Many people have adopted cryptocurrency as a financial exchange for purchasing goods and services and wagering on UFC fight night. If you know anything about cryptocurrency, you know about bitcoin. Bitcoin was the first crypto to be invented.
Ethereum was the second cryptocurrency to hit the market after bitcoin. Bitcoin and Ethereum are the most popular cryptos globally. This article focuses on the two cryptocurrencies.
Invention and Founders
As already stated, bitcoin was the first to be invented. The year was 2009 when bitcoin first came into circulation. The exact person who created bitcoin is not known.
Satoshi Nakamoto is credited with bitcoin's invention. They started working on the software in 2007.
On the other hand, Ethereum founders/developers are well known. The first person to come up with the idea of Ethereum was Vitalik Buterin in 2013. However, the development process started in 2014.
Vitalik Buterin worked with Gavin Wood, Charles Hoskinson, Joseph Lubin, and Antony Di Iorio to create Ethereum. The official date that Ethereum went live was on 30th July 2015.
The founders of Ethereum are not anonymous because, by the time of its invention, cryptocurrency was already a household name, thanks to bitcoin's popularity.
The Monetary Value
The most crucial point is that cryptocurrency is a virtual digital currency. It is not something you can carry in a bag like gold or silver. Cryptocurrency has monetary value because people decided it is valuable and put a figure to it and could come in hand during UFC predictions.
Cryptocurrency is still volatile, and the value of different coins keeps fluctuating from time to time. At the time of its invention in 2009, the value of 1 BTC was below USD 2. However, the value rose to USD 31 per 1 BTC in mid-2011 before dropping again to a single-digit.
As time went by and cryptocurrency became popular, the value of 1 BTC increased exponentially. It hit the highest figure of over USD 65,000 for 1 BTC in November 2021. However, the value has been dropping, and as of August 2022, 1 BTC is about USD 24,700-USD 25,000.
Same as bitcoin, the value of Ethereum was under USD 1 at the time of its invention. The value crossed USD 1 in 2016 when it increased to over USD 2 per ETH. Ethereum's price rose to its highest value above USD 4800 in November 2021. By August 2022, the cost of 1 ETH was USD 2005.
Market Value
The market value of a given cryptocurrency is the value of the total number of coins in circulation at a particular time. For example, as of August 2022, the market value of bitcoin is estimated to be USD 472.73 billion.
This value is concerning the total number of coins in circulation, which is 19,116,356 coins.
For Ethereum, the number of coins in circulation is over 120 million. The market value is estimated to be just over USD 231 billion.
Hard Cap
Cryptocurrency is a digital asset. Some cryptocurrencies have a hard capping on their supply. A hard cap is a limit set for the maximum number of coins to be in circulation. The hard cap is meant to prevent inflation in cryptocurrency.
Bitcoin has a limit on the number of coins that will ever be in supply. You should note that mining is the only way new coins come into circulation. The maximum number of bitcoins is set at 21 million. Once this figure is reached, no more bitcoins can be mined into circulation.
As of August 2022, the number of bitcoins in circulation was just above 19 million. It is estimated that bitcoin will reach its maximum number of coins in 2140.
On the side of Ethereum, there is no hard cap on its supply. Therefore, there is no limit on the number of Ethereum coins that will ever be in supply. As of August 2022, the number of Ethereum coins in circulation was over 120 million. This figure keeps increasing as more coins are mined and pumped into circulation daily.
Conclusion
When talking about cryptocurrency, bitcoin and Ethereum must always come up. Bitcoin and Ethereum are the most popular in the cryptocurrency world as the first two to be developed. As discussed in this article, there are some similarities and differences between bitcoin and Ethereum.