Bitcoin vs. Altcoins: Which is the Most Usable for Merchants?

The number of merchants accepting Bitcoin and other coins is nonetheless steadily increasing, with the number of Bitcoin-accepting stores reported to Coinmap - worldwide - had risen by 3,716 in a single year.

A question remains for those merchants still undecided on whether to jump into the world of crypto payments: Which coin is the most usable and practical as a means of payment? Well, Bitcoin has an advantage insofar as the fact that vastly more people hold the original cryptocurrency than they do any other.

Numerous altcoins - particularly Bitcoin Cash, Dash and Litecoin - are already faster and cheaper than Bitcoin as a method of payment, and while they may lack the value of their older rival, they currently provide a more seamless retail experience.

A poll of gamers conducted by the Swiss-based gaming company also found that Bitcoin was the most popular cryptocurrency, with 83 percent having purchased Bitcoin compared to 75 percent buying Ethereum.

"Bitcoin is definitely useful as a means of payment, especially for higher price items and across borders. On the other hand, few people are using Bitcoin to buy cheap items like paper plates, for good reason. The weaknesses include high volatility, transaction times and fees that are paid by the buyers which create barriers to conversion. The weaknesses tend to put a damper on sales by Bitcoin for low-cost items."

Conversely, Ethereum can reportedly handle a theoretical maximum of 30 transactions per second, while Bitcoin Cash's block-size limit of 32MB should mean that it can handle 32-times as many transactions as Bitcoin - i.e., around 224 per second.

Devan Calabrez agrees that Bitcoin Cash has reason to be recommend as an alternative to Bitcoin and other currencies, particularly with respect to the purchase of cheaper products.

There are reports that Bitcoin Cash is significantly more centralized than Bitcoin.

Secondly, there are reports that Bitcoin Cash is already quite centralized as it is - even as most nodes do not yet use the full 32MB bandwidth - with Jameson Lopp revealing data in December which indicated that as many as 54 percent of Bitcoin Cash nodes are running on Hangzhou Alibaba virtual servers in China, compared to 2 percent of Bitcoin nodes.

In terms of block share, it's not as decentralized as Bitcoin Cash or Dash, since the top four Bitcoin Cash and Dash miners produce 55.1 percent and 41 percent of blocks, compared with 57.5 percent for Bitcoin - it's currently 69.75 percent for Ethereum, 68 percent for Litecoin.