2018-7-5 21:11 |
During the last few years, the cryptocurrency market grew exponentially. Bitcoin, the most famous virtual currency has been attracting investors and interested individuals. Why? Because it is almost anonymous, it allows people in countries with conflicts to have access to the financial world, and it reduces transaction costs and times.
Back in 2009 it was created by a group of people, or an individual, known as Satoshi Nakamoto, that wanted to let the world have a cryptographically secure and peer-to-peer currency. And indeed, after the big crisis suffered by the world back at that time, several interested participants bought the famous currency.
But which are the main features of this currency to make it as attractive as gold? We can mention scarcity, security, divisibility, mobility and genuineness. If you are interested in all of these features at the time of buying an asset, Bitcoin may be a good choice.
ScarcityLet’s start here with scarcity. Bitcoin is scarce, which means that there is a limitation in the number of Bitcoins that will ever exist. Indeed, its supply will never be able to surpass 21 million coins. At the moment of writing this article, Bitcoin has a total supply of 17.13 million units. 3.87 more BTC will be mined, and there will be no more coins created.
Compared to the number of individuals around the world and possible interested investors, the price of this currency may increase substantially in the future. If we divide the amount of Bitcoins that would ever be created and divide it by the current world population, there will be only 0,002 BTC available for each individual.
But we already know that thousands of Bitcoins have been lost forever. As people dies and forget the private keys or seeds of their accounts, there will be less and less supply, that means that the real number of BTC circulating will be substantially less.
Even when Bitcoin is intangible, it is possible to prove ownership because BTC investors have a private key that give them access to their funds anywhere they are.
Another important point to mark is that Bitcoin is more scarce than gold. And because of it and its deflationary supply, its price may substantially increase in the future as more investors enter the market.
SecuritySecurity is a very important reason why to think about Bitcoin is because of its security. Bitcoin is secure, it does not belong to any government or decentralized authority. That means that users are the only owners and controllers of the Bitcoins they have.
Nobody will decide whether you are able to sue your Bitcoins or not, if you have a private key, then you can send funds as much as you want.
Bitcoin is powered by blockchain technology and a protocol that it is currently impossible to undermine. All the transactions are recorded on a distributed ledger that is owned by the nodes in the network. The nodes act as validators of all the transactions on the network. This makes Bitcoin’s network transparent and self-policing.
Of course, Bitcoins can be stolen if users leave them on exchanges or in hot wallets connected to the internet. That’s why it is always recommended to leave the currencies in hardware wallets or cold storage devices.
DivisibilityWe talked that there are 21 million Bitcoins. And yes, this may seem just a few bitcoins for the entire world population. But bitcoin is divisible. That means that you do not need to have an ‘entire’ but you can also have small parts of it. These smaller parts are known as Satoshis – to commemorate the name of Bitcoin’s creator. Each satoshi is one hundred millionth of Bitcoin (0.00000001 BTC) or in dollars $0.00006623.
In the future, if the price goes up, each satoshi will be worth much more than now, and it could even be used as a way to set the prices of goods and services.
MobilityAnother important thing to mention here is that Bitcoin it is transportable. It does not require big places to store funds or deposit boxes. You can have your Bitcoins in your phone, in a paper or on the internet.
And that’s great, because you can send them all to people all over the world in just a few minutes without intermediaries. In the current traditional financial world, these transactions are almost impossible.
Indeed, there are some banks that are working with Bitcoin and other virtual currencies to reduce transaction times and costs, and improve efficiency.
Don’t even mention if you are traveling with more than $10,000 or less, depending on the country. You would have to inform how you acquired the money and give private information about you. For those individuals moving gold or other precious metal, the task is even greater, harder and riskier.
Bitcoin is easy to move from place to place and nobody is able to steal them from you.
GenuinenessThe last important thing to mention is that Bitcoin is genuine. Each coin is unique and cannot be falsified. Bitcoin is an innovative concept of money in the new era of the cryptocurrency economy.
There is no third party intervention or any institution controlling the flow of Bitcoins. With its decentralization and divisibility, users are able to have real financial freedom and stay away from traditional banking institutions that control the markets since a really long time.
How To Buy Bitcoin?Those individuals interested in acquiring Bitcoin can do it in different virtual currency exchanges. Those are companies that provide users with a marketplace that allows them to trade the famous currency against other fiat currencies.
One of the market leaders is CEX.IO, which allows users for buying Bitcoin and other altcoins using bank transfers or credit cards. That means that no matter where you are located, you would be able to purchase this famous virtual currency.
At the moment of writing the article, CEX.IO is the 82th most used virtual currency exchange in the market with $4.32 million dollars transacted in the last 24 hours. It has 21 different trading pairs and the most important are BTC/USD, ETH/USD and BTC/EUR accounting for almost 70% of the total trading volume of the platform.
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