Comparison Study of the Top 5 Leading Cryptocurrencies based on General Consensus Protocol: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tether, XRP and Bitcoin Cash

Abstract

Bitcoin has had a tremendous impact on the monetary system around the globe today since its launch in 2009 by its founder, Satoshi Nakamoto. Since then, over three thousand cryptocurrencies have risen to compete with traditional fiat currencies. While many experts believe that cryptocurrencies are more comparable to assets like gold, few others believe that cryptocurrencies could replace traditional fiat currencies as a medium of payment, just as Satoshi envisioned when he published the Bitcoin protocol. As such, there exist few papers in the literature discussing the potential for Bitcoin to become a major payment currency. Nevertheless, there is a lack of research in evaluating whether Bitcoin is set to dominate the market as a payment currency, or whether another cryptocurrency would take the lead. In addition, the issue of strict regulation capping the potential of cryptocurrencies has been well-studied in the literature and, hence, this paper tries to evaluate the top five leading cryptocurrencies (based on their market cap value as of July 2020) from a different perspective. Particularly, the evaluation is based on five benchmark evaluation factors: Speed, Activity, Decentralization, Users, and Community. For this preliminary study, we assign all these benchmarks an equal weight. Our conclusion shows that Ethereum could be more suitable as a future payment currency rather than Bitcoin.