Bitcoin may be the world’s best-known and most-used cryptocurrency, but it has been under intense pressure of late, having forked once already just a few short weeks earlier. As expected, the currency lost quite a bit of market-cap after the fork, but more trouble may well be on the horizon for the world’s most popular cryptocurrency. According to recent reports, not only is the Bitcoin blockchain likely to see a further fork going forward, some researchers are now also claiming that Bitcoin transactions may not actually be as anonymous as many believe them to be. While it’s unlikely that any of the controversies will actually undermine Bitcoin’s standing as the world’s preeminent cryptocurrency, many are wondering if they can switch to other options for their online payments in order to maintain their privacy. That being the case, here are the top 8 Bitcoin alternative cryptocurrencies you can use:
The Best Bitcoin Alternatives Out There
- Ethereum (ETH)
Like Bitcoin, Ethereum is an open-source, decentralized blockchain-based computing platform that is known mostly for its own cryptocurrency token called ‘Ether’. The platform enables users to create a tradeable digital token that can be used as a currency, or even a central bank that can actually issue currency. It also enables developers to build and run smart contracts and distributed applications without any outside interference. Ethereum went live only a couple years ago, but within a year of becoming operational, was hard-forked into two blockchains after the infamous attack on the DAO project, resulting in the creation of Ethereum (ETH) and Etherium Classic (ETC). With most of the original Etherium backers, including founders Vitalik Buterin and Gavin Wood, moving onto the new Ethereum (ETH) blockchain, it currently has a market-cap of over $31 billion, second only to the mighty Bitcoin, making it a leading Bitcoin alternative.
- Litecoin (LTC)
Litecoin is a decentralized peer-to-peer cryptocurrency that’s powered by open source software released under the MIT/X11 license in October, 2011 by former Googler, Charles Lee. It was originally inspired by Bitcoin and, has quite a few similarities with the world’s most popular cryptocurrency, but the adoption of Segregated Witness and Lightning Network has allowed Litecoin to reduce block generation times to about 2.5 minutes (compared to Bitcoin’s 10 Minutes), thereby reducing bottlenecks and facilitating payments about four times faster than Bitcoin. One of the best features about Litecoin is Wallet encryption, which allows users to secure their wallets in a way that allows them to view their account balance and prior transactions, but are required to enter a passcode to be able to actually spend their money.
Litecoin is one of the largest and most popular Bitcoin alternatives right now, given that the currency currently has a market-cap of over $2.5 billion, with its valuation hovering around the $50 mark. Like Bitcoins, users can also ‘mine’ Litecoins at home, with each block worth as many as 25 Litecoins currently, although, that number gets reduced 50% every four years. Overall, the Litecoin network is expected to produce around 84 million Litecoins, which is four times as many as that of Bitcoin. Litecoin was also the first cryptocurrency to implement the Scrypt algorithm in an attempt to end the prevalence of GPU-based mining, and although that didn’t quite happen, Scrypt-based currencies like Litecoin and Dogecoin still offer the advantage of possibly increasing the dividends and computational efficiency of mining them.
- Dogecoin (Doge)
Dogecoin probably has the most interesting backstory of all cryptocurrencies combined. Back in December 2013, the currency was introduced as a bit of a joke by combining Bitcoin with a viral internet meme called ‘Doge’, which featured the picture of a Shiba Inu accompanied by a multicolored text in broken English, written in Comic Sans font. Like Litecoin and unlike Bitcoin, Dogecoin also uses Scrypt instead of the more traditional SHA-256 algorithm, potentially allowing “merged mining” with other compatible currencies. While some SHA-256 currencies also allow the practice, it’s relatively much less common.
Even though it started off as a joke, Dogecoin is today valued at over $197 million, and is accepted by over 200 merchants worldwide. However, with well over 110 billion coins mined already, and 5 billion more to come every year from now, the value of each individual Dogecoin is a fraction of many of its peers, hovering at around a fifth of an U.S. cent. While that is significantly lower than many of its larger and more established peers like Bitcoin and Ethereum, the platform’s already got a dedicated following, whose main objective it is to ensure that it remains a medium of exchange for the long term rather than a short-term investment.
- Monero (XMR)
Originally launched as a fork of Bytecoin in 2014, Monero (formerly BitMonero) is yet another open-source cyptocurrency that has already gained a steady following since its release. It is a proof-of-work cryptocurrency that works on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and FreeBSD. Monero isn’t actually based on the Bitcoin protocol, unlike most of the cryptocurrencies on our list today, but on the CryptoNote protocol, which has major algorithmic differences with Bitcoin in terms of its obfuscation. Like Bitcoin, however, Monero also focuses on privacy and decentralization, but unlike the world’s most popular cryptocurrency, it also allows scalablity by not having any hard-coded block size limit. To prevent excessive increases in block sizes, a block reward/penalty mechanism is built into the protocol itself
One crucial difference between Bitcoin and Monero is that while Bitcoin mining requires high-end GPUs, the CryptoNight algorithm used by Monero is designed to be used by regular, consumer-level CPUs. As of Friday, August 25th, the total market-cap of Money is around the $1.5 billion mark, with each coin valued at over $98. Monero developers are working on a lot of projects currently, including ‘RingCT’, which is based on Greg Maxwell’s work on confidential transactions in Bitcoin and, would be a way to hide or obscure transaction amounts in Monero