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Alternative cryptocurrency to Bitcoin

Bitcoin, the very first peer-to-peer digital money protocol is... a bit slow in performance (10-minute blocks), a bit slow in development, and most importantly for you, may come with high transaction fees.

There is nothing wrong with Bitcoin. But other interesting alternative projects offer more new and innovative features.

Litecoin

Litecoin is pretty similar to Bitcoin as the GitHub repository of Litecoin is legit just a fork of Bitcoin. The two main benefits are the fact Litecoin is a lot less busy due to the lack of gamblers (aka investors). Second, the Litecoin blockchain has a 'Mimble Wimble Extention Block' (aka MWEB). This MWEB feature isn't enabled by default but with a little knowledge you can enable this to have a more anonymous Litecoin experience.

Ethereum

Ethereum has gained popularity among various communities, including a significant number of hipsters. This blockchain uses the 'Ethereum Virtual Machine' which is turing complete (unlike Bitcoin or Litecoin). This means more sophisticated code (often referred to as 'smart contracts') can run in the Ethereum protocol. These 'smart contracts' are well known for the creation of ERC20 (fungible tokens, like WETH, USDT, USDC, DAI, WBTC, ...) and ERC721 (Non Fungible Tokens like pictures of Apes used in complex money laundering schemes).

Unfortunately, Ethereum is experiencing the same growing pains as Bitcoin. The solution to Ethereum's growth seems to be 'roll-ups' and/or 'sharding'. These solutions are implemented in 'Layer2 blockchains' and go by the name of Polygon, Arbitrum, Avalanche, and a few more. Just be careful with these L2 chains as you add another 'single point of failure' to your exposure.

Hopping Blockchains

The problem is that most worlds are separate as each asset lives on a certain blockchain. The Ethereum and its L2 chains can very easily exchange goods using Uniswap, 1inch, Pancake Swap, Sushi Swap, Kyberswap, or any other Decentralized Exchange as long as both assets live on the respected Blockchain.

This is problematic as Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, Solana, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, and many more have their very own Blockchain. To fix this problem people tend to compromise their pseudo-anonymity and use Central Exchange like Binance or Coinbase to exchange coins. This is bad, please look into alternative options like THORChain or Shapeshift.io to enjoy multiple blockchains.

Date: 30/11/2023
Author: Principal Vagina