It was 2017 when I first heard about Bitcoin, and when I joined this platform readcash in 2019, I learned that it is the very first digital cash created based on the idea stated on the whitepaper released by Satoshi Nakamoto, who is known as the mysterious creator of Bitcoin. Since its inception, it's been holding the spotlight for more than a decade now and has grown phenomenally.
According to Investopedia, when Bitcoin was launched in 2009, it had a zero price but it jumped to $.09 in July 2010. It continuously rose to $1 in April 2011 and reached $29.60 in June. Thus making a 2,960% increase within three months. Any investors would be hooked by its unexpected tremendous increase.
The idea about Bitcoin and its network easily spread throughout the world, driving more investors daily, becoming more popular, and continuing to evolve, which drives its price to rise day by day. And the innovation of blockchain and Bitcoin's network attracted more developers and it became a subject for open-source studies. Then more cryptocurrencies have been created.
More cryptocurrencies popped out in the market following the idea of the cryptography techniques seen in Bitcoin that could make it a possible alternative medium of exchange, and because of its decentralized nature, transparency, convenience, cost-effectiveness, and anonymity.
Looking back at Bitcoin Whitepaper, it strongly stated that Satoshi Nakamoto's main goal in creating Bitcoin is to mitigate the double-spend issues and give a solution to the global financial crisis.
He proposed Bitcoin as Peer-to-peer Electronic Cash Systemwherein transactions can be made directly without the intervention of any intermediaries, such as Central Banks and other Financial Institutions, in a fast, efficient, decentralized, and permissionless manner.
The popularity gained by Bitcoin and the idea of its network had stimulated the launch of hundreds to thousands of other cryptocurrencies, which we called Altcoins. At the time of writing, the crypto market already has more than 15,000 cryptocurrencies based on Coinmarketcap.
Being the very first cryptocurrency, Bitcoin maintained its position on top. And based on Coinmarketcap at the time of writing, it has:
Marketcapilzation: $907,142,575,857
Circulating Supply: 18,901,193 BTC
All-Time High: $68,789.6
What makes Bitcoin unique is that it only has 21,000,000 BTC coins and works through a decentralized process called "mining." And its scarcity says to make it a valuable coin similar to gold.
Moreover, it is not backed by any institutions or the government which makes it protected against government manipulation. It is secure and convenient using its peer-to-peer system and a Proof-of-work consensus mechanism.
The Bitcoin system runs Bitcoin nodes that are stored in a ledger called Blockchain. Miners need to decipher the cryptographic puzzle and pass through complicated validation steps. Then the valid solution will be rewarded with new Bitcoin, and the mining process will continue.
Bitcoin mining is so complicated and the chance of solving the complex math problem is like betting a lottery, a trial and error case. Moreover, it is also time-consuming, energy-consuming, and costly, yet rewarding once you have successfully gone through the complex processes and get your new Bitcoin reward.
To know more about Bitcoin mining, you can visit the reference above.
To mitigate the double-spend mentioned in Bitcoin's whitepaper, the decentralized process of mining with Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus through solving complicated cryptographic puzzles is done where all other nodes are validating the new transaction and making sure that the solution is valid and the origin deserves a reward.
But nowadays, those who can afford to set up the materials needed for mining like computers, an application particularly designed to mine cryptocurrencies called ASIC, and other needed materials can certainly mine Bitcoin, even at home. However, expect the expensive cost of energy consumption and sometimes the reward isn't enough to compensate for the expense used for energy consumption.
CREATE A NEW VERSION OF BITCOIN
The release of Bitcoin source code eventually spread throughout the world, and a lot of programmers, developers, and even establishments studied the code to know how they could benefit from it. Many have tried to copy Bitcoin, while others created their own tokens inspired by Bitcoin code.
In 2011, the second cryptocurrency was created called Litecoin by a former Google engineer named Charlie Lee. Litecoin was created from copying the code of Bitcoin and was even called the "lite version of Bitcoin." Just like Bitcoin, it is peer-to-peer (P2P), decentralized, and notcontrolled by any central authority, but it works differently using a cryptographic algorithm called Scrypt as a Proof-of-Work (PoW) scheme. Reference: Investopedia
In 2015, another cryptocurrency inspired by Bitcoin created by Vitalik Buterin was launched, the Ethereum, which is popular for its innovation. And it is now the second-largest cryptocurrency based on its market capitalization and is said to be the next Bitcoin.
Is Ethereum the true Bitcoin? Based on Bitcoin's whitepaper, NO, it can't be Bitcoin. Bitcoin was mainly created to be an alternative to traditional currencies and has a fixed supply of 21 million. Ethereum on the other hand is a programmable blockchain that was mainly created as a medium of payment for apps and programmatic contracts built on the Ethereum network. Reference: Investopedia
Litecoin and Ethereum aren't Bitcoin. There are similarities, yet differ in other aspects that make the two coins different from Bitcoin and stand out on their own.
As the demand for Bitcoin increases, several issues arise as well. And due to these issues faced by Bitcoin specifically in scalability, which lowers its transaction speed, some miners opted to set new protocols, proposed bigger blocks, and follow different paths. That is how Bitcoin's hard fork began.
Since the inception of Bitcoin, a plethora of hard forks were conducted, inherited Bitcoin's original program and concept, and new coins claimed to be the true Bitcoin. However, others were abandoned and failed to prove it and some remain in the market up to date.
Bitcoin hard forks include:
Bitcoin Cash, the most successful hard fork has then undergone several forks due to disputes among developers and they proposed Bitcoin SV and Bitcoin ABC with different protocols and visions.
Following the vision of Satoshi Nakamoto, he aimed the real Bitcoin not only to solve the issue of double-spending but also to be a medium of exchange that people can be used in buying their daily needs, rather than a store of value.
And to be a medium of exchange, it should have a bigger block size to process faster and more transactions daily. Moreover, Bitcoin's small block size only makes the transaction slower, yet, its transaction fee keeps on increasing as its price and demand increase. And this only makes Bitcoin affordable for rich people.
Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash are both decentralized, with a Peer-to-Peer system, with Proof-of-Work consensus, and a finite supply of 21 million and its scarcity says to make them valuable like gold.
However, to be the future of digital cash and an alternative to fiat currency, one should act as a medium of exchange, not a store of value. In Bitcoin's case, many are buying and holding for long-term investment, rather than spending due to its high transaction fee and low transaction speed.
Even though Bitcoin is now accepted as legal tender in some places like El Salvador and accepted by thousands of merchants across the globe. We can't deny the fact that a cryptocurrency with smaller block size and slow transaction speed can not cater to the daily spendings of millions of people transacting across the world.
And who wants to buy a cup of coffee with a transaction fee higher than its price?
The real Bitcoin was created to solve the global financial crisis especially for the poor, to be used as an alternative to fiat currency and medium of exchange, and was not made as a store of value or investment vehicle of the rich people.Moreover, it has been proven that the Bitcoin network is too slow and too volatile to make it an option for global digital payment, realistically.
People are only being blinded by its high price and because it can give them higher investment returns. Yet, they are being blinded by the fact that it does not follow the original vision of Bitcoin created by Satoshi Nakamoto, and can not be the future digital cash.
And Bitcoin Cash is the only crypto that followed the vision of real Bitcoin and solved the issues of Bitcoin Core (BTC). It is only young compared to its precedent. The only thing we need so the world would realize that real Bitcoin is Bitcoin Cash is mass adoption!
And it seems that I tackled two Myth Busting topics here: (1) Anyone can make a new Bitcoin and (2) There can be only one true Bitcoin, all others are fake.
To know more about this contest, just check the given link above.
This content is just based on my own research and understandings. I don't have the intention to alter the given information of the mentioned matter. Please refer to the given links for the references.
Unfortunately, BTC has become something that they only want to store for the future, many are not interested in making transfers with it. Just wait for the price to be high enough to make a profit.
There is only one true bitcoin and that is bitcoincash. For just two simple reasons, lower transaction fees and faster transactions. Hence other altcoins are nothing close to the development of BCH because it follows the real purpose for which Bitcoin was initially created.
No cryptocurrency will permanently be at the number one spot. Those few cryptocurrencies would survive that can continually improve their scaling performance, i.e., time and fees per transaction.
Wew, mejo masakit talaga sa ulong intindihin minsan basta crypto topic, basta ang alam ko nasa kay Bitcoincash na ang lahat support lang sana ng nga big people ang kulang.
This article gives me additional knowledge to BCH I can see the work of the BCH over BTC. I’ve see the evolution of BCH and BTC. I dont even know that the BTC is Bitcoin core. thanks for your good research.
I have lots of learning due to this article, I was making a research last month regarding BCH and I didn't even know this thing, I'm thankful that you share this knowledge to us. I think this kind of topic is familiar to me since it has the same concept with the article a year ago which got a 10,000 dollars from sir Marc. A big applause to you ate Jane.❤❤
I finally understand the evolution better, but a question remains if you don't mind me asking, from your research, do you reckon the value of BTC crashing if the scalability issue remains the same?
Bitcoin might lose its dominating position if its scalability issues won't be solved. It's just staying on top because it's the very first crypto and has the highest price, thus giving a high investment return to its holders and more people will hold it. But if it will stay the same in the future, more issues might arise that might drive its value to crash, and people might just go with cryptos with a better solution... BCH is the best alternative to it, while Ethereum has the best innovation.
To me o believed that bitcoin only has an affiliate which is carved out from Bitcoin. Despite the name, we have Bitcoin Cash, litecoin if I'm not mistaken.
This is why we have the ethereum network and I believe it is in its own and not on the Bitcoin network.
I joined Read.cash few months ago, so before I never knew this much about Bitcoin which I learned today. Thank you for this information and there is a no doubt, BCH is the king of all.
From start of Bitcoin to the present era, we are still finding the concept of real bitcoin in BTC. Although all other crypto chased the BTC but censorship and BTC manipulator are so cunning and arrogant they crashed the concept of Bitcoin. So I kinda only trust on BCH ignoring all the crypto in dustbin.
This is really an interesting and good one, I'd like to know if I can still put in my entry for the competition tho...
Thanks for the enlightenment