Bitcoin, ethereum or litecoin: What is the best cryptocurrency for you?

A guide on the most famous cryptocurrencies.

Bitcoin detonated the birth of hundreds of cryptocurrencies.

Bitcoin was the first. Since its launch in 2009, it has become the most famous, exchanged and valuable cryptocurrency. But she is not the only one who plays in the city.

Litecoin followed in 2011. Created by Charles Lee, an engineer who later helped build Coinbase - the largest cryptocurrency market - Litecoin is based on the same code as bitcoin but with some adjustments designed to address two of the limitations of its predecessor: transaction speed and access to the mining process.

And in 2015, Ethereum made its debut incorporating the basic premise of Bitcoin's blockchain, but Litecoin's fastest transaction speed, and adding some of its own surprises - including the ability to process small pieces of code, called 'contracts' Smart '-, plus it came with its own virtual person-to-person network, unlike dedicated servers or a mining platform.

Coinbase support for bitcoin, litecoin and ethereum - as well as Bitcoin Cash, a new branch of the Bitcoin blockchain created in August 2017 - helped these cryptocurrencies to remain the most visible and best capitalized. To complete the dynamic list of the 10 most capitalized cryptocoins in the market, there are some well established and new ones that have just arrived as ripple, cardan, neo, stellar, eos and IOTA.

In order to present you some of the main concepts that prevail behind the growing population of cryptocurrencies, we will take a closer look at the technologies behind litecoin and ethereum, how they compare with bitcoin and what each one brings to the table for possible investors. , data miners and operators.

Litecoin

Litecoin is closely based on bitcoin - they are created with the same underlying code - but with some distinctive settings. The central difference is that litecoin is extracted using the Scrypt algorithm, which is based on mathematical calculations that are simpler than those used by the bitcoin SHA-256 algorithm. As a result, in contrast to the specialized, expensive, high-energy mining equipment required to mine bitcoin, you can extract litecoin with a decent laptop or PC, especially if it is boosted with a powerful graphics card.

And since Scrypt is mathematically less complex than SHA-256, litecoin extraction is much faster than bitcoin mining. A block of litecoin takes only 2.5 minutes to form, compared to the 10 minutes it takes a block of bitcoin is taken. Therefore, litecoin transactions are also faster to process and confirm.

Ethereum

Like litecoin, it is based on the same fundamental concept of blockchain as bitcoin, with blocks and additions, but ethereum adds its own distinctive touch. Founded in 2014 through an initial offer of currencies, ethereum sees itself as "a hugely powerful shared global infrastructure" that, in addition to serving as a digital currency, executes special applications called "smart contracts".

This collective and distributed computer network, called "virtual machine ethereum", can, in a certain sense, be rented. Participants who consume computing power pay with tokens, called ether; those who contribute with the processing power can earn them. Of course, buyers and sellers can simply exchange ether independently of these activities.

Consider that bitcoin mining is similar to that of thousands of chefs who compete feverishly to prepare a new and extremely complicated dish - and only the first to offer a perfect version of it receives the payment. In the ethereum kitchen, the miners serve as the owner of the restaurant, compensated for providing the infrastructure so that Ether chefs can invent new types of cuisine.

In fact, a group of companies and universities has formed a non-profit organization expressly to legitimize ethereum; promote it as an open source platform and not as a commercial company per se; and develop and support those applications that run on it. And these are not temporary startups, we are talking about important technology players like Intel and Microsoft and financial giants like JPMorgan and Credit Suisse.

Which cryptocurrency is the most valuable?

Bitcoin is still the most visible and commercialized cryptocurrency most frequently. After a notable takeoff in November 2017, it reached just US $ 20,000 by the end of December 2017, and after remaining at US $ 15,000 for a few weeks, it lost another 50 percent of its value after regulators South Koreans publicly expressed the ban on these coins. The price of litecoin, sometimes known as the "silver" for the "gold" bitcoin, followed a valuation trend similar to that of bitcoin and now around US $ 160. Although the three currencies have increased in value during the last 12 months, ethereum has traced its own behavioral route, increasing its value in June 2017 and exceeding US $ 1,000 at the beginning of January 2018.

Which one is better for you?

If only it were that easy. No one knows if any cryptocurrency will increase its value - or even be maintained within a year (although we believe that those described in this article will achieve both). None of them is regulated (yet) and only people with the highest risk capacity must enter the cryptocurrency market. That said, there are significant differences between these three that could be used to form a rational basis for investing or exploring in one rather than another.