Cryptocurrency is a unique concept that has gained massive popularity in the past few years. If you are planning to use bitcoins, you need to have proper knowledge about them. Bitcoin works on blockchain technology, which makes it different from the traditional currency. You may be wondering “is bitcoin safe and legal?” so it’s best to do your research on it before you start trading bitcoins online. There are several crucial aspects of bitcoins that you need to know about, and some of them are mentioned in the following paragraphs.
What is bitcoin?
First and foremost, it is essential to know what bitcoin exactly is. Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency better known as digital currency, which can be used like fiat currencies for making day-to-day transactions and essential purchases on a regular basis. It works on blockchain technology, which is the primary reason that bitcoin transactions don’t involve any kind of financial intermediary or third party. It allows users to make international transactions at minimum cost. It enables peer-to-peer transactions which are quicker, smoother, safer, and highly affordable.
Bitcoin is the most expensive cryptocurrency, so you can also buy its smaller unit known as Satoshi. It is the smallest unit of bitcoin and holds the value of 0.00000001 bitcoins. Bitcoin can be used as a common medium of exchange, and along with that, it is also an incredible investment as its price keeps on fluctuating. If you have some marker knowledge, you can easily make a good profit by investing in bitcoins.
Let’s learn about the history and origin of bitcoin
Bitcoin is a widely popular cryptocurrency in the present, but there are only a few people who are aware of its origin and history. It is believed that bitcoin was launched in 2008, but if we talk about its origin, it was in the early 1980s. It was that year when the algorithms on which cryptocurrencies work were developed for the first time. The first proto-cryptocurrency was developed in the 1990s, and it was named Bit Gold. It gave the idea and inspiration for bitcoin, and people started working for it.
The first bitcoin was launched in the year 2008 when an anonymous person or organization named Satoshi Nakamoto published a paper with the details of a cryptocurrency known as bitcoin. The real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto is still a mystery as no one has seen him. The open-source code for bitcoins was launched in 2009, which gave a kickstart to the public trading and mining of bitcoins. Bitcoin grew rapidly, and within a few years, it became the world’s biggest and most valuable cryptocurrency.
Adoption in the mainstream
Bitcoin was launched in 2009, but people had not seen anything like that in the past, which made them hesitate to accept is a common medium of exchange. It took few years to get accepted as a mainstream company when WordPress started accepting bitcoin as a legal payment option. It gave a boost to the popularity of bitcoin, and several other significant companies adopted it as a mainstream currency. In 2013, the total market capitalization of bitcoin crossed $10 billion, which embarked its name in history.
In the same year, bitcoin ATMs were also set up in different parts of the world, making it a lot easier for people to purchase bitcoins and use them as the primary payment method. There are two types of bitcoin ATMs; the first one is that which allows users to buy bitcoins for paper fiat currency, and the other one is that it allows you to convert bitcoin into fiat as well as fiat currency into bitcoins.
What are the unique features of bitcoin?
Bitcoin has several outstanding features that make it an incredible cryptocurrency. One of the best features is the excellent anonymity that it provides the users with. It protects the information of the users and allows them to make anonymous and hidden transactions. Another prominent feature used by bitcoin is the two-key feature. Bitcoin uses two keys; private key and public key. The first one is the needed to send bitcoins to any other users, and the seconds key is required in order to receive bitcoins from other users. There are several other astonishing features of bitcoins that make them better than fiat currency.
You may be interested in: What is a cryptocurrency exchange?