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.
Now bitcoin was envisioned in 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto but it is a product of many decades of cryptography and blockchain research and not a job of one man. It’s the utopian dream of cryptographers and promoters of free trade with unlimited, decentralized blockchain -based money. 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 tens of thousands in today’s number.
Within a year, the new alternative currency had risen to $ 1 and it became an interesting prospect for the future. Mining is easy and people make a good profit on the business and even pay for it in some cases.
Within six months, the money had 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 dropped- id it back to $ 2.
December 2012 saw a healthy increase of $ 13 but soon, the price will explode. In the four months to April 2013, the price rose a whopping $ 266. It later corrected itself back to $ 100 but this astronomical price increase raised it for the very first time and people started debating about an actual real-world scenario of Bitcoin.
It was then that I experienced the new money. I had my doubts but as I was still reading about it, it became increasingly clear that money was the future because no one was going to manipulate it or impose it on themselves. Everything has to be done with complete consensus and that is what makes it strong and independent.
So 2013 was the year of success for the money. Large companies are starting to publicly favor the acceptance of bitcoin and the blockchain has become a popular topic for Computer Science programs. Many people think that bitcoin serves its purpose and now it can be solved.
However, the currency is becoming more popular, with bitcoin ATMs being set up around the world and other competitors starting to flex their muscles at different market angles. 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 violated in January 2017 and since then it has increased fourfold since September. This was a remarkable success for a coin that only cost 8 cents seven years ago.
Bitcoin even survived a tough fork on August 1, 2017, and has risen almost 70% since then while even the bitcoin cash fork has managed to post some success. All because of the appeal of the coin and the stellar blockchain technology behind it.
While coventional economists argue that this is a bubble and the entire crypto world will collapse, it really isn’t. There is no such thing as a bubble because it is a visible fact that it has, in fact, eaten away at the shares of fiat currencies and corporate money transactions.
The future is very bright for bitcoin and it is never too late to invest in it, for the short and long term.