What is Bitcoin And Why We Love It

Some of you might have heard about this thing called Bitcoin and that it might have a certain potential to change at least some aspects of the way we think about Money.

But what is it all about and how does it work, in a nutshell?

Read on and you might get some answers…

What Is Bitcoin In As Few Words As Possible?

Bitcoin is a decentralized virtual cryptocurrency whose value and transactions are guaranteed by a network of so called miners.

The miners are connected and specialized pools of computers with huge calculating power, who get Bitcoins for solving difficult hash functions through which the security of the whole network and every single Bitcoin transaction is guaranteed.

The number of Bitcoins that will ever be mined is limited to 21 million bitcoin.

What Is A Cryptocurrency?

A cryptocurrency (or crypto currency) is a digital asset designed to work as a medium of exchange using cryptography to secure the transactions and to control the creation of additional units of the currency. Cryptocurrencies are a subset of alternative currencies, or specifically of digital currencies. (Source: Wikipedia)

Is Bitcoin The Only Cryptocurrency?

Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency coming into being.

By now there are many other cryptocurrencies and new cryptocurrency projects seem to be started quite frequently.

Most of these new cryprocurrencies are just copycats with no really new features while a chosen few might have the potential to even outrun bitcoin due to their intelligent advancements.

Without going into more detail, I will just name you a few other cryptocurrencies, and they are:

Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ripple, Ethereum, NEM, IOTA, Dash, Monero, Zcash.

You will find a quite complete listing here.

But at present, Bitcoin really seems to be the cryptocurrency that will start changing the way we always thought about money, as I think it is the one cryptocurrency which is the closest to really reaching the mainstream arenas.

Some Advantages Of Bitcoin

Bitcoin is cool because everyone can own her/his money again. There is no necessity for a middleman or any external institution, just the people exchanging money, and the network securing the transaction.

There are hardly any transaction costs and the money is transferred within a couple of minutes from any point of the globe to another, as long as both parties have internet access.

As the amount of Bitcoin that will ever be mined is limited, bitcoin will most likely not loose value in the long term.

More likely it will even gain quite some value compared to the fiat currencies.

Bitcoin is not credit based, and as the mining of bitcoin already implies, it can be more compared to gold, some sort of a virtual gold, and, in combination with the limited amount of bitcoins, it will most likely also be able to fulfill the function of a tool for the storage of value, which gold nowadays often does.

Bitcoin is cool, techie, new and fresh.

It gives the whole money thing a newer, better and fresher look and feeling.

And I know there are many more features and advantages of bitcoin, some of them we might not even be able to be aware of now, and some just do not appear within this limited consciousness writing these lines of word.

Has Bitcoin Any Cons?

Bitcoin exists since 2009, so it is still a pretty young thing and no-one can really know where this story will lead to and where it will end, so you can say there is definitely some risk involved.

But Bitcoin already survived quite some crisis, and with every survival the confidence and trust is rising.

Bitcoin is completely virtual so far, and that definitely bears some risks, besides the advantages.

Especially for those people who are not so familiar with computers and technology.

There are many open questions in the moving forward and the growing bitcoin network which are still to be answered when the time will come, which might count to the “risk involved” category, I guess.

As Bitcoin is still a pretty new method for value exchange, it is not yet the most user friendly thing out there.

A certain willingness and adventurous mindset is at present necessary to get into the Bitcoin cosmos.

Although there is a lot happening and it is far better by now than it used to be in the very early days of Bitcoin, it is still evolving and forming and by far not complete and perfect.

But the Bitcoin cosmos is moving to a more sophisticated way of functioning at a fast speed, and improvements are happening nearly every second.

Conclusion

Well, I like Bitcoin, and I did so from quite the beginning.

But of course there are some things that still need to be clarified and cleared before the ultimate rising of Bitcoin, which makes Bitcoin, besides it many advantages a very interesting thing.

If you are interested in new and exiting stuff I definitely recommend you to dive deeper into the bitcoin universe and what it can do for you and your whole world.

There are many interesting opportunities and projects showing up in the recent past, and I am pretty sure even more things will come into being trying to utilize the new energy and possibilities bitcoin might offer them and all the being around.

Not everyone is an early bird and nothing is for everyone, but if you are interested, feel free to get into it and keep exploring the new possibilities that Bitcoin will offer all of us.