Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin (LTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) are among the top 5 cryptocurrencies in existence today. These cryptocurrencies all came into existence at different times and are championed by different teams with varying goals. Despite the timeline, teams, and visions, these cryptocurrencies have a few things in common. Let’s jump in and explore the similarities and differences of Bitcoin, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash.
To start with, we must understand that all three of these are part of an ecosystem that is regarded to still be in its infant stage. All three cryptos mentioned above are not finished products yet. Their core teams are busy creating updates while the communities continue to push for more user adoption.
Our comparisons of these cryptos will revolve around their present conditions, while also incorporating a bit of history. Before we take a closer look at the similarities and differences of Bitcoin, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash, let’s take a brief look into how they were created.
Bitcoin (BTC)
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Bitcoin (BTC) was created by a person, or group, that go by the name Satoshi Nakamoto. The first signs of Bitcoin appeared at the end of 2008 as a whitepaper titled: “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System“. On 3 January 2009, the first Bitcoin transaction was carried out on the Bitcoin network, now widely recognised as Bitcoin’s launch date.
The idea of Bitcoin was to provide an alternative payment system that takes away control from centralized bodies. Hence, the Bitcoin network was decentralized and not managed by any single entity. Another interesting aspect of Bitcoin’s creation was that the code was open source. This hints that its creator knew and expected modifications and improvements on the project to be made down the road, and that is exactly what happened.
Litecoin (LTC)
Unlike Bitcoin, the founder of Litecoin is known to all. His name is Charlie Lee, and he used to be an engineer at Google and Coinbase. Also unlike Bitcoin, Litecoin was not built from scratch. Rather, Lee explored the open source nature of Bitcoin and modified certain aspects of the code through a process known as “Forking”. Therefore, Litecoin is known as a “Bitcoin fork”.
Lee’s goal was to achieve a faster cryptocurrency with lower transaction fees that can be used by anyone across the globe. So by October 2011, Lee finished tweaking certain aspects of the code and Litecoin (LTC) was launched.
Bitcoin Cash (BCH)
8 years after the launch of Bitcoin, the scalability debate became more intense. The core issue behind Bitcoin scaling revolved around the block size, which was at some point adjusted to 1MB in order to secure the network. With scalability becoming an issue of concern, a part of the community favored increasing the block size. Another segment of the community argued that increasing the block size with make it more difficult for regular users to mine Bitcoin, making it centralized.
Unable to come to a consensus, Roger Ver led a group to carry out a fork on the Bitcoin blockchain. His group believed that the block size should be increased. This happened in August 2017, and that was how Bitcoin Cash (BCH) was created.
The following table gives us a summary of some of these cryptocurrencies varying attributes:
Conclusion
Often, when people want to find out the differences between certain cryptocurrencies, they do so with the intention of finding out the one(s) that best suit their unique goals. Speed and cost of transactions are two crucial elements that can determine how much Bitcoin, or any other cryptocurrency, finds adoption.
Several forks, which include SegWit and the abandoned SegWit2x, have all been motivated by this same issue of scalability. Even lightning network (LN), which is another layer altogether that enables atomic swaps, also targets scalability and adoption.
While we are concerned about Bitcoin adoption, it is also important to pay attention to the security of the network. Instant transaction will definitely encourage Bitcoin adoption. But what is the use of having your transactions executed quickly when your funds are not well secured. This is where innovations like the tap platform are playing a crucial role. Such platforms have designed a way of offering instant value during transactions, while making sure that customers’ funds are safe.
Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin (LTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), and any other cryptocurrencies, can serve unique purposes. Be it for investment purposes or a payment vehicle, their various unique qualities attend to the needs of any user. This could be part of Satoshi Nakamoto’s vision when he made the Bitcoin code open source.
Being able to buy any of these cryptocurrencies easily on tap, or trading between them on the same platform, makes it easy for a user to explore all their unique strengths. By doing this, you can combine the similarities and differences of Bitcoin, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash, putting it to beneficial use. Therefore, rather than thinking of individual cryptocurrencies as separate entities, users can choose to keep a “portfolio” mentality. With platforms like tap, everything can happen in one place through a flexible and adaptable system.
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