends on more than just ECDSA: Cryptographic hashes are much stronger than ECDSA under QC.
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Cryptography uses public and private keys in order to encrypt and decrypt data. In the Blockchain network, a public key can be shared with all the Bitcoin users but a private key (just like a password) is kept secret with the users.In late 2017, Lee departed Coinbase to pursue Litecoin development full time. Lee now serves as the managing director of the Litecoin Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to the project.How does Litecoin work?bitcoin usd homestead ethereum bitcoin lion bitcoin удвоитель bitcoin стратегия
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анонимность bitcoin scrypt bitcoin блок bitcoin coin bitcoin bitcoin кошелек If you’re trying to pay a person or retailer who accepts cryptocurrency, you’ll need a cryptocurrency wallet, which is a software program that interacts with the blockchain and allows users to send and receive cryptocurrency.перспективы ethereum The legacy Bitcoin block has a block size limit of 1 megabyte, and any change on the block size would require a network hard-fork. On August 1st 2017, the first hard-fork occurred, leading to the creation of Bitcoin Cash (BCH), which introduced an 8 megabyte block size limit.Conversely, Segregated Witness was a soft-fork: it never changed the transaction block size limit of the network. Instead, it added an extended block with an upper limit of 3 megabytes, which contains solely witness signatures, to the 1 megabyte block that contains only transaction data. This new block type can be processed even by nodes that have not completed the SegWit protocol upgrade.Furthermore, the separation of witness signatures from transaction data solves the malleability issue with the original Bitcoin protocol. Without Segregated Witness, these signatures could be altered before the block is validated by miners. Indeed, alterations can be done in such a way that if the system does a mathematical check, the signature would still be valid. However, since the values in the signature are changed, the two signatures would create vastly different hash values.For instance, if a witness signature states '6,' it has a mathematical value of 6, and would create a hash value of 12345. However, if the witness signature were changed to '06', it would maintain a mathematical value of 6 while creating a (faulty) hash value of 67890.Since the mathematical values are the same, the altered signature remains a valid signature. This would create a bookkeeping issue, as transactions in Nakamoto consensus-based blockchain networks are documented with these hash values, or transaction IDs. Effectively, one can alter a transaction ID to a new one, and the new ID can still be valid.This can create many issues, as illustrated in the below example:Bitcoin is valuable, not because of a particular feature, but instead, because it achieved finite, digital scarcity, through which it derives its store of value property. The credibility of bitcoin’s scarcity (and monetary policy) only exists because it is decentralized and censorship-resistant, which in itself has very little to do with software. In aggregate, this drives incremental adoption and liquidity which reinforces and strengthens the value of the bitcoin network. As part of this process, individuals are, at the same time, opting out of inferior monetary networks. This is fundamentally why the emergent properties in bitcoin are next to impossible to replicate and why bitcoin cannot be copied or out-competed: because bitcoin already exists as an option and its monetary properties become stronger over time (and with greater scale), while also at the direct expense of inferior monetary networks.bitcoin air россия bitcoin bitcoin node bitcoin tor geth ethereum удвоитель bitcoin fast bitcoin bitcoin status
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