BTC is the king of crypto brand awareness for Australian

Have you heard of Bitcoin? Just over half of Australians (56%) are aware of this digital currency, according to a new report. However, that’s the highest awareness level for any cryptocurrency. In comparison, only 20% of Australians have heard of Ethereum and Litecoin; 15% know about Ripple; and just 9% recognise Neo as a crypto brand. It’s no wonder that awareness for Bitcoin is high. The king of cryptocurrencies has had plenty of publicity recently through the ‘new rich’ who bought in early and appeared on programs likeENDERED or cashed out their gains in an extravagant way. Whether they made money or lost it, these stories have been everywhere.

What is Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is a digital currency ‘built’ on blockchain technology. It’s decentralised, which means you don’t need a bank to facilitate any transactions. All you need is a wallet. In the case of Bitcoin, you store your cryptocurrency in a digital wallet that you either store locally or online. Transactions are made with no middleman, but they’re not completely anonymous. If you want to remain completely private, you would use an untraceable crypto like Monero. However, Bitcoin transactions can be traced if someone has a strong enough algorithm. You can buy and sell Bitcoin with a variety of online exchanges or ATMs. You can also ‘mine’ Bitcoin by using your computer to solve complex algorithms. Once the algorithm is solved, it rewards you with Bitcoin.

Ethereum

The world’s second most popular cryptocurrency, Ethereum’s network is designed for ‘decentralised applications’. These are apps that use blockchain technology to run without any central authority. Ethereum is blockchain’s ‘backend’. In simple terms, it’s what connects all the blocks in the chain and makes the blockchain function. Ethereum was the platform that sparked the initial interest in cryptocurrencies when it was released in 2015. Many startups have used Ethereum’s network to build their own brand of cryptocurrency. These are known as ‘ERC20 tokens’ because they use Ethereum’s network. The most well-known of these is probably ‘Cryptokitties’, which briefly brought the network to a standstill due to the sheer amount of people playing the game.

Litecoin

Like Bitcoin, Litecoin is a peer-to-peer digital currency. It’s based on blockchain technology and can be used as a global payment system. Its system is faster than Bitcoin’s, which means it can send payments more quickly. Litecoin also has a higher network capacity, enabling more transactions to be processed at any given time. Litecoin has a global network of nodes and has a mining process similar to Bitcoin. You can either use your computer’s processing power to solve the algorithm or you can buy mining equipment. Given its similarities to Bitcoin, Litecoin has also been described as silver to Bitcoin’s gold. It’s been around for much longer than Bitcoin, but it’s not as popular. However, Litecoin’s network has proven to be more secure than Bitcoin’s on a number of occasions.

Ripple

Ripple is a payment network that enables banks to send money across borders quickly and efficiently. Ripple works like a cross-border transfer: Money is sent from one bank to another via the Ripple network. The banks don’t need to worry about the exchange rates because Ripple locks into the interbank rates. To make it work, Ripple uses its own native cryptocurrency, XRP. Banks that use Ripple have to buy XRP to use the network. If a bank that sends money to another bank that uses Ripple doesn’t have XRP, the network will buy the XRP from the market and send it to the receiving bank. Ripple is different from some other cryptocurrencies because it was created and is still controlled by a company. In other words, it’s not a decentralised network like Bitcoin or Ethereum. Ripple’s creators argue that this makes it more reliable and scalable.

Neo

Neo is another blockchain network. Unlike Bitcoin and Ethereum, which have their own cryptocurrencies, Neo only has one token. But unlike many other crypto currencies, Neo was designed to be used for more than just peer-to-peer payments. It also has a smart contract system, which allows people to build their own apps on top of the Neo platform. Neo is Chinese and was created as a response to the growing demand for blockchain in China. It’s managed by the company NEO, which was originally called Antshares. The company was rebranded to reflect its growing international ambitions.

Bitcoin brand awareness is high, but few Aussies own it

The survey found that only 13% of those who are aware of Bitcoin actually own it. This is surprising given the digital currency’s popularity. However, it could be due to people being afraid of the volatility. In other words, they know that the value will rise and fall. Indeed, Bitcoin’s price has been extremely volatile since it was created in 2009. Another reason could be that the government’s tax office has been investigating people who have a large amount of cryptocurrency. If you have over $10,000 in cryptocurrency, you have to report it to the ATO. This has likely spooked plenty of people away from owning Bitcoin.

Limitations of the survey

The survey was conducted online, which means it may not be representative of the entire population. It’s possible that younger people were over-represented. This could skew the results so that the results for younger people were higher than they should have been. The survey also only asked about the most well-known cryptocurrencies. There are thousands of other crypto currencies out there. Some of them may be more relevant to a particular country or industry. In addition, the survey only asked about brand awareness. It didn’t ask if people really understand what these cryptos do. For example, most people probably know that Bitcoin is a digital currency. But they might not fully understand what it actually is and how it works.

Should you invest in Bitcoin?

If you read the results of this survey and you’re convinced that you have to own Bitcoin, you should be careful. The crypto market is extremely risky, and it’s a bubble that could burst at any time. If you’re investing in cryptocurrencies, it’s wise to diversify. This means that you should spread your money across multiple different cryptos. It’s impossible to predict which crypto coins will do well, so owning a range will protect you from losing everything if one or two coins crash. You should also consider how you store your cryptocurrencies. If you’re storing them on an exchange, you’re at risk of losing them if the exchange is hacked. It’s better to keep them in a hardware wallet or on a private network like blockchain.io.