Bitcoin has almost become a household name with ever increasing coverage in the media, and fair to say its notoriety continues to increase. So what's all the fuss about? Bitcoin appeared around 2009 as a new form of digital currency and was develop from the off as open-source by a clever chap called Satoshi Nakamoto. We are told his true identify is 'shrouded in mystery' like he's some kind of Marvel superhero, I suspect this simply means he's a super nerd, but there's no question, he's certainly a pioneer...
So what's it all about?
Bitcoin is a form of currency the same as any other, however it is not under the control of any government or financial institution. The premise is for it to be owned and managed by its own community. Bitcoin is de-centralised and managed by peer-to-peer members who all partake in new transaction activity and store previous activity in what are known as 'block chains'. This means that a full 'copy' of all transactions are stored locally and used to verify, between participants, new activity, thereby preventing any one person from malforming, adding or creating fake transactions within the block chain. This 'consensus' approach protects the security of Bitcoin transactions.
Bitcoin works in not a dissimilar way to PayPal in that you have a digital wallet with a unique address where people can send you Bitcoins. You can simply install a wallet on your device, or you can download the full Bitcoin wallet and participate in the network as a node.
Bitcoin's value is very much an effect of supply and demand with risky investors gambling on the highs. Currently a single Bitcoin (shown as 1.0000000) is worth £573 or $935. You can purchase Bitcoins at any of the 8 decimal places so for example 0.0100000 would cost you £5.70 and 0.1000000 would cost you £57.00, no surprise where Bitcoin got its name!
OK, where do I buy Bitcoins?
Unless you have some Bitcoins coming your way via a payment, you will need to purchase Bitcoins in your existing currency. Purchasing is all about trust as it is not regulated, however that's sort of how eBay started out, where users trusted each other to pay for and send items, and they've done rather well for themselves...
The Bitcoin coal face
Bitcoin mining, as it is known, is the process of generating (and securing) Bitcoins and a small payment in the form of units of Bitcoins are paid for the time and effort your hardware is used and your level of participation. This is done via a number of methods from using your own PC's CPU or GPU (not dissimilar to other grid based BOINC projects such as Seti @ Home) to using ASIC miners (Application Specific Integrated Circuits), these are designed for the singular purpose for which they are built, which in this case is generating Bitcoins. Unless you have significant investment to purchase powerful ASIC miners such as those from butterflylabs.com which can run at 600GH/s (Hash's per second) you will have to look at USB ASIC Miners such as the popular BlockErupter which generate 336MH/s. Using the BlockErupters you can create your own USB hub style rig running lots of them concurrently.
The reality though, is that it may be too late in the game to make any serious money from Bitcoin mining. The complexity (Hash rate) of the Block Chain is now such that even joining and contributing to a Mining Pool, where miners work together and share the profits, will likely see more spent in electricity than in any real financial return. Also there is a maximum limit of 21 million Bitcoins and at present it is nearing 12.4 million and as more miners join, the quicker this limit will be reached. It is now more likely you will make money buying Bitcoins themselves than generating them.
The future of Bitcoin...
Bitcoin is an emerging technology, as such the price has been volatile, however recently it has started to become more stable as the community of users grows. As of this writing, Bitcoin is seeing the number of transactions reach as high as 100,000 per day. While banks and big business are yet to consider whether Bitcoin is a threat or an opportunity, there is no doubt they are beginning to sit up and take notice of this new digital currency which continues to grow its user base daily.
Interestingly our mysterious Satoshi, the inventor of Bitcoin is thought to own, depending on fluctuations, $1 billion dollars worth of Bitcoins. Don't we all wish we had an idea like that...
ITwaffle.com Copyright © 2014 Gareth Baxendale
Introduction: To Invest in Cryptocurrencies
The first cryptocurrency which comes into the existence was Bitcoin which was built on Blockchain technology and probably it was launched in 2009 by a mysterious person Satoshi Nakamoto. At the time writing this blog, 17 million bitcoin had been mined and it is believed that total 21 million bitcoin could be mined. The other most popular cryptocurrencies are Ethereum, Litecoin, Ripple, Golem, Civic and hard forks of Bitcoin like Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Gold.
It is advised to users to not put all money in one cryptocurrency and try to avoid investing at the peak of cryptocurrency bubble. It has been observed that price has been suddenly dropped down when it is on the peak of the crypto bubble. Since the cryptocurrency is a volatile market so users must invest nft中文 the amount which they can afford to lose as there is no control of any government on cryptocurrency as it is a decentralized cryptocurrency.
Steve Wozniak, Co-founder of Apple predicted that Bitcoin is a real gold and it will dominate all the currencies like USD, EUR, INR, and ASD in future and become global currency in coming years.
Why and Why Not Invest in Cryptocurrencies?
Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency which came into existence and thereafter around 1600+ cryptocurrencies has been launched with some unique feature for each coin.
Some of the reasons which I have experienced and would like to share, cryptocurrencies have been created on the decentralized platform - so users don't require a third party to transfer cryptocurrency from one destination to another one, unlike fiat currency where a user need a platform like Bank to transfer money from one account to another. Cryptocurrency built on a very safe blockchain technology and almost nil chance to hack and steal your cryptocurrencies until you don't share your some critical information.
You should always avoid buying cryptocurrencies at the high point of cryptocurrency-bubble. Many of us buy the cryptocurrencies at the peak in the hope to make quick money and fall victim to the hype of bubble and lose their money. It is better for users to do a lot of research before investing the money. It is always good to put your money in multiple cryptocurrencies instead of one as it has been noticed that few cryptocurrencies grow more, some average if other cryptocurrencies go in the red zone.
Cryptocurrencies to Focus
In 2014, Bitcoin holds the 90% market and rest of the cryptocurrencies holds the remaining 10%. In 2017, Bitcoin is still dominating the crypto market but its share has sharply fallen from 90% to 38% and Altcoins like Litecoin, Ethereum, Ripple has grown rapidly and captured the most of the market.
Bitcoin is still dominating the cryptocurrency market but not the only cryptocurrency which you need to consider while investing in cryptocurrency. Some of the major cryptocurrencies you must consider:
Bitcoin
Litecoin
Ripple
Ethereum
Tron
Civic
Golem
Monero
Where and How to buy Cryptocurrencies?
While some years ago it was not easy to buy cryptocurrencies but now the users have many available platforms.
In 2015, India has two major bitcoin platforms Unocoin wallet and Zebpay wallet where users can buy and sell bitcoin only. The users have to buy bitcoin from wallet only but not from another person. There was a price difference in buying and selling rate and users has to pay some nominal fee for completing their transactions.
In 2017, Cryptocurrency industry grew tremendously and the price of Bitcoin grown spontaneously, especially in last six months of 2017 which forced users to look for alternatives of Bitcoin and crossed 14 lakhs in the Indian market.
As Unodax and Zebpay are the two major platforms in India who were dominating the market with 90% of market share - which was dealing in Bitcoin only. It gives the chance to other organization to grow with other altcoins and even forced Unocoin and others to add more currencies to their platform.
Unocoin, one of India's leading cryptocurrency and blockchain company launched an exclusive platform UnoDAX Exchange for their users to trade multiple cryptocurrencies apart from trading of Bitcoin in Unocoin. The difference between both platforms was - Unocion was providing instant buy and sell of bitcoin only whereas on UnoDAX, users can place an order of any available cryptocurrency and if it matches with the recipient, the order will be executed.
Other major exchanges available to trade cryptocurrencies in India are Koinex, Coinsecure, Bitbns, WazirX.
Users have to open an account in any of the exchange with signing-up with email id and submitting the KYC details. Once their account gets verified, one can start trading of coins of their choice.
Users have to research well before investing in any coins and not fall into the trap of cryptocurrency-bubble. Users must research the exchange credibility, transparency, security features and many more.
All Exchanges charge some nominal fee on each transaction. There are two types of charges - Maker fee and Taker fee. Apart from the transaction fee, one has to pay the transfer fee, if you want to