Satoshi Nakamoto, an anonymous creator of Bitcoin, published the coin’s whitepaper entitled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” in 2008. In 2009, the first Bitcoin software that powered the blockchain, went live. The fees were low and the transactions were reliable for several years. However, by 2016, as the popularity of Bitcoin increased, the number of transactions on its network grew, leading to slow processing times and higher fees. Mining hardware manufacturer Bitmain proposed the hard fork for increasing the block size limit to allow more transactions per block, which went live on August 1, 2017, resulting in the creation of Bitcoin Cash. It received support from some in the Bitcoin community, like Roger Ver. Since its inception, Bitcoin Cash has experienced its own set of challenges and milestones. One notable event was another hard fork in November 2018, which led to the creation of Bitcoin SV (BSV), a separate cryptocurrency. The split was caused by disagreements within the Bitcoin Cash community regarding proposed changes to the protocol. As a result, two competing implementations emerged - Bitcoin ABC and Bitcoin SV - with the former continuing as Bitcoin Cash and the latter becoming its own distinct cryptocurrency.

Due to the larger block size, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) works faster and has lower transaction fees. Furthermore, Bitcoin Cash supports smart contracts and ecosystem apps. With a limited total supply of 21 million coins, Bitcoin Cash is provably scarce and, like physical cash, can be easily spent. Transactions are fast, with fees typically less than a tenth of a cent. Bitcoin Cash has various use cases. In addition to peer-to-peer payments between individuals, Bitcoin Cash can be used to pay participating merchants for goods and services in-store and online. Low fees enable new micro-transaction economies, such as tipping content creators and rewarding app users a few cents. Bitcoin Cash also reduces the expenses and settlement times for remittances and cross-border trade. Other use cases include tokens, simplified smart contracts, and private payments with tools such as CashShuffle and CashFusion.

Bitcoin Cash was considered by some supporters to be the legitimate continuation of Satoshi Nakamoto’s vision of Bitcoin as a peer-to-peer electronic cash. All Bitcoin holders at the time of the fork (block 478,558) automatically became owners of Bitcoin Cash. From a technical perspective, Bitcoin Cash is similar to the Bitcoin algorithm. Namely: both projects have a hard cap of 21 million coins and also use Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus framework and nodes to verify transactions. Unlike Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash aims to scale to meet the demands of a global payment system. At the time of the split, the Bitcoin Cash block size was increased from 1MB to 8MB. An increased block size means Bitcoin Cash can now handle significantly more transactions per second (TPS) while keeping fees extremely low, solving the issues of payment delays and high fees experienced by some users on the Bitcoin BTC network. As of 2023, Bitcoin Cash has a block size of 32MB, compared to Bitcoin’s block size of 1MB.

As with Bitcoin, the maximum supply of Bitcoin Cash has a hard cap of 21 million coins. The circulating supply as of May 2023 is 19,387,119 BCH.

As with Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash is secured by a Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus mechanism, where miners solve computationally intensive puzzles to validate transactions and create new blocks.

Mining is the process in which new Bitcoin Cash transactions are confirmed, and new blocks are added to the blockchain. Miners use computing power and electricity to solve complex puzzles. By doing so, they can produce new blocks of transactions. If one of their blocks is accepted by the network, the miner, or mining pool, earns a block reward in the form of newly-issued Bitcoin Cash. Mining is highly competitive. As the price of Bitcoin Cash in the marketplace rises, more miners are incentivized to bring more hash rate into the ever-increasing miner competition to produce and accept blocks by the Bitcoin Cash network. More miners make the blockchain more secure by increasing and distributing the hash rate. This prevents a single miner from having control over the web.

If you would like to know where to buy BCH at the current rate, the top cryptocurrency exchanges for trading in BCH are Binance, Coinbase, KuCoin, Kraken and more. Want to keep track of BCH price in real-time? Download the CMC mobile app to get the live price of BCH, BTC and other cryptocurrencies.

Learn more about Bitcoin Cash in our deep dive. Find out more about Bitcoin — the first cryptocurrency created. Check out Bitcoin SV — a fork of Bitcoin Cash. Learn about block size and SHA-256 with CMC Glossary.

Bitcoin is, in many regards, almost synonymous with cryptocurrency, which means that you can [buy Bitcoin](https://www.binance.com/en/buy-Bitcoin) on virtually every crypto exchange — both for fiat money and other cryptocurrencies. Some of the main markets where BTC trading is available are: * [Binance](https://www.binance.com/en/price/bitcoin) * [Coinbase Pro](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/coinbase-pro/) * [OKEx](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/okex/) * [Kraken](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/kraken/) * [Huobi Global](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/huobi-global/) * [Bitfinex](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/bitfinex/) If you are new to crypto, use CoinMarketCap’s own educational portal — [Alexandria](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria) — to learn how to start [buying Bitcoin](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/how-to-buy-bitcoin) and other cryptocurrencies.

The current valuation of Bitcoin is constantly moving, all day every day. It is a truly global asset. From a start of under one cent per coin, BTC has risen in price by thousands of percent to the numbers you see above. The prices of all cryptocurrencies are quite volatile, meaning that anyone’s understanding of how much Bitcoin is will change by the minute. However, there are times when different countries and exchanges show different prices and understanding how much Bitcoin is will be a function of a person’s location.

Bitcoin is becoming more political by the day, particularly after El Salvador began accepting the currency as [legal tender](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/el-salvador-plans-to-make-bitcoin-legal-tender-why-thats-a-big-deal). The country's president, Nayib Bukele, announced and implemented the decision almost unilaterally, dismissing criticism from [his citizens](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/bitcoin-atm-set-on-fire-as-el-salvador-marks-independence-day), the [Bank of England](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/bank-of-england-criticizes-el-salvador-over-bitcoin), the [IMF](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/imf-warns-that-el-salvadors-plan-to-adopt-bitcoin-has-risks), [Vitalik Buterin](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/reckless-buterin-attacks-el-salvador-s-president) and many others. Since the Bitcoin legal tender law was passed in September 2021, Bukele has also announced plans to build [Bitcoin City](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/el-salvador-to-build-world-s-first-bitcoin-city), a city fully based on mining Bitcoin with geothermal energy from volcanoes. Countries like [Mexico](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/mexico-has-no-plans-to-make-bitcoin-legal-tender), [Russia](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/russia-says-it-wont-make-bitcoin-legal-tender-as-media-says-el-salvador-is-making-dangerous-gamble) and others have been rumored to be candidates also to accept Bitcoin as legal tender, but thus far, El Salvador stands alone. On the flip side, countries like China have moved to heavily [clamp down](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/bitcoin-price-falls-as-china-declares-all-crypto-transactions-are-illegal) on Bitcoin mining and trading activities. In May 2021, the Chinese government declared that all crypto-related transactions are illegal. This was followed by a heavy crackdown on Bitcoin mining operations, forcing many crypto-related businesses to flee to friendlier regions. Surprisingly, the anti-crypto stance of the Chinese government has done little to stop the industry. According to data by the [University of Cambridge](https://ccaf.io/cbeci/mining_map), China is now the second-biggest contributor to Bitcoin's global hash rate, only behind the United States.

A few years ago, the idea that a publicly traded company might hold Bitcoin on its balance sheets seemed highly laughable. The flagship cryptocurrency was considered to be too volatile to be adopted by any serious business. Many top investors, including Warren Buffett, labeled the asset a “bubble waiting to pop.” This negative sentiment appears to have been broken, with a number of corporate behemoths buying up Bitcoin since 2020. In particular, business intelligence firm MicroStrategy set the pace after it bought $425 million worth of Bitcoin in August and September 2020. Since then, many others have followed suit, including EV manufacturer [Tesla](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/tesla-has-made-100m-on-bitcoin-already-but-elon-musk-is-being-criticized). MicroStrategy has by far the largest Bitcoin portfolio held by any publicly-traded company. The business analytics platform has adopted Bitcoin as its primary reserve asset, aggressively buying the cryptocurrency through 2021 and 2022. As of August 30, 2022, the company had 129,699 Bitcoin in its reserve, equivalent to just over $2.5 billion. Other top corporate holders include Marathon Digital Holdings, with 10,054 BTC, Coinbase (9,000), Square Inc. (8,027), and Hut 8 Mining Corp. (7,078).

The Lightning Network is an off-chain, layered payment protocol that operates bidirectional payment channels which allows instantaneous transfer with instant reconciliation. It enables private, high volume and trustless transactions between any two parties. The Lightning Network scales transaction capacity without incurring the costs associated with transactions and interventions on the underlying blockchain.

Taproot is a [soft fork](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/soft-fork-blockchain) that bundles together BIP 340, 341 and 342 and aims to improve the scalability, efficiency, and privacy of the blockchain by introducing several new features. The two major changes are the introduction of the Merkelized Abstract Syntax Tree (MAST) and Schnorr Signature. MAST introduces a condition allowing the sender and recipient of a transaction to sign off on its settlement together. Schnorr Signature allows users to aggregate several signatures into one for a single transaction. This results in [multi-signature](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/multisignature) transactions looking the same as regular transactions or more complex ones. By introducing this new address type, users can also save on transaction fees, as even complex transactions look like simple, single-signature ones. Although [HODL](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/hodl)ers will probably not notice a big impact, Taproot could become a key milestone to equipping the network with [smart contract](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/smart-contract) functionality. In particular, Schnorr Signatures would lay the foundation for more complex applications to be built on top of the existing blockchain, as users start switching to Taproot addresses primarily. If adopted by users, Taproot could, in the long run, result in the network developing its own [DeFi](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/defi) ecosystem that rivals those on alternative blockchains like [Ethereum](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/).

A [hard fork](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/hard-fork-blockchain) is a radical change to the protocol that makes previously invalid blocks/transactions valid, and therefore requires all users to upgrade. For example, if users A and B are disagreeing on whether an incoming transaction is valid, a hard fork could make the transaction valid to users A and B, but not to user C. A hard fork is a protocol upgrade that is not backward compatible. This means every node (computer connected to the Bitcoin network using a client that performs the task of validating and relaying transactions) needs to upgrade before the new blockchain with the hard fork activates and rejects any blocks or transactions from the old blockchain. The old blockchain will continue to exist and will continue to accept transactions, although it may be incompatible with other newer Bitcoin clients. A [soft fork](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/soft-fork-blockchain) is a change to the Bitcoin protocol wherein only previously valid blocks/transactions are made invalid. Since old nodes will recognise the new blocks as valid, a soft fork is backward-compatible. This kind of fork requires only a majority of the miners upgrading to enforce the new rules. Some examples of prominent cryptocurrencies that have undergone hard forks are the following: [Bitcoin’s hard fork](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/what-is-bitcoin-cash) that resulted in Bitcoin Cash, [Ethereum’s hard fork](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/ethereum-vs-ethereum-classic) that resulted in Ethereum Classic. Bitcoin Cash has been hard forked since its original forking, with the creation of Bitcoin SV. Read more about the difference between Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV [here](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/bitcoin-vs-bitcoin-cash-vs-bitcoin-sv).

Bitcoin is the first decentralized, peer-to-peer digital currency. One of its most important functions is that it is used as a decentralized store of value. In other words, it provides for ownership rights as a physical asset or as a unit of account. However, the latter store-of-value function has been debated. Many crypto enthusiasts and economists believe that high-scale adoption of the top currency will lead us to a new modern financial world where transaction amounts will be denominated in smaller units. The smallest units of Bitcoin, 0.00000001 BTC, are called [Satoshis](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/satoshi-sats) (or Sats in short), in a nod to the pseudonymous creator. At Bitcoin price now, 1 Satoshi is equivalent to roughly $0.00048. The top crypto is considered a store of value, like gold, for many — rather than a currency. This idea of the first cryptocurrency as a store of value, instead of a payment method, means that many people buy the crypto and hold onto it long-term (or HODL) rather than spending it on items like you would typically spend a dollar — treating it as digital gold.

Bitcoin is secured with the [SHA-256 algorithm](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/sha-256), which belongs to the SHA-2 family of hashing algorithms, which is also used by its fork Bitcoin Cash ([BCH](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin-cash/)), as well as several other cryptocurrencies.

Bitcoin’s [total supply](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/what-is-tokenomics) is limited by its software and will never exceed 21,000,000 coins. New coins are created during the process known as [“mining”](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/how-long-does-it-take-to-mine-one-bitcoin): as transactions are relayed across the network, they get picked up by miners and packaged into blocks, which are in turn protected by complex cryptographic calculations. As compensation for spending their computational resources, the miners receive rewards for every block that they successfully add to the blockchain. At the moment of Bitcoin’s launch, the reward was 50 bitcoins per block: this number gets [halved](https://coinmarketcap.com/halving/bitcoin/) with every 210,000 new blocks mined — which takes the network roughly four years. As of 2020, the block reward has been halved three times and comprises 6.25 bitcoins. Bitcoin has not been premined, meaning that no coins have been mined and/or distributed between the founders before it became available to the public. However, during the first few years of BTC’s existence, the competition between miners was relatively low, allowing the earliest network participants to accumulate significant amounts of coins via regular mining: Satoshi Nakamoto alone is believed to own over a million Bitcoin. [Mining Bitcoins](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/how-to-mine-bitcoin) can be very profitable for miners, depending on the current hash rate and the price of Bitcoin. While the process of mining Bitcoins is complex, we discuss [how long it takes](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/how-long-does-it-take-to-mine-one-bitcoin) to mine one Bitcoin on CoinMarketCap [Alexandria](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/) — as we wrote above, mining Bitcoin is best understood as how long it takes to mine one block, as opposed to one Bitcoin. As of mid-September 2021, the Bitcoin mining reward is capped to 6.25 BTC after the [2020 halving](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/bitcoin-halvings-what-they-are-why-they-happen-and-why-you-should-care), which is roughly $299,200 in Bitcoin price today.

Bitcoin’s most unique advantage comes from the fact that it was the very first cryptocurrency to appear on the market. It has managed to create a global community and give birth to an entirely new industry of millions of enthusiasts who create, invest in, trade and use Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in their everyday lives. The emergence of the first cryptocurrency has created a conceptual and technological basis that subsequently inspired the development of thousands of competing projects. [The entire cryptocurrency market](https://coinmarketcap.com/) — now worth more than $2 trillion — is based on the idea realized by Bitcoin: money that can be sent and received by anyone, anywhere in the world without reliance on trusted intermediaries, such as banks and financial services companies. Thanks to its pioneering nature, BTC remains at the top of this energetic market after over a decade of existence. Even after Bitcoin has lost its undisputed dominance, it remains the largest [cryptocurrency](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/what-are-cryptocurrencies), with a [market capitalization](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/market-capitalization-market-cap-mcap) that surpassed the $1 trillion mark in 2021, after Bitcoin price hit an all-time high of $64,863.10 on April 14, 2021. This is owing in large part to growing institutional interest in Bitcoin, and the ubiquitousness of platforms that provide use-cases for BTC: [wallets](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/how-to-use-a-bitcoin-wallet), exchanges, payment services, online games and more.

Bitcoin’s original inventor is known under a pseudonym, Satoshi Nakamoto. As of 2021, the true identity of the person — or organization — that is behind the alias remains unknown. On October 31, 2008, Nakamoto published Bitcoin’s whitepaper, which described in detail how a peer-to-peer, online currency could be implemented. They proposed to use a decentralized ledger of transactions packaged in batches (called “blocks”) and secured by cryptographic algorithms — the whole system would later be dubbed “[blockchain](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/blockchain).” Just two months later, on January 3, 2009, Nakamoto mined the first block on the Bitcoin network, known as the [genesis block](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/genesis-block), thus launching the world’s first cryptocurrency. Bitcoin price was $0 when first introduced, and most Bitcoins were obtained via mining, which only required moderately powerful devices (e.g. PCs) and mining software. The first known Bitcoin commercial transaction occurred on May 22, 2010, when programmer Laszlo Hanyecz traded 10,000 Bitcoins for two pizzas. At Bitcoin price today in mid-September 2021, those pizzas would be worth an astonishing $478 million. This event is now known as “Bitcoin Pizza Day.” In July 2010, Bitcoin first started trading, with the Bitcoin price ranging from $0.0008 to $0.08 at that time. However, while Nakamoto was the original inventor of Bitcoin, as well as the author of its very first implementation, he handed the network alert key and control of the code repository to Gavin Andresen, who later became lead developer at the Bitcoin Foundation. Over the years a large number of people have contributed to improving the cryptocurrency’s software by patching vulnerabilities and adding new features. Bitcoin’s source code repository on GitHub lists more than 750 contributors, with some of the key ones being Wladimir J. van der Laan, Marco Falke, Pieter Wuille, Gavin Andresen, Jonas Schnelli and others.

[Bitcoin](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/an-intro-to-bitcoin) is a decentralized [cryptocurrency](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/what-are-cryptocurrencies) originally described in a 2008 [whitepaper](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/whitepaper) by a person, or group of people, using the alias [Satoshi Nakamoto](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/who-is-satoshi-nakamoto). It was launched soon after, in January 2009. [Bitcoin](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/what-is-bitcoin) is a peer-to-peer online currency, meaning that all [transactions](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/how-long-does-a-bitcoin-transaction-take) happen directly between equal, independent network participants, without the need for any intermediary to permit or facilitate them. Bitcoin was created, according to Nakamoto’s own words, to allow “online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.” Some concepts for a similar type of a decentralized electronic currency precede BTC, but Bitcoin holds the distinction of being the [first-ever cryptocurrency](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/a-beginner-s-guide-to-investing-in-cryptocurrencies) to come into actual use.

Given the fact that Ethereum is the second-largest cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, it is possible to [buy Ethereum](https://www.binance.com/en/buy-Ethereum), or use ETH trading pairs on nearly all of the major crypto exchanges. Some of the largest markets include: * [Binance](https://www.binance.com/en/price/ethereum) * [Coinbase Pro](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/coinbase-pro/) * [OKEx](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/okex/) * [Kraken](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/kraken/) * [Huobi Global](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/huobi-global/) Popular Ethereum price pairs include: [ETH/USD](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/eth/usd/), [ETH/GBP](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/eth/gbp/), [ETH/AUD](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/eth/aud/) and [ETH/JPY](https://coinmarketcap.com/ja/currencies/ethereum/).

As of August 2020, Ethereum is secured via the Ethash proof-of-work algorithm, belonging to the Keccak family of hash functions. There are plans, however, to transition the network to a proof-of-stake algorithm tied to the major [Ethereum 2.0](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/a-dive-into-ethereum-2-0) update, which launched in late 2020. After the Ethereum 2.0 Beacon Chain (Phase 0) went live in the beginning of December 2020, it became possible to begin staking on the Ethereum 2.0 network. An Ethereum stake is when you deposit ETH (32 ETH is required to activate validator software) on Ethereum 2.0 by sending it to a deposit contract, thus helping to secure the network by storing data, processing transactions and adding new blocks to the blockchain. At the time of writing in mid-September 2021, the Ethereum price now for 32 Ether is roughly $116,029. The amount of money earned by Ethereum validators right now is a return of 6% APR, which equates to around 1.91952 ETH, or $6960 in Ethereum price today. This number will change as the network develops and the amount of stakers (validators) increase. Ethereum staking rewards are determined by a distribution curve (the participation and average percent of stakers): some ETH 2.0 staking rewards were at 20% for early stakers, but will be lowered to end up between 7% and 4.5% annually. The minimum requirements for an Ethereum stake are 32 ETH. If you decide to stake in Ethereum 2.0, it means that your Ethererum stake will be locked up on the network for months, if not years, in the future until the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade is completed.

In September 2021, there were around 117.5 million ETH coins in circulation, 72 million of which were issued in the genesis block — the first ever block on the Ethereum blockchain. Of these 72 million, 60 million were allocated to the initial contributors to the 2014 crowd sale that funded the project, and 12 million were given to the development fund. The remaining amount has been issued in the form of block rewards to the miners on the Ethereum network. The original reward in 2015 was 5 ETH per block, which later went down to 3 ETH in late 2017 and then to 2 ETH in early 2019. The average time it takes to mine an Ethereum block is around 13-15 seconds. In the August 2021 Ethereum network upgrade, the London hard fork contained the [Ethereum Improvement Protocol](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/ethereum-improvement-proposal-eip), EIP-1559. Instead of the first-price auction mechanism where the highest bidder wins, EIP-1559 introduces a “base fee” for transactions to be included in the next block. Users that want to have their transaction prioritized can pay a “tip” or “priority fee” to miners. As the base fee adjusts dynamically with transaction activity, this reduces the volatility of Ethereum gas fees, although it does not reduce the price, which is notoriously high during peak congestion on the network. One of the major differences between Bitcoin and Ethereum’s [economics](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/what-is-tokenomics) is that the latter is not deflationary, i.e. its total supply is not limited. Ethereum’s developers [justify](https://docs.ethhub.io/ethereum-basics/monetary-policy/) this by not wanting to have a “fixed security budget” for the network. Being able to adjust ETH’s issuance rate via [consensus](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/consensus) allows the network to maintain the minimum issuance needed for adequate security. With the introduction of EIP-1559 however, the base fees used in transactions are burned, removing the ETH from circulation. This means higher activity on the network would lead to more ETH burned, and the decreasing supply should lead to appreciation of Ethereum price, all things equal. This has the potential to make Ethereum deflationary, something ETH holders are excited about — a potential appreciation in Ethereum price today.

The EIP-1559 upgrade introduces a mechanism that changes the way gas fees are estimated on the Ethereum blockchain. Before the upgrade, users had to participate in an open auction for their transactions to be picked up by a miner. This process is known as a “first-price auction,” and as expected, the highest bidder wins. With EIP-1559, this process is handled by an automated bidding system, and there is a set “base fee” for transactions to be included in the next block. This fee varies based on how congested the network is. Furthermore, users who wish to speed up their transactions can pay a “priority fee” to a miner for faster inclusion. EIP-1559 also introduces a fee-burning mechanism. A part of every transaction fee (the base fee) is burned and removed out of circulation. This is intended to lower the circulating supply of Ether and potentially increase the value of the token over time. Interestingly, less than two months after the London upgrade was implemented, the network had burned over $1 billion worth of Ether.

Since its inception, Ethereum has maintained its spot as the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. But like every other blockchain network that exists, Ethereum is not perfect. Notable, the legacy blockchain is plagued with high gas fees and low throughput of between 15 to 30 transactions per second. Although plans are already on the way to solve these shortcomings through several upgrades, many competitors have capitalized on this delay to offer crypto users cheaper and faster transactions. The term “Ethereum Killer” emerged around 2016/2017 as substitute blockchains such as Cardano began to enter the crypto scene. In 2018, EOS made its debut as the next “Ethereum killer,” raising $4.1 billion from investors, the highest amount an ICO had ever generated. Since then, others like Tezos, Solana, Fantom, Avalanche and Binance Smart Chain have surfaced as possible Ethereum killers. Each of these blockchains employs a different consensus model to tackle Ethereum’s PoW-induced limitations. For instance, Solana uses proof-of-history (PoH) while Binance Smart Chain utilizes both proof-of-authority (PoA) and delegated proof-of-stake (DPoS). However, none of these alternative blockchains have been able to unseat Ethereum as the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap. Ethereum is also currently the largest blockchain for NFT trading activities.

[Ethereum Name Service](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/what-is-ens), aka ENS, is a distributed and extensible naming system based on the Ethereum blockchain. It is essentially the Web3 version of DNS, short for domain name service. In its original state, a cryptocurrency address consists of a long string of numbers and letters designed to be read by computers. It may look like this — “0xDC25EF3F5B8A186998338A2ADA83795FBA2D695E” — making it confusing at times to read, and in some cases even leading to loss of funds. ENS provides a solution to this problem of long and confusing crypto addresses by assigning human-readable names to machine-readable identifiers such as Ethereum addresses, metadata, other cryptocurrency addresses and content hashes. With ENS, the long address above could become something as simple as “Alice.eth,” and you can receive any type of cryptocurrency or NFT via your ENS domain. ENS is based on two Ethereum smart contracts. The first is the ENS registry, which records three critical pieces of information: the owner of the domain, the resolver for the domain and the caching time for all records under the domain. The second smart contract is the Resolver, which translates the domain name to a machine-readable address and vice-versa. It is worth adding that in addition to integrating with .eth names, ENS also supports the most popular DNS names, including .com, .org, .io, .app and several others.

Ethereum has pioneered the concept of a blockchain smart contract platform. Smart contracts are computer programs that automatically execute the actions necessary to fulfill an agreement between several parties on the internet. They were designed to reduce the need for trusted intermediates between contractors, thus reducing transaction costs while also increasing transaction reliability. Ethereum’s principal innovation was designing a platform that allowed it to execute smart contracts using the blockchain, which further reinforces the already existing benefits of smart contract technology. Ethereum’s blockchain was designed, according to co-founder Gavin Wood, as a sort of “one computer for the entire planet,” theoretically able to make any program more robust, censorship-resistant and less prone to fraud by running it on a globally distributed network of public nodes. In addition to smart contracts, Ethereum’s blockchain is able to host other cryptocurrencies, called “tokens,” through the use of its [ERC-20](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/the-beginners-guide-to-erc-20-tokens-and-addresses) compatibility standard. In fact, this has been the most common use for the ETH platform so far: to date, more than 280,000 ERC-20-compliant tokens have been launched. Over 40 of these make the top-100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, for example, [USDT](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tether/), [LINK](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/chainlink/) and [BNB](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/binance-coin/). Since the emergence of [Play2Earn](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/play2earn-play-to-earn) games, there has been a substantial increase in interest in the [ETH to PHP price](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/eth/php/).

Ethereum has a total of eight [co-founders](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/who-founded-ethereum) — an unusually large number for a crypto project. They first met on June 7, 2014, in Zug, Switzerland. * Russian-Canadian [Vitalik Buterin](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/people/vitalik-buterin) is perhaps the best known of the bunch. He authored the original white paper that first described Ethereum in 2013 and still works on improving the platform to this day. Prior to ETH, Buterin co-founded and wrote for the Bitcoin Magazine news website. * British programmer [Gavin Wood](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/people/gavin-wood) is arguably the second most important co-founder of ETH, as he coded the first technical implementation of Ethereum in the C++ programming language, proposed Ethereum’s native programming language Solidity and was the first chief technology officer of the Ethereum Foundation. Before Ethereum, Wood was a research scientist at Microsoft. Afterward, he moved on to establish the Web3 Foundation. Among the other co-founders of Ethereum are: - Anthony Di Iorio, who underwrote the project during its early stage of development. - [Charles Hoskinson](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/people/charles-hoskinson), who played the principal role in establishing the Swiss-based Ethereum Foundation and its legal framework. - Mihai Alisie, who provided assistance in establishing the Ethereum Foundation. - [Joseph Lubin](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/people/joseph-lubin), a Canadian entrepreneur, who, like Di Iorio, has helped fund Ethereum during its early days, and later founded an incubator for startups based on ETH called ConsenSys. - Amir Chetrit, who helped co-found Ethereum but stepped away from it early into the development.

Ethereum is a decentralized open-source [blockchain](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/blockchain) system that features its own cryptocurrency, Ether. ETH works as a platform for numerous other [cryptocurrencies](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/what-are-cryptocurrencies), as well as for the execution of decentralized [smart contracts](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/smart-contract). [Ethereum was first described](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/an-intro-to-ethereum-eth) in a 2013 whitepaper by Vitalik Buterin. Buterin, along with other co-founders, secured funding for the project in an online public crowd sale in the summer of 2014. The project team managed to raise $18.3 million in Bitcoin, and Ethereum’s price in the [Initial Coin Offering](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/initial-coin-offering-ico) (ICO) was $0.311, with over 60 million Ether sold. Taking Ethereum’s price now, this puts the [return on investment](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/roi) (ROI) at an annualized rate of over 270%, essentially almost quadrupling your investment every year since the summer of 2014. The Ethereum Foundation officially launched the blockchain on July 30, 2015, under the prototype codenamed “Frontier.” Since then, there has been several network updates — “Constantinople” on Feb. 28, 2019, “Istanbul” on Dec. 8, 2019, “Muir Glacier” on Jan. 2, 2020, “Berlin” on April 14, 2021, and most recently on Aug. 5, 2021, the “London” [hard fork](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/hard-fork-blockchain). Ethereum’s own purported goal is to become a global platform for decentralized applications, allowing users from all over the world to write and run software that is resistant to censorship, downtime and fraud.