What Is Bitcoin?
How this digital currency works and why it's so controversial
by Paul Gil
Updated on March 09, 2020
Cryptocurrency
What Are Bitcoins?
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Bitcoin is a virtual currency that gained recognition after its price-per-coin rose above $13,000 in early 2018. The cryptocurrency (one of many) is at the center of a complex intersection of privacy, banking regulations, and technological innovation. Today, some retailers accept bitcoin, while in other jurisdictions, bitcoin is illegal.
Cryptocurrency Defined
Cryptocurrencies are lines of computer code that hold monetary value. These lines of code are created by electricity and high-performance computers.
Cryptocurrency is also known as digital currency. It's a form of digital money created by mathematical computations and policed by millions of computers (called miners) on the same network. Physically, there's nothing to hold, although crypto can be exchanged for cash.
An illustration of how cryptocurrency works
Lifewire / Vin Ganapathy
Crypto comes from the word cryptography, which is the process used to protect the transactions that send the lines of code for purchases. Cryptography also controls the creation of new coins. Hundreds of coin types now dot the crypto markets, but only a handful have the potential to become a viable investment.
Governments have no control over the creation of cryptocurrencies, which is what initially made them so popular. Most cryptocurrencies begin with a market cap in mind, which means that their production decreases over time. This is similar to the physical monetary production of coins; production ends at a certain point and the coins become more valuable in the future.
What Are Bitcoins?
Bitcoin was the first popular cryptocurrency. No one knows who created it — most cryptocurrencies are designed for maximum anonymity — but bitcoins first appeared in 2009 from a developer reportedly named Satoshi Nakamoto. He has since disappeared and left behind a bitcoin fortune.
Because bitcoin was the first major cryptocurrency, all digital currencies created since then are called altcoins, or alternative coins. Litecoin, Peercoin, Feathercoin, Ethereum, and hundreds of other coins are all altcoins because they are not bitcoin.
One of the advantages of bitcoin is that it can be stored offline on local hardware, such as a secure hard drive. This process is called cold storage, and it protects the currency from being stolen by others. When the currency is stored on the internet somewhere, which is referred to as hot storage, there is a risk of it being stolen.
On the flip side, if a person loses access to the hardware that contains the bitcoins, the currency is gone forever. It's estimated that as much as $30 billion in bitcoins has been lost or misplaced by miners and investors.
Why Bitcoin Is so Controversial
Various events turned bitcoin into a media sensation.
From 2011 to 2013, criminal traders made bitcoins famous by buying them in batches of millions of dollars so they could move money outside of the eyes of law enforcement and tax collectors. Subsequently, the value of bitcoins skyrocketed.
Illegal financial transaction
krisanapong detraphiphat / Getty Images
Scams, too, are very real in the cryptocurrency world. Naive and savvy investors alike can lose hundreds or thousands of dollars to scams.
Bitcoins and altcoins are controversial because they take the power of issuing money away from central banks and give it to the general public. Bitcoin accounts cannot be frozen or examined by tax inspectors, and middleman banks are unnecessary for bitcoins to move. Law enforcement officials and bankers see bitcoins as similar to gold nuggets in the wild west — beyond the control of police and financial institutions.
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Blockchain analysts estimate that Nakamoto had mined about one million bitcoins before disappearing in 2010 when he handed the network alert key and control of the code repository over to Gavin Andresen. Andresen later became lead developer at the Bitcoin Foundation. Andresen then sought to decentralize control. This left opportunity for controversy to develop over the future development path of bitcoin, in contrast to the perceived authority of Nakamoto's contributions.bitcoin ротатор цена ethereum bitcoin png bitcoin login bitcoin транзакции bitcoin отзывы bitcoin scam fpga ethereum bitcoin cgminer monero стоимость bitcoin ann bitcoin рейтинг bitcoin x
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bitcoin dance When I originally wrote this article in 2017, Bitcoin was worth $6,500 or so. It then went on to increased to over $19,000 only to come back down to under $4,000, and since then it has popped back up to over $10,000 and then down to well below $10,000 again. I keep this article updated from time to time, but less often then before.No non-mining full nodes exist.The most important feature of a cryptocurrency is that it is not controlled by any central authority: the decentralized nature of the blockchain makes cryptocurrencies theoretically immune to the old ways of government control and interference.Regarding ownership distribution, as of 16 March 2018, 0.5% of bitcoin wallets own 87% of all bitcoins ever mined.tether coinmarketcap bitcoin japan pull bitcoin график ethereum monero dwarfpool casinos bitcoin bitcoin xapo bitcoin ecdsa goldsday bitcoin china cryptocurrency cryptocurrency mining capitalization bitcoin
