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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bitcoin фермы пополнить bitcoin магазины bitcoin cryptocurrency exchange Instead, the effects of increasing the money supply are transmitted, over time, through an expansion of the credit system. The credit system attempting to contract is the market and the individuals within an economy adjusting and re-pricing value; the Fed attempting to reverse that natural course by flooding the market with dollars is, by definition, overriding the market’s price setting function, fundamentally altering the structure of the economy. The market solution to the problem is to reduce debt (expression of preference) and the Fed’s solution is to increase the supply of dollars such that existing debt levels can be sustained. The goal is to stabilize the credit system such that it can then expand, and it is a redux to the 2008 financial crisis, which provides a historical roadmap. In the immediate aftermath of the prior crisis, the Fed created $1.3 trillion new dollars in a matter of months. Despite this, the dollar initially strengthened as deflationary pressures in the credit system overwhelmed the increase in the money supply, but then, as the credit system began to expand, the dollar’s purchasing power resumed its gradual decline. At present, the cause and effect of the Fed’s monetary stimulus is principally transmitted through the credit system. It was the case in the years following the 2008 crisis, and it will hold true this time so long as the credit system remains intact.bitcoin earn bitcoin sec Since 2007, the Fed balance sheet has increased seven-fold, but the labor force has only increased 6%. There are roughly the same number of people contributing output (human time) but far more dollars to compensate for that time. Do not be confused by impossible-to-quantify theory concerning the idea of a job saved versus a job lost; this is the U.S. labor force, defined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as all persons 16 years of age and older, both employed and unemployed. The inevitable result is that the value of each dollar declines, but it does not create more workers, and all prices do not adjust ratably to the increase in the money supply, including the price of labor. bitcoin new sberbank bitcoin
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