Differences Between Gulden and Bitcoin
Many people who come across Gulden initially heard of Bitcoin, which is seen as the default crypto-currency as it is the best known one. Were Gulden was born in 2014, Bitcoin dates back to 2009. Why would you switch from Bitcoin to Gulden? What exactly are the differences? And why would Gulden be better? Questions that many crypto-currency beginners and investors are struggling with. In this article we try to find the answers to these questions.
Transaction Capacity
Bitcoin was previously developed as an alternative payment system. Unfortunately however it’s technically ill-equipped to carry out many transactions at once. The transaction capacity of Bitcoin is just 7-8 transactions per second. That’s way too low to be a generally accepted paymentsystem.
By comparison, an average of 120 debitcard transactions per second are being performed in the Netherlands alone. This low capacity is Bitcoin’s bottleneck at the moment; regularly transactions are performed with great delay, because the network is incapable to do them all at once.
Gulden in its current state has the ability to handle 40 transactions per second, but can easily be scaled as needed. Making changes to Bitcoin is difficult and almost an impossible process.
Transaction fees
When a transaction is carried out, a small charge is due. This is for the miners to maintain the network and add the transactions to the blockchain.
The aforementioned accumulation of payment delays, among other things, results in increasing transaction fees for Bitcoin. Simply because people who pay the most fees will be helped faster. On average a payment in Bitcoin now costs 0.00075 BTC, +/- € 0.85. So paying for something small comes with at least 85 Euro cents in fees. This makes Bitcoin useless when you want to pay a small sum. And with an increasing number of transactions these fees will become higher and higher.
Gulden on the other hand uses an average transaction fee of NLG 0.01 (€ 0.0002 +/-) irrespectively of the traffic on the Gulden network.
Confirmation Time
Performing a complete transaction is a lengthy process with Bitcoin. A payment is only completed and irreversible after six network confirmations. With Bitcoin, this process takes in average one hour. The problems with the network capacity causes the confirmation times to increase to several hours or even days, if you paid a low fee! This is unacceptable for regular payments.
Users expect a payment to work as they are accustomed to with debitcard payments. Gulden payments take now around 15 minutes but it will be reduced to 150 seconds (with the Prime I update of the network) and by the end of 2017 to 0 seconds (the Prime II update).
Consensus
Bitcoin is the first crypto currency but because of the inherent design flaws, we see that Bitcoin can not fulfill its promises. And technologically it begins to lag behind whilst powerlessness prevails to change something in the situation surrounding the problems. There is no active development group that can make independent innovations and adaptations. Consensus is needed to change something about the technique, whilst developers are being divided to the bone. This is because there are various conflicting interests at stake.
The miners don’t want to change anything, because otherwise the revenue from the fees will go down. The Bitcoin traders only focus on profit and benefit from a wildly fluctuating price, so they do not care about a change either. Investors want to see only a rising price and will therefore not change anything, because any change can bring down the price. Meanwhile nothing happens.
Bitcoin is completely paralyzed. The only thing debatted at the moment is a so-called hard-fork. This means you will get two separate coins, which would be disastrous for the value of Bitcoin. The risk of a ‘hard-fork’ is now very real. Gulden does not suffer from these issues.
Community
Bitcoin was created by Satoshi Nakamoto but no one knows him personally. Gulden in contrast, was invented by Rijk Plasman who is part of the core development group. He is directly accountable and manages new developments in the blockchain and wallets. In addition, a larger group of people and companies are engaged in the development of services around Gulden.
Next to that there is a large community you can ask questions, something that does not exist for Bitcoin. The development team takes feedback from the community into account for further developments of Gulden. Progress can therefore not be paralyzed by conflicting interests among users, miners and investors.
Easyness of use
Bitcoin as a whole has a ‘nerdy’ look and feel. The link with the real world is hard to find and doesn’t appeal to the average user. The standard wallet software doesn’t excel in usability. There are others who have developed better wallets but those are followers. Gulden strives for maximum usability. The wallet should be as easy to use as possible for every user.
It has the possibility to pay with Gulden at every Bitcoin accepting merchant and it is also possible to do IBAN transfers from the Gulden wallet. Actually, for the user it should work in such a way that a user will not see a difference in the way of working between the Guldenapp and applications of the different banks. Gulden is fully developed, were Bitcoin development is practically halted.
Fraud and crime
Bitcoin is often in the news in connection with money laundering and fraud. This is because “stupid” criminals think Bitcoin is anonymous. However, the opposite is true. The blockchain is public and anyone can follow the transactions. But it gives a lot of negative impact on cryptocurrency and that is unfortunate and unnecessary.
Therefore Gulden is trying to do something about this negative image of cryptocurrencies. If you want to invest or withdraw more than 50 euros a week in Gulden, make sure to register at Nocks, the Gulden paymentprovider. Then you can buy for 500 Euros a time with a limit of 5,000 Euros per month. Want a higher limit, then you need to identify yourself fully with an ID verification.
Conclusion
Is Bitcoin dead? No, Bitcoin certainly has value, but it should not be seen as a new payment system. It is more comparable to the current function of gold. It derives its value from scarcity in the market and can therefore function as a good, but risky investment. As paymentsystem its hopeless and will be known as the Netscape or AltaVista as being the first, but not the best solution. Gulden is a powerfull coin and as such carries the potential to become the new world currency.
Read also this message from Bitcoin.