Alex Sunnarborg is the founder of Lawnmower, a blockchain investing and market data platform founded in 2015. In this opinion piece, Sunnarborg compares bitcoin’s attributes with those of the newly launched cryptocurrency Zcash, providing an overview of how he considers the market potential of each . With the launch of Zcash today (and the speculation surrounding it) you may be wondering how the decentralized, open-source cryptocurrency compares to bitcoin, the original digital currency. While many structural similarities to Satoshi Nakamoto’s bitcoin design are obvious, Zcash utilizes advanced new cryptographic techniques to offer optional improved privacy and transparency, as well as its own unique blockchain. But, despite the differences, there is common ground. Zcash’s supply model is extremely similar to bitcoin’s , with a fixed and known issuance model that is cut in half approximately every four years. As well, there is a maximum of 21m units of both Zcash (ZEC) and bitcoin (BTC) which will be mined over time. Given these similarities, it’s easy to see why the price and market caps of the two assets are often compared. Cautious start Nearly eight years after bitcoin’s genesis block was formed, more than 15.75m BTC have already been mined (representing over 75% of the supply that will ever exist on its blockchain). Zcash’s developers are now standing by to launch a similar cryptocurrency, albeit with some key differences. Small changes to the blockchain and issuance structures mean ZEC will have a 2.5-minute average block time and an initial block reward of 12.5 ZEC. There will also be a " slow-start " period during the first 20,000 blocks (about 34 days) where the block reward linearly increases to 12.5 ZEC. This is designed to reduce the impact of a potential negative event like "a major bug" or "security vulnerability". As a […]
