Читать книгу Cryptocurrency All-in-One For Dummies - Peter Kent, Kiana Danial - Страница 84

Cardano and Bitcoin are both decentralized, they both act as a medium of exchange, and they both have bright futures as absolute trust in fiat currencies is on the decline. Cardano is very different than Bitcoin in a few notable ways, however. Cardano is built from the ground up to serve as a smart contract platform. It also doesn’t have the extreme computer processing requirements that Bitcoin miners face every day. Here’s a basic list of how Cardano and Bitcoin compare to each other:

 Mining: One of the major differences between Cardano and Bitcoin has to do with mining. Mining Bitcoin is becoming more difficult and expensive as time goes by. To really make money mining Bitcoin, you need very powerful computers. Cardano, on the other hand, doesn’t require mining, and so there is no need for ultra-expensive, dedicated computer equipment and air-conditioned facilities. Bitcoin mining uses a proof-of-work protocol, meaning that your specialized computer hardware churns through a mind-boggling number of computations per second. Cardano’s system requires a fraction of the computing power, as you swap, in a manner of speaking, the heavy computational load of Bitcoin mining for the staking of your own Cardano ADA coins. Staking means that you make a certain amount of your ADA coins temporarily un-spendable until a Cardano transaction has been verified as complete. This somewhat over-generalized explanation is called proof of stake (PoS).

 Total number of coins: Bitcoin has a finite number of 21 million coins. Cardano also has a finite, maximum supply of coins, totaling 45 billion.

 Transaction speed and fees: On Bitcoin’s network, transaction confirmation time averages around ten minutes and sometimes much longer. For Cardano, the speed can be as short as the generation of one block in 20 seconds. Cardano’s transaction fee is also considerably lower than Bitcoin’s, averaging less than $0.30 in mid-2021.