What is Bitcoin?

Bitcoin (BTC) is an innovative payment network and a new type of currency.

Bitcoin uses peer-to-peer technology to operate without a central authority or bank; manages transactions and issuance Bitcoins are collectively executed by the network. Bitcoin is open source; its design is public and no one owns or controls Bitcoin and everyone can participate. Through its many unique features, Bitcoin allows for exciting uses that no previous payment system could cover.

Who created it?

An anonymous software developer named Satoshi Nakamoto proposed bitcoin in 2008 as an electronic payment system based on mathematical proofs. The idea is to produce a means of exchange independent of any central authority that can be transferred electronically in a secure, verifiable and immutable manner.

Until today, no one knows who Satoshi Nakamoto is.

How is it different from traditional currency?

Bitcoin can be used to pay electronically if both parties so wish. In this sense, just like regular USD, EUR or JPY, also traded digitally .

This is different from fiat digital currency in some important ways:

1 - Decentralized

The most important feature of Bitcoin is that it is decentralized. No single institution can control the bitcoin network. It is maintained by a team of volunteer coders and is run by an open network of dedicated computers distributed around the world. This attracts individuals and groups who are uncomfortable with the control banks or government agencies have over their funds.

Bitcoin solves the "double spending problem" of electronic money (where digital assets can be easily replicated and reused) by cleverly combining cryptography and economic incentives. In electronic fiat money, banks can perform this function, allowing banks to control traditional systems. With bitcoin, the integrity of transactions is maintained by a distributed open network that no one owns.

2 - limited availability

The supply of fiat currencies (dollars, euros, yen, etc.) is unlimited - central banks can issue any amount of currency and can attempt to manipulate the value of a currency relative to other currencies . Currency holders (especially citizens with few other options) bear the cost.

In bitcoin, on the other hand, the power supply is strictly controlled by the underlying algorithm. The small number of new bitcoins will gradually decrease every hour and will continue to do so at a decreasing rate until it reaches a maximum of 210,000. This makes bitcoin more attractive as an asset - in theory, if demand grows while supply stays the same, the value will increase.

3 - Anonymous

While the sender of traditional electronic payments is usually identified (for verification purposes, and to comply with anti-money laundering and other regulations), bitcoin is theoretically semi-anonymous. Since there is no central "validator", users do not need to identify themselves when sending bitcoin to another user. After submitting a transaction request, the protocol checks all previous transactions to confirm that the sender has the necessary bitcoin and permission to send them. The system does not need to know his or her identity.

Actually, each user is identified by their wallet address. Transactions can be tracked in some way. In addition, law enforcement has developed methods to identify users when necessary.

Furthermore, most exchanges are required by law to conduct identity checks on their customers before buying or selling bitcoin, facilitating another way bitcoin usage can be tracked. Since the network is transparent, the progress of a particular transaction is visible to all.

This makes bitcoin not an ideal currency for criminals, terrorists or money launderers.

4 - irreversible

Bitcoin, unlike electronic fiat transactions, cannot be reversed.

This is because there is no central "adjudicator" who can say "OK, pay back". If the transaction is recorded on the network and more than an hour has passed, it cannot be modified.

While this may upset you, it does mean that the bitcoin network cannot be tampered with.

5 - Divisibility

The smallest unit of bitcoin is called satoshi. It is one millionth of a bitcoin (0.00000001) – about one percent at today’s prices. As you can imagine, this enables micro-transactions that are not possible with traditional electronic money.

Website: https://bitcoin.org/

What is Ethereum?

Ethereum is a blockchain application platform.

Ethereum is an open source, public, blockchain-based distributed computing platform and operating system with smart contract (scripting) capabilities. It supports a modified version of the Nakamoto consensus with transaction-based state transitions.

Ether (ETH) is a cryptocurrency whose blockchain is powered by the Ethereum platform. Ether can be transferred between accounts and used to compensate participants’ mining nodes for computation.   Ethereum provides a decentralized Turing-complete virtual machine, the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which can execute scripts using an international network of public nodes. An internal transaction pricing mechanism "Gas" is used to mitigate spam and distribute resources on the network.

Ethereum was proposed in late 2013 by cryptocurrency researcher and programmer Vitalik Buterin. The development was funded by an online crowdfunding between March 2014 and March 2015. The system went live on March 11, 13, with a "pre-sale" of 11.9 million tokens. This is about seven percent of the total circulating supply.

In 2016, Ethereum was split into two separate blockchains – the new separate version became Ethereum (ETH), while the original continued as Ethereum Classic (ETC). The Ethereum currency has grown more than 13,000% in 2017.

Website: https://ethereum.org/ 

What is Zcash?

Zcash(ZEC) is a cryptocurrency designed to use cryptography compared to other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin provides enhanced privacy to its users.

Bitcoin Most cryptocurrencies expose your entire payment history to the public. Zcash is the first open, permissionless cryptocurrency that fully protects the privacy of transactions using zero-knowledge encryption.

Zcash payments are posted on the public blockchain, but users can use optional privacy features to hide the sender, recipient and amount being transacted. Like Bitcoin, Zcash has a fixed total supply of 210,000 units.

If Bitcoin is like http for making money with money Zcash is a https-secure transport layer.

Website: https://z.cash/

What is Decred?

Decred (DCR) is an autonomous digital currency. Its stakeholders are decentralised and sustainable, and thus directly part of the decision-making process; this gives it the term "symbol of self-governance". As such, the cryptocurrency has set its priorities to decentralized governance and decision-making on the blockchain.

Decred's killer feature is good management, and with good management, you can have any feature you want.

Website: https://www.decred.org/