Today, Bitcoin is trading at $3922 while Zcash is trading at $50. There is one thing that seems clear to the investors, and that is “Bitcoin is far valuable than Zcash.” Well, the age of how one cryptocurrency is better than the other based on price is fading in the period where policymakers are more interested in a coin that can make a difference with its unique nature. This article will introduce readers to some of the technical comparisons between Bitcoin and Zcash.
The blockchain which acts as a public ledger to Bitcoin records all transactions of the coin and also make it possible to check coin history and other records to prevent double spending. Users behind transaction are although protected from having their identities exposed, through forensic research, this would not be a problem to anyone who intends to identify the person behind a transaction. This is where Zcash comes in. CEO of Zcash Zooko Wilcox-O’Hearn spent time to make privacy a top priority of the coin. It uses Snark to proof the validity of a transaction and to prevent double spending.
It also has an option for users to either go private or public. When a transaction is made, the only thing that appears in the blockchain is that a transaction happened. Neither the recipient address nor the sender’s address is shown, and the same for the amount involved in the transaction.
Zcash as a fork of Bitcoin was created with more improved features. For instance, it has a shorter block size of 2.5 compared to the Bitcoin block size of 9.2. This makes it process transaction faster than Bitcoin. Zcash also has a block limit of 2mb which is twice as large as Bitcoin. The PoW of the Bitcoin network is Hashcash while the Zcash uses the Equihash.
Technically, Bitcoin and Zcash seem to be the same cryptocurrency, but Zcash offsets most of the weaknesses of Bitcoin. Also, Bitcoin has a total supply of 21 million compared to the 6 million total supply of Zcash. This makes Zcash more sensitive to change than Bitcoin.
Even though Zcash seems to be very promising, many concerns have been raised in how its privacy feature can facilitate money laundering and crime on the internet, hence facing a huge hindrance of government regulations when it begins to garner recognition as Bitcoin.