How to earn bitcoins fast
5 popular cryptocurrencies other than bitcoin
When it comes to cryptocurrency, the first thing that comes to mind is bitcoin. But apart from bitcoin, there are about a thousand other types of digital money. How do they work and how much are they worth?
Bitcoin
According to CoinMarketCap - Forbes, there are more than 1,100 types of digital money in the world of cryptocurrencies today. And the total capitalisation of this market is $133 billion. DW has compiled the facts about the most popular types of cryptocurrencies and which of them, apart from bitcoin, are most often invested in.
Altcoins - an alternative to bitcoins
Most altcoins (alternative digital currencies) are just a variation of bitcoin. The creators of the new currencies take the existing bitcoin code and improve it to their liking. The result is a branching of cryptocurrencies, with a single "start" in the form of bitcoin. Such a process is called a "hardfork". A hardfork occurs when users of a currency cannot come to a single decision about how digital money works.
Bitcoin cryptocurrency
Bitcoin cryptocurrency
This is what happened with Bitcoin in August, for example. The hallmark of bitcoin is the speed and cheapness of transactions. However, the cryptocurrency became so popular that the system could no longer cope with the volume of work. As a result, bitcoin users could wait for hours or even days for a transaction to go through.
Bitcoin users decided it was time to improve the system. But the cryptocurrency has no single owner who can make new changes. To change a decentralised cryptocurrency, a majority decision is not enough. You need 99 percent of users to agree to the new rules and start abiding by them. Although the decision to change the bitcoin system was made, users could not come to a common plan of action. As a result, bitcoin split into Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash, and there was one more cryptocurrency on the market. Apart from Bitcoin Cash, there are 5 other types of digital money that are popular among alternatives to bitcoin.
Ethereum (ethereum, ether) - smart contract currency
It is unknown why the creator of Ethereum, a Canadian programmer of Russian origin, Vitaly Buterin, named it so. Perhaps because, unlike the same bitcoin, the amount of Ether is unlimited. Or perhaps because Ether is the first cryptocurrency to use "smart contracts" technology, which means it can "take the form" of any object.
How do these smart contracts work? For example, you make a bet with a friend that Russia will win the upcoming football match between Russia and South Korea. Your friend wholeheartedly supports the South Korean team. You spell out the terms of your wager.
Ether - the currency of smart contracts
"A smart contract withdraws the betting amount and holds it until the terms of the contract are fulfilled - until one of the teams wins. This approach reduces human intervention and gets the machine to do the work. In the future, smart contracts could be applied to accounting, logistics and law.
The currency appeared in 2015, with funds raised by Buterin, through crowdfunding - voluntary donations of money over the internet. By the way, the donations were collected in bitcoins. Ethereum emerged in 2015.
While bitcoin accounts for 40 per cent of the cryptocurrency market, Ethereum accounts for 18 per cent, thereby taking a respectable second place in the list of popular cryptocurrencies. Ethereum's total issued value reaches $26 billion. At the time of writing, one Ethereum was worth $279 per unit, much cheaper than bitcoin.
Ethereum works in much the same way as bitcoin, because the underlying code of Ethereum is borrowed. It, too, has miners (cryptocurrency miners. - Ed.) that "calculate" the cryptocurrency, blockchains that store transaction information. Just like the bitcoin system, Ethereum blockchains are stored on each user's computer. Therefore, it is impossible to forge records - then it would be necessary to forge records on all computers.
There are many differences between bitcoin and Ethereum. For example, there cannot be more than 21 million bitcoins, whereas the amount of ether is unlimited. Blocks to store information in the Ethereum system appear every 10-15 seconds, unlike bitcoin, which takes 10 minutes for a new block to appear.
Ripple is the fastest cryptocurrency
Most new cryptocurrencies emerge thanks to small changes in bitcoin's code. Like Ethereum, for example. But in the case of Ripple, the code was written from scratch, commissioned by venture capital funds (an investment fund focused on working with innovative ventures and projects, investing in securities or shares of high-risk businesses in the expectation of extremely high returns. - Ed.)
Ripple was created to increase the speed and savings of banking transactions. A calculator on Ripple's official website shows that if the bank's turnover is $5 million and the number of transactions is 300,000 per year, you can save $3.4