Bitcoin: Its competitors and alternatives

by John Griffith
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To understand cryptocurrency, the best idea is to start with the most famous and the simplest of these networks: Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is the first completely decentralized, peer-to-peer and open-sourced virtual currency of the world. A few decades ago, Bitcoin knowledge was limited to some of the hobbyists on Internet forums. The Bitcoin economy is much larger than some of the countries of the world. Bitcoin price has fluctuated and grown considerably, from pennies to hundreds and thousands of dollars.

The price of Bitcoin has grown considerably

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Which Cryptocurrencies are in competition with Bitcoin?

Following are some Bitcoin alternatives in the cryptocurrency market:

Ethereum (ETH):

Ethereum is the first Bitcoin alternative on our list. It is a decentralized software platform that allows smart contracts and decentralized applications to be created and run without fraud, control, downtime, or interference from a third party. The purpose behind Ethereum is to build a decentralized suite of financial products that everyone in the world can access freely, regardless of ethnicity, faith or nationality. Ethereum is known as the main competitor of Bitcoin.

Litecoin (LTC):

Litecoin is a network for global payment that is not anticipated by any authority or third party and uses “scrypt” for work proofs, which is decode-able with the help of CPUs which must be consumer-grade. Litecoin is similar to Bitcoin in many ways; its block generation rate is faster and provides faster transaction confirmation time. There is an increasing number of merchants other than developers that accept Litecoin.

There are a few Bitcoin alternatives out there

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Polkadot (DOT):

A unique proof-of-stake cryptocurrency is Polkadot, and that is aimed at providing interoperability to other blockchains. Relay chain is Polkadot’s core component that enables the interoperability of a variety of networks. It also permits for “parachains” or parallel blockchains with their tokens for specific-use cases.

Bitcoin Cash (BCH):

Another cryptocurrency that holds an important place in the history of cryptocurrencies is Bitcoin Cash because it is one of the most successful and earliest hard forks of Bitcoin. People can buy Bitcoin Cash with paybis with just a few clicks. In the world of cryptocurrency, a fork occurs as the result of arguments and debates between miners and developers. Due to the decentralized nature of cryptocurrencies, wholesale automatically changes to the code present behind the token and the mechanism for this process changes according to the particular cryptocurrency.

You can buy Bitcoin cash with just a few clicks

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Dogecoin:

Dogecoin is similar to Bitcoin and Ethereum in its working methodology. Dogecoin may be used for payments. The blockchain provides benefits to miners for their effort by making millions of new Dogecoins daily. It started as a meme but now is one of the most followed and bought cryptocurrencies online.

Chainlink (LINK):

Blockchains do not have the strength to connect to external applications in a trusted way. Chainlink’s decentralized oracle network fixes the gap between smart contracts, similar to ones on Ethereum, and data present outside it. This oracle enables smart contracts to communicate with data present outside. The execution can be done based on contracts based on data that Ethereum cannot connect it to.

A famous meme turned into cryptocurrency

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Binance Coin (BNB):

A utility cryptocurrency that works as a payment procedure for the fees linked with trading on the Binance Exchange is Binance Coin. The people who use the token for payment for the exchange can trade at a discounted rate. Blockchain of Binance Coin is also the platform that Binance’s decentralized exchange works on.

Stellar (XLM)

Stellar is an open blockchain network created to give solutions to an enterprise by connecting financial institutions to make large transactions. Large transactions between investment firms and banks—typically taking many days, involving several intermediaries, and imposing a good deal of money—can now be done instantaneously with no intermediaries. It costs little to nothing for users making the transaction.

Choose your cryptocurrency wisely

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Bitcoin vs. its Competitors:

Bitcoin is the most basic type of cryptocurrency, and it has been the most famous for a few years now. If you are likely to invest in cryptocurrencies, you might want to know that several other currencies can compete with Bitcoin in the future. It is mainly due to the reason that some of them have better algorithms than Bitcoin. Bitcoin’s market cap is the fundamental perspective that gives it a considerable benefit against its competition.  It is believed that someday, one of Ethereum, Binance Coin, Chainlink, Stellar, Litecoin, Dogecoin, or other similar cryptocurrencies could become the top on this list.

Always do your research!

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Conclusion:

With the progress of Bitcoin it can be anticipated to grow unpredictably as new services are discovered. Bitcoin owners can consider its utility to develop over time. The other owners of cryptocurrencies risk that the coin would fall into disuse significantly much greater. In other words, Bitcoin already has lapped in the cryptocurrency market and has a massive advantage for the environment and the capital. Bitcoin has two main elements that make an enormous contribution to this, corporate engagement and stability. They are both challenging and much more incredible to keep up with than with other cryptocurrencies. Moreover, developers are continuously trying to make the working algorithms of other cryptocurrencies better to mask off Bitcoin from the cryptocurrency market.

John Griffith

John Griffith is a young, passionate journalist. Writing has been John’s hobby ever since he was a boy. He has worked in some of the UK’s most successful news portals over the course of his professional career but found his forever home at Archzine.