Is It Too Late for Bitcoin? Should New Crypto Users Buy Ethereum?

Bitcoin is the king of cryptocurrencies; it is the biggest reason for the ongoing blockchain revolution and this upcoming market worth trillions of dollars. Bitcoin is the biggest cryptocurrency; on a sunny day, more than 50–60% of the entire cryptocurrency market is dominated by Bitcoin, as per market capitalization. It has seen an outstanding rally since last year from US$ 3.8K to US$62K (as of April 2021), giving traders who caught the bottom and held for 12 months a profit of 1531.8%. Bitcoin has many big institutional investors and celebrities, ranging from Elon musk to Mike Tyson.

Ethereum is another gem that has made blockchain accessible for anyone and everyone in the world. It is an open-source blockchain protocol that lets virtually anyone develop their own smart contracts/Dapps/tokens or other blockchain protocols on top of the Ethereum blockchain. Many top cryptocurrencies and DeFi ( Decentralized Finance) protocols that have revolutionized the meaning of privacy, security, and finance have been hosted on the Ethereum blockchain.

To keep itself up to date, Ethereum is going to upgrade its networks to Ethereum 2.0, which will solve most of the shortcomings that the current Ethereum blockchain poses.

As a beginner investor, when picking between a Bitcoin vs Ethereum investment, one needs to consider many factors, including growth potential, underlying tech, use cases, and previous return of interests.

Bitcoin vs Ethereum: a brief comparison

Bitcoin vs Ethereum: Notable data

Satoshi Nakamoto mined the first Bitcoin on 3rd January 2009; the price of Bitcoin then was $0.06, and the current all-time high (as of March 2021) is $62K. So a Bitcoin investment — where you buy Bitcoin and hold it would’ve worked great. Since its inception, you would’ve made 10,33,33,000% profits. Bitcoin has an all-time high market cap of $1.1 trillion. For reference, gold’s market cap is estimated to be around $7–10 trillion.

Ethereum’s launch price was $0.3, which took place in 2014. Since then, Ethereum has increased exponentially to an all-time high of $2150 (as of March 2021). This means that by investing in Ethereum at launch and selling it in its latest ATH, an investor would have made 7,16,567% in profits. Ethereum is the second biggest cryptocurrency and the biggest altcoin with a market cap of $250 Billion.

Bitcoin vs Ethereum: Underlying tech and use cases

Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency that utilized blockchain’s power; it’s a highly secured Peer 2 Peer transaction system that is not owned by any centralized authority. Instead, anyone can participate in the governance and verification of transactions happening on a Bitcoin blockchain by becoming a ‘miner.’ Bitcoin has many drawbacks which are to be worked on, but companies like Microsoft and Tesla now accept Bitcoin as payments. If you are investing in Bitcoin, you are indirectly supporting the technology.

Ethereum is an open-sourced blockchain that lets developers code their smart contracts into Ether; this way, user can make their own Decentralized applications(Dapps), cryptocurrencies, and blockchain protocols just by writing some simple lines of codes instead of making their own blockchain from scratch. This ecosystem has helped many developers, including some of the biggest blockchain protocols to date, like Basic Attention Token(BAT) and Uniswap(UNI). In this blockchain, Ethereum is used to pay transaction and coding fees known as “Gas” This gas is calculated in Gwei where 1 Gwei= 0.000000001ETH. Keep in mind that if you are investing in Ethereum, you are indirectly backing its technology.

Bitcoin vs Ethereum: What’s the upside potential?

Most of the cryptocurrencies are pegged on the technology that it brings to the table, but Bitcoin is just a digital currency, and when compared to other cryptocurrencies of that genre, the tech is slow and costly.

On the other hand, Bitcoin is why so many cryptocurrencies exist in the first place; also, more than 50% of cryptocurrencies are Bitcoins. We can safely say that Bitcoin represents the cryptocurrency industry. If Bitcoin falls, altcoins fall; if Bitcoin rises, so do they.

Cryptocurrencies are still in their infancy; there is a lot of room to grow for them, and therefore Bitcoin will also rise in the future. By 2021 EOY, many experts have predicted BTC to break US$100K. Hence, investing in Bitcoin is still profitable.

Ethereum has a market cap of approx 200–250 Billion; it is the second-biggest cryptocurrency by market cap and used every day by millions of users. Experts believe that Ethereum will break US$3K and continue to rise in the 2021 bull market. Hence, investing in Ethereum is still profitable and safe.

Bitcoin vs Ethereum, which one should a beginner buy?

If you have the capability of holding, buying Bitcoin and Ethereum at any moment in time is profitable. If a trader decided to buy Bitcoin in the last bull run four years ago at its previous ATH ($20K), if you held it till 2021, you would have made 4X on your investment. The same goes for buying Ethereum. Buy it at any point in time, you would still be in profits.

But these coins are already up and therefore do not have enough growth potential that the current, smaller altcoins have. But these investments also pose a risk and hence must be managed accordingly. If you want to play safe and hold for the long term, both Bitcoin and Ethereum are your coins, but if you can manage your funds according to the risk/reward ratio and other analyses, go for altcoins to enjoy higher returns.

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