I have been a cryptocurrency enthusiast since 2013, when I first heard of Bitcoin. I was fascinated by the idea of decentralizing the currency. By removing banks and credit-card companies from the equation, it became possible to solve many problems that these institutions had created over the years.
But it was only in 2016 that I got serious about trading. That was when I noticed that there was a huge price difference between bitcoin and other coins, especially Ethereum and Litecoin. However, all three coins experienced massive growth in 2017, with Litecoin becoming the fifth most valuable cryptocurrency in the world.
It is true that bitcoin has been around for years, but with a market cap of over $180 billion, it’s still one of the most valuable cryptocurrencies. Ethereum grew from less than $3 billion at its launch to more than $80 billion today, making it the second most valuable cryptocurrency in the world. And while Litecoin has only grown to around $14 billion since its inception in 2014, it has been an incredible year for cryptocurrencies overall. The value of all 100-plus cryptocurrencies combined hit an all-time high of nearly $600 billion on December 17th. The value of each coin soared during this time period, as investors swarmed in to buy into altcoins expecting
Cryptocurrency is a new technology that promises to be the future of money. Bitcoin is the most famous cryptocurrency, but there are hundreds of other cryptocurrencies available online. As with any new technology, though, it’s hard to tell how successful it will be until we have time to see what happens.
Bitcoin has been around for already almost ten years. It has not yet achieved mainstream acceptance, and people do not trust it as currency. But in different countries all over the world, people are using it every day as an alternative way to pay for everything from coffee to rent.
The main attraction of Bitcoin is that you can send money anywhere in the world instantly and for low fees. Sending money from China to America or India is usually very cheap, compared with the traditional methods like Western Union or Amazon gift cards. With Bitcoin you don’t even need a bank account; you just create an address (a string of letters and numbers) that you give out when you want someone else to receive money. You can send as many payments as you like without needing to remember your pass code or worry about paying a fee at the end of each transaction.
But wait: if Bitcoin doesn’t work, why are everyone’s computers full of programs that talk about Bitcoin?
This is a broad topic, and to cover everything here would take a book. So we’ll focus on the two most important cryptocurrencies, bitcoin and ethereum.
Bitcoin was created in 2009 by a person or group of people who used the name Satoshi Nakamoto. By now the world has learned almost nothing about him. What we do know is that he is a very smart guy with a lot of computer science experience and an early interest in cryptography. He created Bitcoin not just to use as a currency but also as a way to encrypt messages.
In March 2014, the market cap of all bitcoins was $13 billion; today it is $3 billion. It has been estimated that there are around 21 million bitcoins in circulation, which means that at today’s price of about $19 000 per coin, there are around 2.1 million left to be mined (that is, for various reasons no longer available to be spent).
If you think Bitcoin is doomed–if you think the idea of digital money will soon go away–you should probably get out now because there are other cryptocurrencies available that are more promising than Bitcoin. Cryptocurrencies tend to have low transaction fees (there isn’t any), so they are theoretically better for paying for digital goods like music or video or
Cryptocurrency is the newest, hottest investment of 2017. The price has shot up in recent months and there is nothing you can do to stop it. But if you are going to get into cryptocurrency investing, it’s a good idea to know something about it in advance.
Before you read further, you should have a general understanding of how digital currencies work and what they are used for. If you don’t understand these fundamentals, this guide might seem irrelevant.
Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum are not regulated by any government or central bank, unlike traditional currencies that rely on banks or the government. The most popular types of cryptocurrency are Bitcoin, which we will focus on here, and Ethereum. The term cryptocurrency is a catch-all for all these different types of money-like tokens that exist on computers around the world.
Although Bitcoin may have been the first cryptocurrency, it is far from the only one available today. There are hundreds of cryptocurrencies now being traded online, with thousands more being developed by different developers around the world.*
There are three ways to gain exposure to cryptocurrencies: buy them directly from an exchange (we will look at this method later), invest in a digital currency fund (we will look at this later as well) or learn how to trade
Ethereum is one of the most exciting digital currencies around. It runs on blockchain technology, which is crucial for cryptocurrencies to work. The blockchain is a public ledger that records all transactions in a secure and irreversible way. The blockchain makes cryptocurrency so secure, it’s easy to forget that it’s not just a currency, but also a platform that can be used to build decentralized applications (DApps) on top of it.
I like Ethereum, because it’s the cheapest cryptocurrency at the moment and has a very active community behind it. Most people using Ethereum don’t know much about it and I get asked often how they can buy or sell their Ethers. This article gives you some tips on how to buy or sell your Ethers.
The largest cryptocurrency by market cap is Bitcoin. It was the first widely used cryptocurrency and has the largest market capitalization, but it is not the most widely used.
It’s easy to become a bitcoin millionaire, especially if you do nothing more than buy bitcoins and hold them. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to get rich with bitcoin – or any other cryptocurrency. If there is any lesson from my experience as a bitcoin miner it is this: Don’t invest money you can’t afford to lose.
Bitcoin mining involves very high electricity use, and the cost of mining equipment isn’t falling; electricity prices are rising, so that miners are making less money. They might be able to dig up more bitcoins, but the chances of making more money are getting lower every year, so that bitcoin millionaires are becoming fewer and further between.
Bitcoin has been around for nearly 10 years, and we’ve seen two bubbles in its value. In 2013 there were stories about people who’d bought bitcoins at $1 each or less, then sold them for $100 each or more, reaping huge profit. But they were people who had done nothing but buy and hold since bitcoin started trading in 2010. They’d already made millions – millions! – of dollars by then.
But
Cryptocurrency is a technology that enables you to make an electronic payment, typically using the Internet, without going through a bank. The most famous cryptocurrency is bitcoin, which was created in 2009 by a software developer known as Satoshi Nakamoto.
Cryptocurrency has some unusual properties. You can use it to buy stuff from someone else. There is no such thing as a central authority: a cryptocurrency has no identifiable owner or control center and no one can say who is buying what with it, if anything. It’s like digital cash.
But the most interesting feature of cryptocurrency isn’t any of these particular features. It’s that any possible transaction can be made without any central authority keeping records of who did what to whom when and how much money changed hands. The whole system only exists because the participants trust each other not to cheat.