Bitcoin the New Way to Pay.. Watch out Visa..--Not..
I'm not saying that bitcoin is flawed per say, the concept is an excellent starting point for better technologies. In many ways it is no different than the steam engine of old, an excellent concept that was in time usurped by the internal combustion engine, the hybrid etc.
Bitcoin (in whatever form becomes the dominant chain) should hold itself as a store of value, and the currency medium for all other currencies.
As a payment system for everyday things its not going to make it. I'm certainly not going to pay a $5.00 transaction fee to buy a $1.50 cent Diet Coke at the gas station. I believe the major technological hurdle not yet overcome by all block chain based technologies thus far is transaction speed.
The fact like it or not is that LARGE APPS CANNOT RUN ON THE CHAIN and for the conceivable future based on current technology have a long, long way to go.
The Facts.
Let’s do the math on running something like Facebook on the blockchain. Facebook handles 175k requests per second (900k users on the site in any given minute, assume an action is taken every 5 seconds). And this probably doesn’t include API requests, which are a better analogue and probably 3–4x higher.
Where is Ethereum now?
First, a note: I am not an Ethereum maximalist, but I think Ethereum is the best suited for thinking about scalability right now.
At the moment, Ethereum can handle about 20 transactions per second, which cuts in half to about 7 transactions per second for tokens (4.7m gas limit, 21k avg gas price for standard txn = ~220 standard txns every block, current avg block time 17s = 13 txns/sec, gas requirement roughly doubles for token transactions). And this doesn’t include more expensive smart contract execution.
By this estimate we’re roughly 250x off being able to run a 10m user app and 25,000x off being able to run Facebook on chain.
Also compare it to VISA (a payment system for everyday things, minus a transaction fee for the user) but with a .25 cent or 1.3 percent (greater of) surcharge to the seller
VisaNet handles an average of 150 million transactions every day and is capable of handling more than 24,000 transactions per second.
Again compared to Blockchain
The Ethereum 20 transactions per second.
Bitcoin roughly 7 transactoins per second. (blistering fast).. a long way to go to be the everyday payment method of the common man
If you had to compare Litecoin to Ethereum as a currency for exchange. Which would you prefer?
Litecoin/ Dash I would think and really profitable if LiteCoin (or the Silver of Bitcoin) could reach Dash levels. Etherium is B2b and smart contracts, not necessarily geared towards a medium of currency for exchange.
"However, from a general point of view, Bitcoin and Ethereum differ in purpose. While Bitcoin is created as an alternative to regular money and is thus a medium of payment transaction and store of value, Ethereum is developed as a platform which facilitates peer-to-peer contracts and applications via its own currency vehicle. While Bitcoin and Ether are both digital currencies, the primary purpose of Ether is not to establish itself as a payment alternative (unlike Bitcoin) but to facilitate and monetize the working of Ethereum to enable developers to build and run distributed applications (ĐApps)."
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/031416/bitcoin-vs-ethereum-driven-different-purposes.asp#ixzz4zfyGCPj2