Bitcoin vs Hedera

Bitcoin is the first decentralized blockchain, secured by proof‑of‑work where miners expend SHA‑256 hash power to find valid blocks every ~10 minutes. The supply is capped at 21 million coins, with inflation halving roughly every four years—the most recent halving occurred on 20 April 2024. Upgrades like SegWit and Taproot have enabled second‑layer protocols such as the Lightning Network and emerging covenants via OP_CTV debates.

Hedera Hashgraph uses a gossip‑about‑gossip DAG protocol that achieves asynchronous Byzantine fault tolerance and finality in 3‑5 seconds. Governing Council members like Google and IBM run permissioned nodes, and the Hedera Token Service allows issuance without smart‑contract coding. The 2024 ‘Smart Contract 2.0’ release introduced Solidity bytecode support via Hyperledger Besu integration.