The ever-increasing media coverage of bitcoin has made it a household name. So where did this cryptocurrency come from? It appeared as a new form of digital currency in 2009. Satoshi Nakamoto was behind its creation using open-source to develop it. Since then, it has been steadily gaining popularity all over the world.
IMAGE: PIXABAY
What Is It All About?
Bitcoin is like any other currency on the market. The main difference is the lack of regulation from any organization, including government agencies. The whole point behind its development is to allow the management and ownership to be regulated by its community.
Peer-to-peer members are used to mining the currency. They store previous activity in blockchains and partake in new transaction activity. The result is a full copy of transactions being stored locally. The storage is used to verify new activity between participants. This ensures single individuals will not have the opportunity or ability to create or add fake transactions within the blockchain.
The security of bitcoin transactions is protected by this “consensus” approach. It works in more or less the same way as PayPal. For starters, you have a unique address attached to a digital wallet. You can install the wallet on your computer or mobile device.
Bitcoin is volatile, meaning its value is more an effect of supply and demand. Risky investors may opt to gamble on the highs using trading platforms. For example, a bitcoin platform like Bitcoin Loophole is one of the trading platforms.
If the price of one bitcoin is $935, it will be shown as 1.0000000. You can make a purchase at any of the eight decimal places. So purchasing 0.0100000, you will pay $9.35 and 0.1000000 will cost you $93.5. As you can see, the name bitcoin was derived from the coins reflected with decimal places.
Where Can I Buy The Coins?
The only way to purchase bitcoins is by using your existing currency. Buying is not guaranteed and is all about trust since the process is not regulated by any organization, governmental or otherwise. This should not worry you since eBay used a similar model, and it is working to date.
The Bitcoin Coalface
The process of generating and securing these coins is known as bitcoin mining. People who mine these coins are paid for the hardware they used and their time in form of a small payment using units of bitcoins. Mining can be done using a number of methods.
In the past, miners used their computer’s CPUs and GPUs. More recently, people are using Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASIC) miners. They are created for the sole purpose of doing a specific task, in this case, mining bitcoins. You will need to make a substantial investment to get powerful ASIC miners that can reach 600 gh/s. If you do not have the investment capability, you can go for more affordable options such as USB ASIC miners. These are known to generate a maximum of 336 mh/s, which is comparatively slow. However, there is additional hardware you can use for running a number of these USB gadgets concurrently.
If you are interested in even more business-related articles and information from us here at Bit Rebels then we have a lot to choose from.
Author Bio: Jim Bevin is a passionate writer, guest blogger, and a social media enthusiast. The primary focus is writing high-quality articles after in-depth research and make sure it is a readers delight. Information is key and he abides by the rule of writing articles that will appeal to a broader audience. He has published various articles on authoritative magazines like TripOnTech, Social Media Explorer, ThriveGlobal etc.
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