Bitcoin vs Altcoins

• Bitcoin has outdone every other cryptocurrency when it comes to market capitalization and popularity.
• Ripple, Ether, Litecoin, and many other Altcoins have higher transactional speed and Maximum supply limit than Bitcoin and Bitcoin cash.

Bitcoin is the first and oldest decentralized cryptocurrency, which has a reputation of being the most stable in this super fragile Crypto Market.  It was formed in 2009 as damage control for the 2008 Global Economic crisis by a certain individual or a group of people pseudo named Santoshi Nakamoto. Every other almost 21000 cryptocurrencies that have been formed after Bitcoin to date are known as Altcoins. Some of the well-established Altcoins are Ethereum, Dogecoin, Solana, Litecoin, EOS, and Ether.

Supply and Demand Factor

The Supply and demand of coins play an important role in determining market prices. Bitcoin and Bitcoin cash both have an upper limit of 21 million coins each. Litecoin and Ripple have maximum supplies of 84 million and 100 billion respectively. The point is that the quantity of coins is inversely proportional to its value. As new coins are mined or released, the values of the coins also fluctuate. In order to authenticate blocks, the process of mining is used. 

Despite having fewer applications than some of the popular Altcoins, Bitcoin has still managed to be a formidable player in the market when it comes to market capitalization.

This implies that reputation plays an essential role because of the trust factor it brings along with it. However, there is always a chance of Bitcoin, which is a standalone cryptocurrency, to be outdone by cryptocurrencies like Ether and Ripple, which are part of wider networks associated with expanded applications. In case such a wider network economy comes under the umbrella of mainstream businesses, there is always a chance of Standalone cryptocurrencies facing a surge.

Pros and Cons of Cryptocurrencies

While Bitcoin is known to be the most popular cryptocurrency, one of the issues with Bitcoin (BTC) is its slow transaction speed and the fact that it requires specialist mining equipment. However, the slow transaction problem was confronted with the launch of Bitcoin Cash (BCH) in 2017, but the transactional speed issue did not get nullified or vanish completely. The maximum block size of Bitcoin Cash is 8 MB in comparison to the 1 MB size of Bitcoin.

Ripple (XRP) and Litecoin (LTC) have faster transaction speeds than Bitcoin; however, the decentralization of Bitcoin is more intact and secure than Ripple, and Bitcoin also has a higher market capitalization than Litecoin. Stellar (XLM) is a cryptocurrency integrated with banks, and it is more dynamic than Bitcoin as it is used to process transactions in multiple currencies; however, it is not as well known and recognized as Bitcoin.

In order to determine the trade pattern of a particular Cryptocurrency and foresee the fluctuation in its price depending upon the supply and demand of each coin, which can vary with time, it is important for traders and investors to look into the differences and compare the technical factors of each cryptocurrency before investing or trading.