Is Electroneum similar to Bitcoin, or different?
How does Bitcoin mining compare to Electroneum mining?
In this article, we’re doing an in-depth comparison between Electroneum and Bitcoin.
Purpose
Both coins were created for widely different reasons, which is what makes them each unique and necessary in their own right.
- Electroneum was created as a mobile-centered cryptocurrency that would spur mass adoption among the 2.2 billion smartphone users worldwide. Is was meant to be the “coin of the people” and the first coin that would truly become mainstream.
- Bitcoin was created right after the 2008 financial crises as a means to circumvent the traditional centralized banking system and create a money system that could not be controlled by any one person, government, company, or entity.
ALSO READ: What is Electroneum?
History and Launch
Bitcoin has been a pioneer in the cryptocurrency industry and is therefore much older than Electroneum.
- Electroneum launched on 1 November 2017, although the wallets and ICO coins only went live on 13 November 2017. The launch of the flagship product, the mobile miner, is scheduled for sometime in the first quarter of 2018.
- Bitcoin was launched on 3 January 2009, making it just over 9 years old.
Regarding the creator and management team of each coin:
- Electroneum is managed by the Electroneum team, headed by CEO Richard Ells. The online wallet and mobile miner components are centralized, although the blockchain is decentralized and managed by miners around the world.
- Bitcoin’s creator goes by the name of Satoshi Nakamoto (the name on Bitcoin’s first whitepaper) although no one knows who he/she is. There is no person or entity that manages Bitcoin. It is regulated and managed entirely by majority decisions of miners around the world.
The fact that Bitcoin has no central management entity is both a blessing and a curse – a blessing in that it prevents any one person or entity from having control over the coin, and a curse in that it lacks the vision and focused direction that a CEO or leader provides. Electroneum has the best of both worlds in that it is managed by a centralized team (which spurs development goals and helps tremendously in forming alliances with other companies), but the actual Electroneum blockchain is decentralized and cannot be controlled by one person.
Target Market and Market Share
Electroneum and Bitcoin were created for entirely different reasons, and thus their target markets differ widely:
- Electroneum is built with mobile users in mind, and thus have a potential audience of 2.2 billion smartphone owners around the world.
- Bitcoin was a pioneer in the cryptocurrency space and has mostly been used by geeks and computer nerds, although many hopeful investors have shown up in recent times.
Market share is the number of users that make use of each coin and is, therefore, an indication of the coin’s acceptance around the world.
- Electroneum (at the time of writing) has more than 800,000 registered users on its online wallet system. There could potentially be more users who keep their coins in a paper wallet or on an exchange.
- Bitcoin’s user base is hard to quantify due to the fact that anyone can open an unlimited number of wallets. However, according to research, Bitcoin’s user base is between 3 million and 4 million strong.
The fact that Electroneum was able to garner nearly a third of Bitcoin’s user base within 3 months after the Electroneum blockchain launch is an amazing feat, considering the fact that Bitcoin has been around for 9 years.
Coins and Decimals
The Electroneum team has chosen the number of decimal places to make it easier for users to read prices.
- Electroneum has 2 decimal places (for example 17.99 ETN).
- Bitcoin has up to 8 decimal places (for example 0.00000389 BTC).
Electroneum’s maximum coin supply was chosen as an arbitrary value that will allow mass adoption (keeping in mind that it only has 2 decimal places).
- Electroneum has a maximum coin count of 21 billion ETN.
- Bitcoin has a maximum coin count of 21 million BTC.
In terms of how much of each coin’s maximum supply is allocated to which use:
- Of Electroneum’s coins, 7 billion is allocated to conventional mining, 7 billion to mobile mining, and the rest was sold during the ICO, given to bounty members, or reserved for the team.
- All of Bitcoin’s 24 million coins are allocated to conventional mining.
ALSO READ: How Many Electroneum Coins are There?
Fees
- Electroneum’s transaction fees are never more than 0.2 ETN.
- Bitcoin’s transaction fees depend on blockchain activity and can sometimes run up to $30, depending on the amount being transferred.
Electroneum was originally advertised as having “no fees” whatsoever, but during testing phases, it became apparent that a hacker could cripple the network by repeatedly transferring coins between various wallets. Therefore, a fee was added.
Technology
- Electroneum is based on Monero’s codebase and therefore inherits much of the privacy features of Monero.
- Bitcoin is based on the SHA256 algorithm, nearly the same codebase with which it launched.
Monero is an open source project and thus copying its codebase was entirely legal. There were however, some bugs introduced through Monero’s codebase that were subsequently fixed.
- Electroneum has an official online wallet system that communicates with the blockchain on behalf of the user.
- Bitcoin has no official online wallet system, but several exchanges and wallet websites offer that functionality.
Regarding offline wallet systems:
- Electroneum has released an official offline wallet generator that can be used to print out a wallet that is virtually unhackable. No hardware wallets currently exist for Electroneum.
- Bitcoin does not have an official wallet generator, but various websites have created this functionality. There are also various hardware wallets that exist for Bitcoin.
ALSO READ: How to Create an Electroneum Paper Wallet
- With Electroneum’s privacy features, it is impossible to trace the exact origin of a transaction or the exact balance of a wallet. The Electroneum blockchain explorer will only show this kind of information to users in possession of the private view key of such a wallet.
- With Bitcoin, all transactions of one particular wallet, as well as its current balance, are publicly visible in blockchain explorers.
Mining
Being a mobile-centralized coin, Electroneum has been created from the ground up to be mineable with a smartphone. This is called the Mobile Mining Experience, which does not perform real mining, but rather a simulation of mining that will not heat up the phone or drain the battery.
- Electroneum mining can be done with a smartphone and no technical knowledge.
- Bitcoin mining requires an expensive mining rig and a great deal of technical expertise.
ALSO READ: How to Mine Electroneum With a Mobile Phone
- Electroneum is mineable through conventional methods (computers and GPUs) as well through the mobile mining experience (mobile phones).
- Bitcoin is only mineable through conventional methods (CPUs, GPUs, ASIC miners).
Conclusion
Both coins are important to the cryptocurrency community in their own right. Although this article showed various differences between the two, it is not true that one is better than the other. Bitcoin will be a “store of value” for years to come while Electroneum will take cryptocurrency mainstream and introduce it to the unbanked masses around the world.
Can you think of any other differences between the two?
Let me know in the comments, and I’ll update the article.
Myspace solved the problem of connecting people online socially. They were first movers. But they became old and dated and did little to innovate. A new social media platform with new features and with a large user base of students rose up and took its place. That platform is called Facebook.
Nowadays, nobody ever talks about Myspace anymore (except to illustrate their downfall). Facebook is on every road sign and on every website you look. But these two companies provided the same basic service and were both operating on the same platform – the Internet. The differences that made Facebook stand out was its new features and, more importantly, its rapidly growing user base. At their start, they had a large following of students on campuses around the globe, and this gave them the necessary momentum to trump Myspace.
Bitcoin was a first mover in the cryptocurrency space, but it is fast becoming outdated and old. Fees are unpayable and transaction times will never allow it to be a day-to-day transactional coin. And yet the loyal mining community won’t soft-fork to new versions to make it better. It is impractical to mine even a fraction of a Bitcoin if you don’t own an expensive mining rig – which is why their user numbers struggle to get off the ground.
Electroneum has already solved the transactional problem and made it super easy to transfer funds between phones. And with their planned internal transaction system, transaction times will be nearly instantaneous. They have a great plan of bringing a massive user base on board through the mobile miner, referral systems, and great marketing. The value of any currency (fiat or crypto) is directly tied to the size of its user base. And so the currency with the most users will trump the rest.
I’m not saying that Bitcoin is going to fall anytime soon. It will probably last for many more years. But new technology that gets accepted by the masses will certainly get an upper hand over Bitcoin. There are certainly many other coins in existence that have already solved some of Bitcoin’s problems. It might be one of them that dethrones Bitcoin someday. But Electroneum certainly has all the necessary requirements to become that coin and repeat the success of Facebook.