Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency, without a central bank or single administrator, that can be sent from user to user on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network without the need for intermediaries.
Transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public distributed ledger called a blockchain. Bitcoin was invented by an unknown person or group of people under the name Satoshi Nakamoto and released as open-source software in 2009.
Bitcoins are created as a reward for a process known as mining. They can be exchanged for other currencies, products, and services. As of February 2015, over 100,000 merchants and vendors accepted bitcoin as payment.
If you are considering investing or trading in these crypto, make sure you choose a good platform like Roicraft to get started.
Ethereum on other hand is a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts: applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of fraud or third party interference. In the Ethereum protocol and blockchain there is a price for each operation. The general idea is that users will pay each other for services with cryptocurrency tokens.
These tokens are like digital assets that can be used to represent virtual shares, units of account, assets, proof of membership, and more. The Ethereum platform itself is featureless or worthles; Ether is only used to pay for transaction fees and computational services on the Ethereum network. Applications built on top of Ethereum can be completely decentralized.
This means there is no single point of failure and no need for trusted third parties like banks or event notaries. Ethereum enables developers to build and deploy decentralized applications. Decentralized application (DApps) have many advantages over traditional centralized applications, including increased security, transparency, and reliability.
DApp developers can earn revenue from transaction fees, and users can trust that DApps will always work as intended because they are running on the tamper-proof Ethereum blockchain.