Next level Bitcoin
These days, a lot of people ask me, "how's bitcoin doing?" And depending on my knowledge of their crypto knowledge the answer can be quite different.
For the general investor that dabbles in stocks, but doesn't really invest in cryptos (the highest performing asset class in history); I say that the market is in the beginning of a bull market and it might be a good time to cost average in via Cash app (has Bitcoin Lightning) or something similar.
For the slightly advanced investor that has bought bitcoin and alt coins in the past, I say that the Bitcoin network has evolved past the alt coins' networks to where a lot of the alt coins that are basically clones of Bitcoin, like Dogecoin, Litecoin, or Digibyte; are quickly becoming irrelevant due to Bitcoin Lightning.
Bitcoin lightning has the speed and capacity to handle all of the current and future e-commerce transactions. Also there's an ex PayPal executive that's working on making Bitcoin Lightning even easier to implement.
Additionally, because of all the institutional scams, such as FTX, in the prior bull market; meme coins from the past, such as Dogecoin and Shiba, are not going to do well in the future.
For the advanced crypto investor that has used Bitcoin extensively and understands how Bitcoin technology works, I say to them that Bitcoin technology has been improved with HEX.com to not waste energy for Proof of Work mining (PoW) by using Proof of Wait mining (PoW) instead, similar to how bank CDs work. And, in another adaptation, Bitcoin technology has been optimized for better development support and privacy with Z.Cash.
The HEX token smart contract is basically Bitcoin, but the code is more secure because it's a smart contract that can never be changed. With Bitcoin, upgrades can cause inflation bugs, but in HEX, the money control part of the code is locked.
Zcash is Bitcoin, but with the advantages of a blockchain-paid development company, and of course privacy.
The Zcash development has been funded by the Zcash blockchain, so when you buy Zcash you are actually supporting it's network development because they sell ZEC regularly to pay the development team. In Bitcoin the development is kind of a hodgepodge of companies and a few volunteers that make most of the changes.
The privacy aspect of Zcash allows Bitcoin like transactions to be untraceable by utilizing Zero-Knowledge Proofs. This is useful because in order to be used as cash there needs to be privacy. Otherwise everytime you spend money people will be able to see how much money is in your source account. In Bitcoin there's mixers that can help hide the source of funds, but generally the government surveillance systems can track all transactions. Satoshi had noted in the forums in the early days of Bitcoin that he wanted to implement Zero Knowledge Proofs in Bitcoin, but it wasn't feasible at the time. So in reality if Satoshi were around today he would probably be involved with Zcash moreso than Bitcoin.
Enjoy.