Bitcoin vs Ethereum

[Upneko]

I was wondering, why (or why not) do you think that Bitcoin is better than Ethereum?

Ethereum seems to provide everything that Bitcoin offers but it has a huge advantage: smart contracts.
Smart contracts are small "programs" that live on the blockchain, so you can use them to build actual services and applications, while Bitcoin is useful only as a digital currency.

So why do you prefer Bitcoin if Ethereum seems superior?
Or maybe I'm missing something that makes Bitcoin actually better than Ethereum in some way?

[Oshosondy]

The founder of bitcoin is anonymous and bitcoin is fully decentralized unlike ethereum. Bitcoin total supply is still 21 million, ethereum supply is manipulated now as some other are burnt in transaction fee. If you need a totally decentralized currency that is not controlled directly by certain people, bitcoin is what to go for, this is what ethereum can not achieve as it is still controlled by some set of people.

[Upneko]

bitcoin is fully decentralized unlike ethereum

Why? At the moment Bitcoin has 15.000 nodes deployed around the globe (source: https://bitnodes.io/) while Ethereum has 6.000 nodes (source: https://www.ethernodes.org/) so this makes them both fully decentralized.

[BlackHatCoiner]

I'm glad there's a person who came well-intentionally and asked this excellent question. I hope the responses you'll get, will satisfy you. To me, it's a matter of opinions of what's better.

You see, newcomers look on a cryptocurrency that way and try to define its value superficially. Does it have these “smart contracts”? Is it better in terms of utility? Could this new feature it has make the difference?

However, they don't ask themselves what's the monetary policy of each cryptocurrency and to be honest, that's the only thing I judge when I evaluate a currency. Even if in “terms of utility” it's better than any other, what to do with it if an entity owns the majority of the coins? Or, what to do if this very entity can have a huge impact on the community or the market?

It's pretty clear that I'm taking part in a highly hierarchical system this way, which I'm strongly disagreed with. And this is what gives Bitcoin its value; the fact that it has the greatest monetary policy, humanity has ever witnessed.

I choose not to compare them in any way other than their monetary policy. Either way, they are two different innovations providing different solutions for different problems. The only common thing they share is that they're both currencies. They can must co-exist.

[batang_bitcoin]

Well, why not have both of them if you think that any of those are superior and you see the other is also superior in the sight of the other investors. But honestly, it's because being the first in the market is very important and bitcoin is like the gold of the crypto market. I think I've seen the same discussion years ago that people are getting into bitcoin because it's stable, not the value but bitcoin itself is a stable asset that you'll be sure to have it someday if you hold it. While in Ethereum, it's quality is good as it is but this time, it's fee is one of the discouragement that we have which has been said for bitcoin bitcoin.

[KaliLinux]

I do not really look at them in that sense, whether one is superior to the other even though that argument might be there. In terms of investment, since both of them have been doing well overall, I believe that they are both superior coins in the space. This discussion will continue but in the end, it all depends on whether the ROI on both coins is attained by investors.

[Zilon]

Gas fee has been one of the tackling issues of Ethereum and it's founder isn't anonymous making it easier to manipulate the total distribution and market capitalization. Bitcoin founder till date is anonymous and even though it is currently used basically as a digital currency as everything done With Bitcoin revolves around transactions it's more safer and cheaper to transact with compared to Ethereum

[ipanks]

Both bitcoin and ethereum are superior to the other coins and it is like a king and queen in the crypto market. I do not compare bitcoin and ethereum because I think bitcoin and ethereum will have different paths. Ethereum can provide smart contracts, which you think gives a huge advantage, but bitcoin is superior. Besides that, ethereum has a gas fee problem that is not solved yet and still needs more time.

I prefer bitcoin but I also like ethereum because both bitcoin and ethereum give me profit. I do not yet expect smart contracts can be applied to real life so soon because that depends on many things such as government regulations.

[GeorgeJohn]

You don't need a microscope to view it or microscoped the difference between bitcoin and ethereum, because from the upset bitcoin is like father of all cryptocurrencies seconded by ethereum from the introduction, since 2009 is when bitcoin was created and it has been valuable till date and i believe that remember valuable till the day it will scrab out, comparing bitcoin and ethereum, the difference or margin is very far, the price of bitcoin at this point is not stagnant but you can't use it relate or compare to the price of ethereum. The firm of cryptocurrency generally is because of bitcoin, so in summary bitcoin is highly potential than ethereum.

[hatshepsut93]

Ethereum seems to provide everything that Bitcoin offers

Ethereum's development is completely centralized, a few people basically fully control its course. In Bitcoin there is a broad community of developers, so no single individual or a handful of people can hijack it.

Ethereum's blockchain is so bloated that few home users can afford to run an actual full node, so even if Ethereum people try to claim that they have a lot of nodes, in reality Ethereum is already being run only on a small numbers of large farms. Bitcoin full nodes on the other hand can easily be hosted on old PCs and laptops, which a lot of people actually do.

With Proof of Stake Ethereum will get even more centralized, as whales will become a major factor on the network.

Smart contracts are small "programs" that live on the blockchain, so you can use them to build actual services and applications, while Bitcoin is useful only as a digital currency.

Except you really can't make almost anything useful with them. All what Ethereum has achieved is becoming a fertile soil for countless scams like ICO and NFT. I remember in 2016 Ethereum was promising to bring automatization, allowing things like automatically paying for your electricity bills via smart contracts, but none of that became a reality. Instead we got things like DeFi and NFT, which have zero use in real world. Ethereum is a solution in search of a problem. Bitcoin is a solution to existing problem - trust in third parties when you deal with payment networks.

The only reason why Ethereum is so expensive is because the people behind it invest a ton of money into marketing and spreading the myths about how useful and revolutionary it is.

[Kemarit]

I was wondering, why (or why not) do you think that Bitcoin is better than Ethereum?

Ethereum seems to provide everything that Bitcoin offers but it has a huge advantage: smart contracts.
Smart contracts are small "programs" that live on the blockchain, so you can use them to build actual services and applications, while Bitcoin is useful only as a digital currency.

So why do you prefer Bitcoin if Ethereum seems superior?
Or maybe I'm missing something that makes Bitcoin actually better than Ethereum in some way?

I do agree at some point, the design of Ethereum is better that Bitcoin.

But what separates Bitcoin to the rest of the crypto's? I think it's more of it being the prime mover in the space, although you can also argue that Ethereum is also one of the first altcoin and now the top one.

However, Bitcoin remains so dominant that it's name became synonymous to crypto. An for noobs, they prefer Bitcoin first because that's what they hear on the internet.

And that's why we have this "Bitcoin maximalist" too. 

[breathlessz]

I was wondering, why (or why not) do you think that Bitcoin is better than Ethereum?

Ethereum seems to provide everything that Bitcoin offers but it has a huge advantage: smart contracts.
Smart contracts are small "programs" that live on the blockchain, so you can use them to build actual services and applications, while Bitcoin is useful only as a digital currency.

So why do you prefer Bitcoin if Ethereum seems superior?
Or maybe I'm missing something that makes Bitcoin actually better than Ethereum in some way?

I do agree at some point, the design of Ethereum is better that Bitcoin.

But what separates Bitcoin to the rest of the crypto's? I think it's more of it being the prime mover in the space, although you can also argue that Ethereum is also one of the first altcoin and now the top one.

However, Bitcoin remains so dominant that it's name became synonymous to crypto. An for noobs, they prefer Bitcoin first because that's what they hear on the internet.

And that's why we have this "Bitcoin maximalist" too. 

because bitcoin was born before ethereum and trust in bitcoin is certainly higher because it is the first coin in cryptocurrency. For example, if there is a first brand that has been released, many people think that they will be more satisfied if they use that brand, even though there are actually many other new brands whose quality is not inferior.

[enhu]

Saw some influencers actually believe ETH will outrank BTC because of the smart contract advantage and then the future which is the metaverse too. Raoul Pal is also one of these influencers who did believe the same thing. They are spreading this information for months now, one would think they purposely want people to sell their BTC for ETH.

[pooya87]

	|	BTC	|	ETH
Decentralized	|	Y	|	N
Immutable	|	Y	|	N
Limited_supply	|	Y	|	N
No_premine	|	Y	|	N
No_ICO	|	Y	|	N
Fair_distribution	|	Y	|	N
Secure_protocol	|	Y	|	N
Useful_in_real_world	|	Y	|	N
Cheap_fee	|	Y	|	N
Easy_to_use	|	Y	|	N
Easy_to_run_full_node	|	Y	|	N
Scaleable	|	Y	|	N

Ethereum seems to provide everything that Bitcoin offers but it has a huge advantage: smart contracts.

Well you are just parroting back something you've read. Why do you think ETH smart contracts are providing advantage? Have you ever used a ETH smart contract in real world or seen any that solves any problem in real world? Better said have you even seen a single ETH smart contract used for anything other than fundraising? The answer is always no. So you see not only they don't have any advantage but also they are useless.

Now ask the same questions about bitcoin. Bitcoin as a currency with smart contracts is used every day to solve real world issues and transactions are not just for some hyped up fund raising that dies shortly after creation.

[StarKay]

I was wondering, why (or why not) do you think that Bitcoin is better than Ethereum?

Define your parameters for rating Cryptocurrency generally then we can compare in fair term which is better. Personally I don't think Bitcoin and Ethereum are in the same class so there is no fair basis to rate them.
You can compare ETH and BSC, and things like that. Bitcoin is in the world of it's own that's why we have Bitcoin and Altcoins.
Anyone can claim one is better than the other but since we don't have a Global Cryptocurrency Organisation, the debate will always go on with the opposing sides not coming to an agreement.

[Fortify]

I was wondering, why (or why not) do you think that Bitcoin is better than Ethereum?

Ethereum seems to provide everything that Bitcoin offers but it has a huge advantage: smart contracts.
Smart contracts are small "programs" that live on the blockchain, so you can use them to build actual services and applications, while Bitcoin is useful only as a digital currency.

So why do you prefer Bitcoin if Ethereum seems superior?
Or maybe I'm missing something that makes Bitcoin actually better than Ethereum in some way?

It's probably a reason that Ethereum has continued marching up in price over the last few years while Bitcoin seems to be stalling at a certain point. The fact that there is a lot more Ethereum in circulation than Bitcoin is also a huge bonus in comparison, because it makes people feel like they actually possess more (even if it's only psychological). However you could compare it to many things, the Blockchain and Bitcoin were groundbreaking technology, however there is always room for things to be improved. Just like the world went from line land only phones, to rugged Nokia like phones to the very latest iteration of smart phones. Improvements come incrementally and it's naive for anyone to think that Bitcoin will only ever be the best.

[BigBos]

no matter how complete you say about ethereum, the fact is that ethereum always moves based on the movement of bitcoin. if the price of bitcoin dumps, 95% of the price of ethereum will drop too. as well as other altcoins.
other than that, bitcoin is very purely decentralized, which is why so many people use and prioritize it over other coins. even you see that people always talk about bitcoin, it's because bitcoin can't be stopped. bitcoin also has a very large commission, you can see from the current volume. well, when it comes to bitcoin, it has many advantages over ethereum.

[Coin_trader]

It should be understood that these two currencies are quite dependent on each other, and this has already been proven more than once. So, in terms of investment, they are also very similar.

They are not dependent to each other. They are both open source but they working in different way. Ethereum is the upgraded version of Bitcoin because of there cutting edge invention of smart contract to implement on the original idea of blockchain to Bitcoin. Both project right now is developing independently without the need to incorporate each other idea.

Maybe you are talking to the price alone. Most of the cryptocurrency price is always dependent to Bitcoin because of the current volatility.

[Hydrogen]

Bitcoin is designed and engineered by independent open source demographics, who aren't affiliated with special interests.

Ethereum has partnerships with big players like JP morgan and microsoft and is subject to conflicts of interest as a result.

[ven7net]

I was wondering, why (or why not) do you think that Bitcoin is better than Ethereum?

Ethereum seems to provide everything that Bitcoin offers but it has a huge advantage: smart contracts.
Smart contracts are small "programs" that live on the blockchain, so you can use them to build actual services and applications, while Bitcoin is useful only as a digital currency.

So why do you prefer Bitcoin if Ethereum seems superior?
Or maybe I'm missing something that makes Bitcoin actually better than Ethereum in some way?

I believe that BTC is better than Ethereum as it is the first cryptocurrency to be launched. Altcoins, in this case Ethereum, have been developed to rapidly increase the price of BTC and create its value. but from Ethereum all other altcoins and blockchain systems went, well, almost everything. It turns out that Ethereum is the power source for BTC. You probably already know that very often and regularly there is a transfusion of funds from altcoins to BTC and vice versa. This just shows that all cryptocurrencies are created to promote the growth of the price of BTC. Due to the emergence and development of cryptocurrencies and tokens, money is being withdrawn from people, and this money eventually flows into BTC, raising its price and creating even more value for it.