in 1999 he believed that the internet was going to be the one of the major forces in reducing the role of the government he also believed that the one thing that was missing was reliable electronic cash and just like he predicted in 2009 the cryptocurrency Bitcoin was born so what exactly is a cryptocurrency a cryptocurrency works very similar to how our normal currency works now normal currency could be dollar euro pound en rupees and so on so any form of currency that isn’t a crypto currency falls under the banner of normal currency the normal currency is also known as fiat currency now the major difference between crypto currencies and fiat currencies is that crypto currencies are decentralized what does that mean this means that crypto currencies don’t have a central authority controlling them now for example they don’t have a bank or government that regulate how the crypto currency works in a way the crypto currency works in a very democratic fashion any change that needs to take place is done only after a majority of the people using the crypto currency agree to it crypto currencies and fiat currencies are similar because both them were created as a medium of exchange however that’s where the similarity ends with crypto currencies there are not third parties involved for example with fiat currencies you have banks your money lenders governments and so on with crypto currencies we have cryptographic functions to ensure that the transactions are kept secure bitcoin uses the sha-256 algorithm to ensure that the transactions are kept secure but most importantly cryptocurrencies use blockchain now a blockchain is a set of Records that are placed into a container known as a block now these transactions are kept public and in a chronological order so what is Bitcoin bitcoin which was released in 2009 by the still unknown Satoshi Nakamoto is a crypto currency that’s decentralized which means that there is no central authority that controls how it works it works using encryption techniques like the sha-256 algorithm to help people send and receive money across the world now as I mentioned before the payments are secured using cryptography the most important point about Bitcoin is that it helps keep the identity of the people sending and receiving money anonymous the transaction fee is also very low now we all know that when we form a transaction with the bank some amount of money or service charge is levied on us however with Bitcoin this value is very very low so what is ether or aetherium it helium which was created in 2015 by metallic blue torrent is a cryptocurrency which provides ether tokens this is equivalent to bitcoins that defined in the Bitcoin network ether is used by users to build and deploy decentralized applications now these are applications who’s backing code is placed in a distributed peer-to-peer network now this is different from a regular application as the backend code is placed in a centralized server in this case ether is also used to pay for services like the computational power that is required before a block can be added to the blockchain and as transaction fees ether also works very similar to how Bitcoin works and can be used for peer-to-peer payments ether can also be used to create smart contracts now smart contracts work in such a way that when a certain set of predefined rules are satisfied a particular output takes place if you are interested in learning more about smart contracts I suggest you click on the top right corner and watch our what is a smart contract video and now for the thing you’ve been waiting for Bitcoin vs. helium now on one side we have Bitcoin now Bitcoin has proven itself to be a very popular and well-known cryptocurrency among everyone in the world it also has the highest market cap among all the cryptocurrencies available right now in a way it’s the current world champion when it comes to cryptocurrencies on the other side we have the underdog it’s helium it’s helium did not have the revolutionary effect that Bitcoin did but it learned from Bitcoin and produced more functionalities on the concepts of Bitcoin it is the second most valuable cryptocurrency in the market right now so in a way this is the fight between the underdog and the world champion who do you think will win now let’s understand how Bitcoin and helium are different from each other Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency to be a were created it was released in 2009 by a group of people or a person known as sons of shin akimoto no one really knows if this person is alive or dead however with this technology came the concept of blockchain which is still revolutionising institutions around the world on the other side helium was released in 2015 by a researcher and a programmer named Alec butyl now Vitalik used the concepts of protein and Bitcoin and improved upon it providing a lot more functionality creating the Atheneum platform for distributed applications and smart contracts Bitcoin enables peer-to-peer transactions Bitcoin in this case acts as a replacement for fiat currencies just that it removes all the problems associated with fiat currencies for starters you don’t have to pay high transaction fees for a transaction at the same time you also don’t have a centralized Authority that regulates how bitcoins work on the other hand we have etherium which enables peer-to-peer transactions and also provides a platform for creating and building smart contracts and distributed applications a smart contract allows users to exchange just about anything of value Beach shares money real state and so on in Bitcoin miners are able to validate transactions with the method known as proof of work this is the same with aetherium as well proof of work involves miners around the world trying to solve a complicated mathematical puzzle to be the first one to add a block to the blockchain aetherium however will be moving to something known as proof of stake the concept of proof of stake works in such a way that a person can mine or validate transactions in a block based on how many coins he or she owns the more the amount of coins that a person owns the larger their mining power will be in the case of Bitcoin every time a miner adds a block to the blockchain they rewarded with 12.5 bitcoins this reward that they receive is expected to have every two hundred ten thousand blocks now the next time the reward is going to have is in the year 2020 where the reward will reduce from 12.5 bitcoins to 6.25 bitcoins per block in the case of etherium a minor or a validator receives a value of 3 either every time a block is added to the blockchain the transaction fees in Bitcoin is completely optional you can pay the miner more amounts of money to have them give special attention to your transaction however as I mentioned before the transaction will go through even if you don’t provide any money on the other hand it is absolutely necessary that you provide some amount of ether for your transaction to be successful the ether that you provide will get converted into a unit called gas now this gas drives the computation that allows your transaction to be added to the blockchain now let’s start with the average amount of time it takes to add block to the blockchain in the case of Bitcoin it takes 10 minutes to add a block to the blockchain in the case of aetherium it takes only about 12 to 15 seconds for the same process now let’s talk about hashing algorithms or how these systems can maintain their privacy and ensure security Bitcoin uses a hashing algorithm known as sha-256 aetherium uses a cryptographic algorithm called ET hash now let’s talk about some important values associated with Bitcoin and it helium the total number of coins that each of them have are 17 million bitcoins and 101 million ether now you can see that aetherium has easily crossed the 100 million mark however the market capitalization for bitcoins is hundred and ten billion u.s. dollars whereas for aetherium it’s only 28 billion so even though it helium has a larger number of coins in the market does not reach up to the level of Bitcoin the number of transactions that take place in a day for Bitcoin is 290 thousand and at the same time for aetherium it’s 659 thousand now you can see this throughout July whether the number of transactions per day stay more or less the same for Bitcoin and it’s helium the number of blocks that are created for Bitcoin is five hundred thirty seven thousand for each helium that goes up to six billion now this has more to do with the fact that the amount of time it takes for a block to be added to a theorem is much less as compared to Bitcoin now the block size for bitcoin is six hundred and twenty-eight 0.286 kilobytes and twenty five point one thirty four kilobytes for aetherium now you can see that the market value of Bitcoin is significantly higher than any form of digital currency in the market right now it is however closely followed by ether