What Is Qtum?
Qtum is a cryptocurrency that combines Ethereum’s excellent contract capacity with the security of Bitcoin’s unspent transaction output sort (UTXO) to create a platform that is suitable for adoption by way of large organizations. Qtum used to be as soon as based totally in 2016 by way of Patrick Dai, Jordan Earls, and Neil Mahl, and its initial coin offering (ICO) used to be as soon as held in March 2017.
As of August 2022, the coin used to be as soon as ranked #98 by way of general market cap, with the fee hovering spherical $3.48 with a market cap of $363.15 million.
Key Takeaways
- Qtum is a cryptocurrency that combines the security of Bitcoin’s blockchain sort and the flexibility of Ethereum’s excellent contracts.
- It uses a proof-of-stake consensus sort for growing new blocks, which is a long way easier and less energy-intensive than Bitcoin’s proof-of-work sort.
- Qtum is designed for use by way of large organizations, with the serve as of becoming integral to a variety of industries, along side finance and social media.
Understanding Qtum
The founders of Qtum (pronounced “quantum”) sought to combine some of the best possible facets of every Bitcoin and Ethereum, with the serve as of becoming a secure business for business-focused decentralized methods (dApps). Qtum hopes to disrupt the online transactions market and develop into an integral part of industries very similar to finance and social networking. Its foreign exchange is known as a token.
One core a part of Qtum borrowed from Bitcoin is the UTXO sort, one of those accounting tool used by Bitcoin that provides a best level of transactional protection. The UXTO tool provides one of those receipt for unspent money after a transaction. Qtum copied and remodeled Bitcoin’s UTXO code for its private platform.
Qtum borrowed excellent contracts from Ethereum. Good contracts are blocks of self-executing code that, once verified on the blockchain, carry out the words of the deal, making the contract irrevocable.
Qtum, Bitcoin, and Ethereum
While Qtum borrowed from every Bitcoin and Ethereum, it differs from both of its much-bigger festival in key ways. First of all, Qtum deployed what it calls the Account Abstraction Layer (AAL), the technology that permits the use of excellent contracts along side the UTXO sort. AAL lets in the UTXO and excellent contract models to interact.
Qtum moreover uses a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus sort relatively than the proof-of-work sort used by Bitcoin. This makes it easier to mine new money. Bitcoin’s PoW method is resource-intensive, causing the computer networks mining its money to consume further electric calories annually than many entire world places. A PoS method simplifies the process and results in so much a lot much less calories consumption.
With a PoS tool, miners are decided on to verify blocks in line with their own stakes inside the tool, relatively than who can treatment a fancy math downside the fastest. The bigger the stake, the bigger the individual’s chance of being made up our minds on to verify the transactions.
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