Euros, Dollars…the powerful currencies in the world are in a trusted crisis. These situations create a lot of uncertainty among people and some of them prefer trust the virtual currency “Bitcoin”. With the years the value of this new type of money has strongly increased.
What is « Bitcoin »?
The Bitcoin (BTC) is a decentralized digital currency created in 2009 by a developer known under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. It is based on an open source solution of peer to peer internet protocol. You can directly exchange your Bitcoins from your personal computer without a financial intermediate. Indeed this currency is distributed on the nodes of the network and uses a strong security with cryptography process. Everything is done to avoid the dependence from one central emitter.
Why this phenomena?
The main advantages of the Bitcoins are the anonymity for the payment and the apolitical nature of the currency. To pay something, you must use a dedicated software using cryptography keys. The money is transferred from a Bitcoin account to another. With the loss of trust and the fluctuation on the actual values (gold, national currencies…), more and more people are using Bitcoins. Recently a Canadian have released his house for 405 000 dollars or…6 750 Bitcoins (at the rate of 1 Bitcoin for 60 Dollars). He hopes to be the first to realize a property transaction with this currency.
Some organizations as Wikileaks or WordPress are already offering the possibility to pay with Bitcoins. In countries where the web is censured, some anonymous bloggers paid premium services of wordpress with Bitcoins to avoid tracking.
To a recognition?
The value of this money has strongly increased in a few years and many responsible in countries are interested in this problematic. Some of them accentuate the risks inherent to this new currency. Indeed Bitcoins are more susceptible to fluctuation and the way of creation of money gives an advantage to the first owners of Bitcoins. Moreover the anonymity of the transactions makes the exchanges irreversible and asks questions about money laundering.
Lately, billions of Bitcoins have been achieved in the world. The continued growth could be a problem in the future because the use of peer to peer network for the transactions would not probably be enough to meet demand.
