Bitcoin Alternatives To Look At In 2020
If you are looking for some great Bitcoin alternative to invest in, then you are in the right place.
However, I am of a strong belief that Bitcoin cannot have an alternative, but I will save this discussion for another date.
The crypto market is always expanding, and almost daily, a new blockchain project is getting introduced. But still, Bitcoin continues to be the darling of crypto investors.
However, there are many other cryptocurrencies, which has risen to prominence and is giving a fierce competition to Bitcoin in terms of returns and utility.
I have curated a list of Bitcoin alternatives that holds great value and has good chances of soaring high in the time to come.
Best Alternatives To Bitcoin Currency
| Alternatives To Bitcoin | Quick Buy Links |
| Litecoin [Recommended] | Buy Now |
| Dash | Buy Now |
| Ethereum | Buy Now |
| Zcash | Buy Now |
| Monero | Buy Now |
| Grin | Buy Now |
| Bitcoin Cash | Buy Now |
Litecoin
Litecoin is among the first of the few cryptocurrencies to believe in the vision of Satoshi Nakamoto, the father of Bitcoin. Launched in 2011, by Charlie Lee, a former Google engineer, and an MIT graduate, Litecoin is often referred to as silver in comparison to Bitcoin’s gold collation.
It is also a derivative of a hard fork of Bitcoin blockchain and is based on the open-source global payment network. It uses a “scrypt” algorithm for proof of work consensus, which can be decoded using consumer-grade CPUs.
The visible difference between Litecoin and Bitcoin is its faster block generation rate, which helps in the quick settlement process. The transaction settlement time for Litecoin is 2.5 minutes compared to 10 minutes for Bitcoin.
Dash
Based on Bitcoin software, Dash is one of the few cryptocurrencies, that is designed for everyday use by individuals and businesses. In a short period, it has proven its significance in the cryptosphere. Launched in 2014 as Darkcoin and later got rebranded as Dash, it stands for “digital cash.”
Dash is an open-source cryptocurrency and is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). It is run by a subset of users, called masternodes that can help you make your transactions almost untraceable.
The one more advantage of Dash is, it can be mined using your existing CPU or GPU. The transactions made using Dash is much cheaper and faster than Bitcoin.
Ethereum
Ethereum is the second-most popular and valuable cryptocurrency in the circuit. It offers the benefit of both cryptocurrency and a platform that assists in building and run decentralized applications (DApps). Its cryptographic token Ether is the force behind the platform.
Launched in 2015, Ethereum provided the much-needed element to the cryptosphere and ushered a new era of crypto-economy in the form of initial coin offerings or ICOs. It helps developers to build decentralized applications that are believed to censorship-resistant- a much-needed feature in today’s world.
More than being preferred to be called as a cryptocurrency, it describes itself as a global, open-source platform for decentralized applications. Also, the Ethereum community is the largest and most active blockchain community in the world, helping it to improve its architecture continuously.
Bitcoin Cash
Talking about Bitcoin alternatives and not discussing the Bitcoin Cash will be a great injustice to the Bitcoin project itself. An outcome of a hard fork of Bitcoin blockchain in August 2017, Bitcoin Cash, was created to eliminate the shortfalls in Bitcoin. The hard fork was aimed at fulfilling the original promise of Bitcoin “peer-to-peer electronic cash.”
The spin-off resulted in a greater block size of 8 MB, which helped to increase the transaction speed, addressing the issue of scalability.
Following another hard fork in November 2018, the block size further increased to 32MB. Alongside, it also solved the problem of higher transaction costs, enabling the transfer of money for pennies.
It highly centralized according to me, but for sure, it has a decent fan following the market; that’s why it is here on my list too.
Zcash
Comparatively, a new cryptocurrency than its peers, Zcash described itself as a privacy-protecting digital currency and developed to overcome the privacy flaws in Bitcoin.
It provides enhanced privacy features to users compared to any other cryptocurrencies and ensures total privacy and confidentiality of transactions on its blockchain. The company states that the transactions are auditable, but disclosure is entirely under the participant’s control.
Because Zcash uses zero-knowledge proofs to validate transactions, its blockchain finds greater practical utility and adoption among businesses and large corporations.
Monero
Monero is the most secure, private, and untraceable cryptocurrency and finds many takers on the dark web. Launched in April 2014, Monero focuses on fungibility, privacy, and decentralization.
It uses obfuscated public ledger (extremely difficult to understand) where anybody can broadcast or send a transaction. Still, it will be tough for an observer to determine the source and destination of the transaction.
Apart from privacy, Monero is a highly collaborative project with no connection to any ICO or IEO. Meaning, it is a highly decentralized cryptocurrency, which is continuously upping its game of anonymous transactions. Lastly, Monero can easily be mined using consumer-grade CPU or GPU.
Grin
One of the newest cryptocurrencies in the block, Grin, was launched in January 2019. A privacy-focused and highly scalable cryptocurrency that is based on the newly introduced MimbleWimble protocol, that supports electronic transactions without censorship and restrictions.
The grin was developed to overcome all the shortcomings in Bitcoin, like the privacy and scalability issues. Therefore, it can be called as an improved version of Bitcoin. Apart from Bitcoin, other nearest competitors are Monero and Zcash.
It aims to be used more like currency for daily exchange rather than a store of value, which is entirely different from Bitcoin’s idea. And, also to keep the value of Grin stable, it uses a linear supply schedule of inflation meaning, the overall supply of coins is unlimited.
Conclusion
As we all know, Bitcoin is the star of cryptocurrencies and how it holds a significant value over the crypto ecosystem. Because, for many, it is the start and end of the cryptosphere.
However, there are many alternatives to Bitcoin, which are much superior in terms of technicalities and utilities. But I don’t believe the game of crypto dominance is only about the superior tech.
We will get to find this in the next decade for sure because by then, market forces would have decided the direction cryptosphere takes.
But still, you tell us which alternative to Bitcoin you find the best? Which one you think has a good chance of soaring in 2020, let us know in the comment box.
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