Calling it as an alternative might be an exaggeration. Both are used in security or as a protection like you mentioned. Yet, encryption is a way of storing data

Calling it as an alternative might be an exaggeration. Both are used in security or as a protection like you mentioned. Yet, encryption is a way of storing data for a future[0] use in a secure manner while using the hash, you destroy the data and keep only the footprint. [0] Future can be nanoseconds later in any data-in-transit unlike data-at-rest, so I picked future to address the ambiguity of time measurement in different contexta.