COMPETITIORS OF BITCOIN:

Despite the growing number of cryptocurrencies (more than 100+) shaping the way for future cashless world, bitcoin-mania has showed no diminishing effects even though its competitors are gaining considerable attention in the market. They have been trying and developing strategies that bitcoin cannot fulfil. Bitcoin, in my point of view is considered as the Godfather of all cryptocurrencies and will continue to maintain its unique standing in these roles.

But as advancement and growth in technology can never be controlled nor predicted the stability of bitcoin may be affected when the competitors develop methods to overcome the specific niche operational roles of digital currency. For example, Ethereum looks at smart contracts, Zcash looks at anonymity etc.

The following are the major rivals of bitcoin that are rapidly on the rise:

1.    Ripple (XRP)

Ripple is a real-time global settlement network that offers international payments instantly with end-to-end transparency as well as with low-cost. It is considered to be bitcoin’s logical successor by certain industry experts. It was released by the former bitcoin developers in 2012. Unlike bitcoin, Ripple is not just a currency but a system through with any currency can be traded or transferred at lower costs. Also, mining is not required for Ripple unlike bitcoin. Because of this, it gains an advantage of reducing network latency and the usage of computing power.

Ripple believes that ‘distributing value is a powerful way to incentivize certain behaviors’ Also, it focuses on distributing mainly through business deals and also gives incentives to providers offering tighter spreads for payments so that the institutional buyers find a promising interest in investing in Ripple. 

 

2.     Ethereum (ETH)

Ethereum was launched in 2015, and is a decentralized software platform that supports Smart Contracts and Distributed Applications. These can be built and run in secured way such that it works without any downtime, control or interference from a third party. Ethereum initially launched a pre-sale for ether and received an amazing response during 2014. Ether, is a platform-specific cryptographic token, which are used for running the applications of Ethereum. It is like a vehicle for moving around on the Ethereum platform, and is mostly required by the developers who try and look forward in developing and run applications inside Ethereum.

3.     Litecoin (LTC)

After the release of Bitcoin, one of the cryptocurrencies which followed into the market was “Litecoin” which was introduced in 2011. It was often referred to as ‘silver to Bitcoin’s gold.’ Charlie Lee, a MIT graduate also a former engineer from Google, was the creator of litecoin. Litecoin is based on an open source global payment network and uses “scrypt” as a proof of work, the decoding can be as simple as with the help of CPUs of consumer grade. The open source network for global payments is not monitored by any central authority.

Although Litecoin is like Bitcoin in many ways, it has a faster block generation rate and hence offers a faster transaction confirmation. Other than developers, there are a growing number of merchants who accept Litecoin to process large volume of small transactions.

4.     Zcash

Zcash is another decentralized and open-source cryptocurrency released in the end of 2016. It came up with the concept of anonymity amongst all the emerging cryptocurrencies. With the saying, “If Bitcoin is like http for money, Zcash is https” they offer privacy and selective transparency of transactions. Hence like https, Zcash claims to have extra security with all the transactions being recorded and published on a blockchain. Certain details such as the sender, recipient and amount remain anonymous.

Zcash offers its users the choice of ‘shielded’ transactions, which allow for content to be encrypted using advanced cryptographic technique or zero-knowledge proof construction called a zk-SNARK developed by its team.

5.     IOTA (MIOTA)

IOTA is another newest contender in the cryptocurrency field, founded in 2015. It is an open-source distributed cryptocurrency focused on providing payments and communications between machines on Internet of Things securely. Unlike the commonly used technology of blockchain, IOTA uses directed acyclic graph (DAG) called Tangle, partnered with Microsoft, Fujitsu and several other companies. Considering itself as the first marketplace powered by the Internet of Things, IOTA provides transaction free regardless the size of the transaction. The number of transactions handled by the system can be unlimited as well as with faster confirmation times.