There is no doubt that the majority of people will have heard about Bitcoin by now – its meteoric rise of over 1800% this year has made mainstream news globally. However, anyone that has dealt with BTC will also know that it is inefficient, slow, and expensive to send and receive.
Transaction costs are escalating, it can take hours to send it from one exchange to another, and crypto exchanges often just close their digital doors when demand is overwhelming. Not a great start for revolutionary technology that will change the world. What Bitcoin has done, though, is transform the blockchain industry into a massive horse race of alternative digital currencies, who are all vying to be the next big thing.
Verging On Ridiculous
Technology evolves, and while Bitcoin is still a basic and sluggish system, it needs to be scaled up by huge proportions to meet demand if it is ever going to flourish as a digital currency. Many predict it will not succeed but be surpassed by something far more superior. Enter Verge, a little known altcoin that has done big things in recent months. According to a Yahoo News report, XVG has been running rings around BTC this year.
Verge can be considered as Bitcoin 2.0 in that it has adapted the blockchain to improve security and anonymity in addition to capacity and transaction times. Anonymity is something that is lacking on Bitcoin’s public ledger. Verge has solved this by incorporating the use of multiple anonymity-centric networks, such as Tor and I2P. Internet (IP) addresses of users are obfuscated, and the transactions are completely untraceable, according to the spiel on their website.
If Bitcoin transactions are slower than a proverbial tractor, transactions on Verge happen at light speed, comparatively speaking. Its use of Simple Payment Verification technology allows most transactions processed through Verge’s blockchain to be completed in around five seconds. Verge also maintains a community feel since it’s not a private company. Community members are responsible for the direction of its technology and where the coin heads next. It currently offers a number of secure mobile wallets, including the Tor Android Wallet, which offers mobile anonymity, another big plus over Bitcoin.
The Verge Surge
Verge could be a game changer for digital currencies. It has made an astronomical rise this year from $0.00002 in January to an all-time high a couple hours ago of $0.30, according to CoinMarketCap. That is a staggering 1.5 million percent, which pretty much blows Bitcoin out of the water. At the time of writing, XVG has a market cap of $3.5 billion, with a total of 16.5 billion tokens and 14.5 billion in circulation. It could go literally to the moon if mass adoption follows. The majority of XVG is traded on Binance and Bittrex, where over a billion dollars in volume has been recorded in the past 24 hours. Things change fast in crypto land, and it is time for Bitcoin to move over.
[Full disclosure: The author of this article is a Verge (XVG) holder]
Is it time for Bitcoin to get off its perch and be replaced with something far more efficient? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Images courtesy of Verge