On paper, one could argue Bitcoin is better than any other cryptocurrency, token, or digital asset because those other offerings would not be around, were it not for Bitcoin. In this regard, the popular cryptocurrency has a leg up over any other currency in existence. Bitcoin will always be the first “major” cryptocurrency, and it has been around for 9 years now. Ethereum, on the other hand, only came to market a few years ago.
That being said, Ethereum offers some interesting pieces of technology. Smart contracts have been quite a revolutionary technology, although the same concept will be part of the Bitcoin protocol soon. Bitcoin has a disturbing lack of decentralized application possibilities, which makes Ethereum seem “better” in this regard. Then again, there is no “major” decentralized application in existence to be embraced by mainstream society either. Ethereum has a technological edge over Bitcoin, but until it is used by the masses, it is a matter of semantics.
The Big Picture
It’s been one of the most interesting months in the history of cryptocurrency. The price of Bitcoin has soared up to nearly $800 (then dropped to $675 as $19 million in BTC hit the market) as the reward for mining a block is soon set to be halved. Ethereum created what is arguably the world’s most complex multi-million dollar financial instrument, the DAO, only to see it hacked through a combination of flaws in its “smart contract” and the language it was implemented in. Meanwhile, the average size of a block in the Bitcoin blockchain nears 90% of the 1MB hard limit.
