Ethereum vs Bitcoincash: A Case In Point

Have you ever carried out a transaction on the ethereum blockchain? Well, personally I have not, but I do have a friend that deals in what people have christined Altcoins or shitcoins and most of the time he does these transactions in hundreds of dollars. The reason been that, these coins have the tendency to pump astronomically, something that makes bitcoin look like a waste of time. I lost have lost count of how many times he has told me he bought a certain coin for say $300, only to pay a gas fee worth around $200 just to transfer it. Can you believe this sh*t?

Well, that's not what I want to talk about. Lately I have been seeing so much complaints online over the high gas fee on the ethereum network, and you have to wonder what the developers were thinking when they put such a system in place.

So, for the past few days, there were talks of a certain organisation called ConstitutionDAO - short for "decentralised autonomous organisation" hoping to participate in the auction of an extremely rare privately-owned copy of the original printing of the US constitution. They would go on to start a fundraiser few days to the auction.

Their reason for wanting to buy it was to ensure some sort of public ownership, which was to be dealinated according to the amount of money donated, almost like buying a share of a company on the floor of the stock exchange. The fact that they came together to form the group with such aim few days to the auction in itself meant there was going to be a number of mistakes, to be corrected as they went.

Then they did it; they decided to accept the donation in Ethereum! Why they did that, I don't know, as there are multitudes of tokens and coins they could have used. So it was that the donations were made by those interested, a number that ran to 17,437 donors with a median donation of 206.26. This was quite a lot of transactions over a few days, just for one group, not to mention the so many other transactions on the Ethereum network in that time period. My point is which such usage, the demand/supply build(higher bidder wins) system of the Ethereum network must have resulted in quite costly gas fees.

According to the BBC "The Ethereum network records its transactions on the blockchain, the same basic technology idea that powers other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, and like Bitcoin mining, it requires computational power to run.

"Gas" is the fee paid to those who run the computer systems to facilitate transactions. And it changes price based on supply and demand, that means that at times, it can be much more expensive to make any kind of transaction, depending on how busy the Ethereum network is and the network has recently seen high usage - and high gas prices"

If everyone of these poeple were to pay an average of a $100 gas fee per transaction, that will amount to $1.74million in gas fees. Just imagine that! Using $1.7million to transfer what amounted to around $40million.

That's not where the drama sets in yet. After participating in the auction and losing to a private investor, they had the responsibility of keeping to their promise to make a refund to everyone who participated in the donation.

The Big Question

It was then it probably dawned on them that there was a question yet to be answered. Who was going to pay the gas fees required for the refund? There was a number of possible solution. Pay the gas fee from the fund and not everybody will get their money in full, or pay some in full and leave the others dry. It was a messy situation. Finally, the decision to have individual donors to pay the required gas fee themselves was reached. Simply put, if I paid $150 dollar to make a $500 donation, I will likely have to pay the same amount just to get the $500 back. That's $300 down the drain. It's quite a laughable situation, but who's checking?

Now, if I was using bitcoincash instead, I would have to pay no more than $0.01 as gas fee regardless of the amount I might be donating. Put that against 17,437 donors, you have the total donation gas fee at just $174. That same amount would have easily covered the refund and the total money in the wind as gas fees would have been no more than $350 max. That's so negligible that one guy could have easily just covered for it. In other words, you would have made transactions in the tune of multiples of millions of dollars and it would have cost you a meagre $350. This is simply one of the strength of BCH and why it is better positioned as a crypto that will stand the test of time.

I mean, put against each other, the BCH network is faster, cheaper, more scalable, has a better community, better roadmap for mass adoption and more commitment from the developers. The release of the smartBCH sidechain has not made Ethereum case any better as it is doing quite well even in it's early days.

Think about it, for how long will people be willing to pay so much for so little value, when they can get it for almost nothing somewhere else, not to mention how the unreasonable charges been one of the reasons cryptocurrencies were made to challenge the world financial system.

Most cryptocurrencies today have lost sight of the original intention the crypto world was born as well as even their own individual roadmap. Bitcoincash on the other hand is doing everything to position itself for the realisation of the goal of mass adoption. This we can see in small pockets, but clearly we see the potentials.

With the way other tokens and coins are becoming speculative instruments, I have got to say, only BCH and a few other tokens have what it takes to be there in the near and distant future.

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