Ever since the inception of Ethereum in 2014, countless experts have been asked “Is Ethereum better than Bitcoin?” With a little bit of digging, you can easily find some pretty vicious arguments on either side. We’re here to tell you one thing — it’s a no-contest. One is significantly better than the other, and you’ll know which and why by the time you’re done reading this.
Before we can compare the two, it’s important to at least have a general understanding of what Ethereum and Bitcoin even are.
What is Bitcoin?
Bitcoin is a worldwide digital payment system. It is the first cryptocurrency and also the most popular. There is no controlling authority in Bitcoin and all transactions are directly peer to peer and made on a system called a “blockchain”. It was created following the housing market crash of 2008, as a means to decentralize currency from one central authority to a global system, safe from financial crashes. Bitcoin is commonly referred to as “digital gold.” At the day of writing, it is worth $11,600 USD.
What is Ethereum?
Ethereum is, in a nutshell, a global supercomputer built on a blockchain. It has all of the financial and transactional features of bitcoin and much more. On top of just being a digital payment system to send and store money, Ethereum is also a platform that can run applications known as DApps (Decentralized Applications). There are three types of Dapps: Dapps that manage currency (think financial management), Dapps that use currency (think poker games), and Dapps that don’t use currency at all (think legal, government). The third type of DApp is expected to completely revamp entire industries and bring them into the 21st century.
…Now to answer the question
Is Ethereum Better Than Bitcoin?
Yes, Ethereum is Better Than Bitcoin by a longshot. There are a few reasons why Ethereum is better than Bitcoin, and we’ll get into them below.
Reason One — Development Team
As a whole, the Ethereum development community generally agrees with eachother and they all share a similar vision of where they see the technology going. The founder of the technology, Vitalik Buterin, has proven on multiple occasions his ability to thoughtfully lead the development in this direction.
In comparison, Bitcoin has no core development community. The development community constantly disagrees with eachother, and has on several occasions split up resulting in completely new currencies. See Bitcoin Cash, LiteCoin, and so on. The lack of a unified development team will continue to stagnate the expansion of Bitcoin, while Ethereum continues to pave its way forward.
Reason 2 — Technical Capabilities
As we spoke about earlier, Bitcoin is a digital transaction system while Ethereum is a worldwide supercomputer.
A metaphor hear pretty often and like is this:
Bitcoin is a 2001 Nokia flip phone. It is designed for one thing, making phone calls. It is perfectly adequate at making phone calls, but it can’t really do anything else. Ethereum on the other hand is like a modern smartphone. It makes phone calls too, but it also has an unlimited amount of features through downloadable apps.
Bitcoin is a transactional system, it makes transactions and can store value. Ethereum is a supercomputer built on a blockchain — it is a transactional system like bitcoin but it also has unlimited capabilities through the development of DApps.
Reason 3 — Transaction Speed and Cost
To send money in Bitcoin and Ethereum, the user has to pay a “gas” fee. This is the fee that pays for the computing power for sending your currency from A to B. As seen here, Bitcoin transactions cost significantly more than Ethereum transactions. At some intervals, Bitcoin is literally 75x more expensive to use.
In addition to being cheaper, Ethereum is also significantly faster than Bitcoin. As seen here, Ethereum transactions tend to be 20–40x faster than Bitcoin transactions.
Reason 4 — Institutional Investment and Support
If a friend ever asks you “Is ethereum better than bitcoin,” then look no further than reason 4. The Ethereum Enterprise Alliance is a collaboration between dozens of Fortune 500 companies that are currently investing resources into understanding and developing Ethereum related projects.
To name a few members of the EEA (Ethereum Enterprise Alliance):
Cisco, J.P. Morgan, Microsoft, Mastercard, Samsung, Santander, Toyota
Institutional adoption is monumental and continues to grow with Ethereum. This is completely unseen with Bitcoin, as Bitcoin doesn’t have the capabilities or development team that excite these institutions like Ethereum does.
Conclusion
Is Ethereum better than Bitcoin? YES! Ethereum is better than Bitcoin. We listed four reasons why, but the list could go on indefinitely. We at Eth Buddha could not be more excited for the future of this technology, both as an investment but also as a driver into the future.
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