The recent times have not been all that great for
The recent times have not been all that great for Bitcoin. The price has dipped lower than the $4000 range and its throne seems to be on shaky grounds. Will Bitcoin be surpassed by other cryptocurrencies? Only time will tell. But if it does, which cryptocurrencies will be the ones that’ll stand a chance to grab the throne? In this article, we take a look at a few possible contenders for Bitcoin’s quivering crown.
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Bitcoin: What is the Situation Now?
Now, if you were to take a look at Bitcoin price history, you would see that it has a come a long way from its days of glory. While December 2017 had seen Bitcoin prices soar to $20000, now the pioneering cryptocurrency is trading at a mere range of $3700. However, the price is not the only determinant of Bitcoin’s suitability for the top spot. Its ability to hold on to its position also depends largely on its market cap.
Coinmarketcap serves as the industry standard for cryptocurrency market information and it ranks the cryptocurrencies on the basis of their respective market caps. The market cap also depends on the prices. Market Cap refers to market capitalisation. It is basically the total value of all the shares or stocks of a particular organization or company. The number of outstanding shares of the company, if multiplied by the price of every unit of share, gives us the market cap. Therefore, in the world of cryptocurrencies, this would mean that the market cap would have to be calculated by multiplying the number of coins in circulation and the price of the cryptocurrency. Keeping this calculation in mind, let’s look at Bitcoin’s closest competitors, in no particular order.
Closest Competitors of Bitcoin
1. Ethereum:
Every cryptocurrency is powered by the advantages of an underlying blockchain network. There is no denying that Ethereum takes the cake when it comes to competing for the position of the most user-friendly and commonly-adapted network. It supports dApps, DAOs and blockchain smart contracts and serves a number of use cases pertaining to various companies that are members of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance. While its price has not seen a great increase, Ethereum, with its widespread enterprise adoption, still holds a great deal of potential. Also unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum has a much larger number of Ether coins in the market as it crossed the 100 million mark earlier this year. Bitcoin has a total hard cap of 21 million, while Ethereum issues 18 million Ethers every year. Naturally, the market cap is likely to surpass Bitcoin’s some day.
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2. Ripple:
Ripple is a player that has surpassed Ethereum in terms of market cap recently and has been enjoying quite a good run in the market. Ripple does not have a mining model like either Bitcoin or Ethereum. At the time of introduction itself,a total of 100 billion XRP coins were produced and that was considered to be the final count. Now, this total supply is significantly higher than that of Bitcoin, several times so. Hence, with rising price and adoption (and especially now that Ripple has even overcome Ethereum in market cap), Ripple is highly likely to dethrone Bitcoin some day. Ripple has been increasingly adopted by banks and other financial institutions and even by organizations as reputed as Gates Foundation for reaching out to unbanked communities.
As of now, it seems that these are the two crypto players that might be able to surpass Bitcoin. Although some underdogs like Stellar or Monero are also in the fray, they are still too far down the list to be considered yet. If you do invest in any of these BTC rivals however, do remember to store them in one of the best cryptocurrency wallets of 2018.
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