Bitcoin ethereum litecoin difference

Both are called the same thing which admittedly can be confusing for newbies.

Coinbase is the most popular, and easiest place to buy both bitcoin and ethereum. Other popular exchanges where you can buy Bitcoin and Ethereum include Gdax owned by Coinbase , or Kraken. For Bitcoin, the total supply cap is set at 21 million. A new BTC is generated approximately every 10 minutes.

And after no more new bitcoins will be created, which is why Bitcoin is said to be deflationary the opposite of inflation. When new bitcoins are created miners compete to get them. At the moment, around 96,, ETH are circulating. You can use Bitcoin to send or receive money or to purchase goods at popular sites like Overstock.

You can also hold your bitcoin as an investment, or for long term storage of value kind of like how people invest in gold. Ether is not as popular as BTC for purchasing goods. At the moment ether is mainly being used by developers building applications on top of it. Over time, and as more apps are developed, the value of ether will likely move from being speculative as it is now , to more useful in everyday life.

Exchanges like Coinbase are where you want to buy currency, but after you purchase the currency it is not advisable to leave your money at the exchange. Bitcoin, ether and many other types of coins can be stored on a cold storage option like Trezor or a Ledger. And also teach online with One Month. You can join over 60, students at One Month where we offer a day Learn Bitcoin and Ethereum course. The course covers blockchain and the top 5 most popular cryptocurrencies. Simply explained and easy to understand.

Litecoin 101

A nice read, i share it with my family to educate them on bitcoin. From my understanding, the point of issuing a token is for use a transfer of value within the network like file storage with Filecoin. Thanks for any clarifications! Which is partially what makes it confusing. Personally, I believe that ether is more than a currency. You can see this illustrated in two recent token sales by Filecoin and Blockstack.

These are both Y Combinator companies where I know the founders are some of the smartest people I know who are working to improving the future of how we think about the digital asset space. Very easy to understand and specially for newbies. I have read somewhere that Bitcoin is safer and more widely accepted.

It has more utility for the time being. But Ethereum is cheaper, and it has a much a higher ceiling considering its utility. Can you share your opinion which is better? Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance.

Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Over the past several years, public interest in cryptocurrencies has fluctuated dramatically. But with the advent of the s, investor interest in cryptos has surged. The main focus of this interest has been Bitcoin , which has long been the dominant name in cryptocurrency—not surprising since it was the first digital money to really catch on.

Since the founding of Bitcoin in , however, hundreds of other cryptocurrencies have entered the market. LTC currently trails behind Bitcoin as the 6th-largest digital currency by market cap. On the surface, Bitcoin and Litecoin have a lot in common. At the most basic level, they are both decentralized cryptocurrencies. Whereas fiat currencies such as the U. Litecoin was launched in by former Google engineer Charlie Lee, who announced the debut of the "lite version of Bitcoin" via a posted message on a popular Bitcoin forum. For this reason, Litecoin adopts many of the features of Bitcoin that Lee and other developers felt were working well for the earlier cryptocurrency, and changes some other aspects that the development team felt could be improved.

One important similarity between Bitcoin and Litecoin is that they are both proof of work ecosystems. That means the underlying process by which both cryptocurrencies are mined—that is, generated, authenticated, and then added to a public ledger, or blockchain—is fundamentally similar though not exactly the same, as we will see below.

For an investor, many of the basic elements of transacting with Bitcoin and Litecoin are very similar as well. Both of these cryptocurrencies can be bought via exchange or mined using a mining rig. Both require a digital or cold storage "wallet" in order to be safely stored between transactions. Furthermore, the prices of both cryptocurrencies have over time proven to be subject to dramatic volatility, depending upon factors ranging from investor interest to government regulations. One area in which Bitcoin and Litecoin differ significantly is in their market capitalization , the total dollar market value of all the outstanding coins.

Bitcoin as a network still dwarfs all other digital currencies. Another of the main differences between Bitcoin and Litecoin concerns the total number of coins that each cryptocurrency can produce. This is where Litecoin distinguishes itself. The Bitcoin network can never exceed 21 million coins, whereas Litecoin can accommodate up to 84 million coins.

In theory, this sounds like a significant advantage for Litecoin, but its real-world effects may ultimately prove to be negligible. This is because both Bitcoin and Litecoin are divisible into nearly infinitesimal amounts. In fact, the minimum quantity of transferable Bitcoin is one hundred millionth of a bitcoin 0. Users of either currency should, therefore, have no difficulty purchasing low-priced goods or services, regardless of how high the general price of an undivided single Bitcoin or Litecoin may become.

In November , IBM executive Richard Brown raised the prospect that some users may prefer transacting in whole units rather than in fractions of a unit, a potential advantage for Litecoin. Although technically transactions occur instantaneously on both the Bitcoin and Litecoin networks, time is required for those transactions to be confirmed by other network participants.

Litecoin was founded with the goal of prioritizing transaction speed, and that has proven an advantage as it has grown in popularity. According to data from Blockchain. In principle, this difference in confirmation time could make Litecoin more attractive for merchants. For example, a merchant selling a product in exchange for Bitcoin would need to wait nearly four times as long to confirm the payment as if that same product were sold in exchange for Litecoin. On the other hand, merchants can always opt to accept transactions without waiting for any confirmation at all.

The security of such zero-confirmation transactions is the subject of some debate. By far the most fundamental technical difference between Bitcoin and Litecoin are the different cryptographic algorithms that they employ. Bitcoin makes use of the longstanding SHA algorithm, whereas Litecoin makes use of a comparatively new algorithm known as Scrypt. The main practical significance of these different algorithms is their impact on the process of mining new coins. In both Bitcoin and Litecoin, the process of confirming transactions requires substantial computing power.

Some members of the currency network, known as miners, allocate their computing resources toward confirming the transactions of other users. In exchange for doing so, these miners are rewarded by earning units of the currency which they have mined. On the other hand, it protects the transaction by using a closed system and ensures a use case for those who hold the coin as an investment. Global recognition and speed are important to merchants who want to work internationally. XRP can process transactions per second with an average ledger settlement approval time of seconds.

This is in comparison to Ether, which takes an average of 13 seconds, and Bitcoin, which can take around 10 minutes. This speed makes XRP a practical currency for instant transactions in comparison to other leading cryptocurrencies. Mining, the process of verifying transactions in exchange for the coin, is how validators are compensated on the Ethereum and Bitcoin networks.

Contrary to some other coins, Ripple destroys coins with each validated transaction, as a transaction fee. In order to ensure this trust while remaining transparent, Ripple employs a blend of both centralized and decentralized protocols. Ripple Labs chooses which protocols validators must follow. Ripple users are not required to use these validators for transactions, although it is recommended. In addition, validators operate independently without needing to check in with a central system before updating their ledger.