Bitcoin is the world’s leading cryptocurrency. It is a peer-to-peer currency and transaction system based on a decentralized consensus-based public ledger called blockchain that records all transactions.
Today bitcoin was envisioned in 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto but it is a product of decades of cryptography and blockchain research and is not a one man job. It is the utopian dream of cryptographers and free trade advocates with a borderless, decentralized blockchain-based currency. Their dream is now a reality with the growing popularity of bitcoin and other altcoins around the world.
Now the cryptocurrency was first deployed on the consensus-based blockchain in 2009 and in the same year it was sold for the first time. In July 2010, the price of bitcoin was only 8 cents and the number of miners and nodes was small compared to the tens of thousands of the number today.
Within a year, the new alternative currency rose to $1 and it became an interesting prospect for the future. Mining ismost
Within six months, the currency doubled again to $2. While the price of bitcoin is not stable at a particular price point, it has shown this pattern of insane growth for some time. In July 2011 at one point, the coin went bonkers and the record-high $31 price point was reached but the market soon realized that it was overvalued compared to the gains made on the ground and it was directed- id it back to $2.
December 2012 saw a healthy rise to $13 but soon, the price will explode. In the four months to April 2013, the price peaked at $266. It corrected itself later back to $100 but this astronomical price increase made it rise for the first time and people started debating about the actual real-world scenario of Bitcoin.
It was then that I experienced the new currency. I had my doubts but the more I read about it, the more it became clear that money is the future because no one is going to manipulate it or impose itself on it. Everything must be done with complete consensus and that is what makes it strong and free.
So 2013 is the year of progress for money. Large companies are beginning to publicly favor accepting bitcoin and blockchain is becoming a popular topic for Computer Science programs. Many people think that bitcoin has served its purpose and now it will settle.
However, the currency is becoming more popular, with bitcoin ATMs being set up around the world and other competitors are beginning to flex their muscles in different angles of the market. Ethereum developed the first programmable blockchain and Litecoin and Ripple started themselves as cheaper and faster alternatives to bitcoin.
The magic number of $1000 was first crossed in January 2017 and since then it has increased four times till September. This is a remarkable achievement for a coin that was only worth 8 cents just seven years ago.
Bitcoin even survived a hard fork on August 1, 2017, and has risen by almost 70% since then while even the fork bitcoin cash managed to post some success. All because of the coin’s appeal and stellar blockchain technology behind it.
While conventional economists argue that this is a bubble and the entire crypto world will collapse, it really isn’t. There is no such bubble because it is a visible fact that it has, in fact, eaten the shares of fiat currencies and money transaction corporations.
The future is extremely bright for bitcoin and it is not too late to invest in it, both for the short and long term.