Can Ethereum Really Take Over Bitcoin?

Right now, the two top cryptocurrencies in the market, as per market capitalisation (data sourced from Coinmarketcap.com) are Bitcoin and Ethereum. Bitcoin, the pioneering cryptocurrency has been at the top throughout, while Ethereum has occasionally been displaced from the its second spot by Ripple. However, right now, it is firmly in the second position. Can Ethereum ever take over Bitcoin? Let us find out.

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Bitcoin and Ethereum: A Brief Comparison

While Bitcoin is a crypto coin devised as a mode of virtual payment, Ethereum is devised more as an enterprise blockchain solution with the Ether token fuelling and facilitating its processes. Unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum supports a number of tools such as blockchain smart contracts.

Therefore, in terms of use cases, both Bitcoin and Ethereum are quite different from one another.

While Bitcoin is more commonly used for storing value, trading for profitability and purchasing goods and services from vendors who support Bitcoin payments etc., Ethereum cryptocurrency Ether (ETH) is used more often to pay for dApps, smart contract execution and facilitating other processes within the Ethereum blockchain.

In terms of supply, Ethereum is likely to have a much higher supply than Bitcoin because it does not have a hard supply cap like Bitcoin yet.

Currently, the supply of Bitcoin is a little under 18 million, while the supply of Ethereum is a bit more than 105 million. Naturally, this represents a higher potential from Ethereum to contribute to an increase in market cap.

Despite this factor, the massive difference in their prices has caused a large gap in the respective market capitalisation rates.

Currently, the market capitalisation of Bitcoin is 69.56 billion dollars but that of Ethereum is just 14.52 billion dollars.

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Will Ethereum Take Over Bitcoin?

In terms of practical applications and the broad diversity of use cases, Ethereum has a greater potential for adaption in the long term. However, for some time at least, Bitcoin seems to be certain of the lead in the market.

The difference in market cap between the two cryptocurrencies at present seems to be rather large to be breached easily. Given Ethereum is used more as a facilitating token than a trading asset, it is unlikely that it will have a wild enough price rise any time soon to propel it to the top. Even though it has had some major spikes in its price of late, a massive jump is required to match up to Bitcoin.

In the long run, however, as the supply of Bitcoin peters out, Ethereum does stand a chance of overtaking the top cryptocurrency eventually.

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