Bitcoin or Ethereum: Which is the Better Buy?
Unless you’ve been living under a rock this year, you’ll have likely heard about Bitcoin. The first-mover in the cryptocurrency space has been making dramatic headlines throughout 2017. The latest, of course, is that the digital currency asset has exploded into the world of mainstream investing with a futures market being offered by several large groups. These include the CME and CBOE.
Bitcoin isn’t the only exciting opportunity in the space, however. The next largest cryptocurrency, Ether, is also having an amazing year. The Ethereum price has rocketed from just shy of $8 on January 1st to around $950 at the time of writing (December, 19). With more and more mainstream media outlets reporting on the substantial gains early investors are making in both leading digital currencies, it’s understandable that folks who are less knowledgeable about blockchain-based assets want to get in on the action. But which is better to buy at the end of 2017: Bitcoin or Ethereum’s Ether token?
The Case for Bitcoin
Current Bitcoin price - $20,740.
Bitcoin is the big name in the space. It has the advantage when it comes to brand recognition, and underlying infrastructure. It has better exchange hook-ups and ATMs dotted around the planet, which makes it very easy to enter the space using traditional currency. Thanks to this first-mover advantage, the wallet software and security is arguably much better and more developed than with other cryptocurrencies.
Perhaps most important to its success as a store of value is Bitcoin’s censorship resistance. There is no authority that can easily convince the whole community to make changes to its design. During the last nine years Bitcoin has proved itself as a protocol that is resilient to attack on every vector that has so far presented itself. Those wishing to change it have failed. It’s only when the entire community’s incentives align that any alteration gets made. When they don’t, hard forks occur. This was the case this summer with Bitcoin Cash. It’s then up to the market to decide which is the more successful version of Bitcoin.
Another factor to consider is how difficult it would be to shut down the Bitcoin network at all. There is no single entity that could be jailed for its creation, because no one knows who was behind it. The only real opportunity to attack Bitcoin comes at the exchange level or by ending the internet on a global scale. The rapid evolution of decentralized exchanges is seeking to nullify the former weakness, and if the internet was entirely switched off one day (not sure how over 200 national governments would come to such a consensus in the first place), you’d have a global revolution before the end of the first day.