Bitcoin, a crypto-currency, is like Digital Gold and allegedly it has immense potential. Gold in the sense that its value has been appreciating over time and investors are happy. It is in fact one of the highest return earning commodities during the past decade. While Bitcoin is the future, it has made its present investors a happy lot.
Its core attributes of being Decentralized, Anonymous and Free of control of Central Banks & governments make it a super powerful currency. Being a buyer having Bitcoins entitles you to buy almost anything off the web without being subjected to restrictions laid down by rules of your respective country or state.
As McAfee founder, John McAfee puts it “You can’t stop things like Bitcoin. It will be everywhere and the world will have to readjust. World governments will have to readjust”
Comparing Bitcoin (BTC) to Gold as an investment: During 2010, 1 BTC was $0.08 and now at the time of writing this article, price of 1 BTC is hovering around US$ 2600. Thats a humongous upside of ~ 22,10,00%. While during 2010, Gold costed $1200 and now it is hovering around same price. During April, 2017 Japan legalized Bitcoin and there has been no looking back ever since. As more and more countries legalise it, the currency prices are going to gain momentum.
Two of the basic ways to earn Bitcoin is by Trading in BTC or by way of minig the BTC.
TRADING – Like any other commodity, BTC are tradeable. All you need to do is go the BTC exchange available in your geography. There are Bitcoin excjanges and there are Bitcoin wallets. Exchanges provide you with a platform to Buy or Sell coins and wallets are there to Store the coins you own (You can store BTC in hard copy frmat too).
Following are the most popular Bitcoin Exchanges:
One can easily purchase Bitcoins and other digital crypto-currency through online payments like Credit Cards, Debit Cards or PayPal and even sell them. Choose you an exchange that works legally in your country otherwise you may face trouble while redeeming your domestic currency once you sell your Bitcoins online.
MINING – If Bitcoin is Gold of the 21st century, the Bitcoin generating process has to be called Mining. You can Mine coins by processing mathematical calculations involved in BTC transactions taking place worldwide. You can either get a CPU which mines the crypto-currency or outsource the mining process over the cloud.
Hardware Mining – depends n your CPU’s prowess to be able to calculate the most complex calculations within least time and consuming least electricity. Hashrate (caculating prowess) of your computer has to match the current complexity of Blockchain difficulties to make the process profitable. With passage of time the Blockchain complexities have increased. A huge number of professional Bitcoin miners have further made the process long and less profitable. Today an average professional miner boasts of harshrates of minimum 1 TH/s which involves a huge investment to setup mining farms with huge capacities.
It is always advisable to mine alternate crypto-currencies and later convert them to Bitcoin via an exchange.
Yes there are several other crypto-currencies like Bitcoin and you can check their maret cap through various websites. One of the most common GUI based minin software is MinerGate, same works wth windows as well.
If you have done your calculations and are really serious about Mining, you may consider Application Specific Integrated Circuits or ASIC Mining. These are CPUs developed with objective of Mining and deliver the desirable Hashrates without wasting electricity or resources on redundant jobs. The most popular supplier in this segment is BITMAIN with its AntMiner series of ASIC equipment. A simple calculator here shows profit earning tendencies with specific set of hardware.
Cloud-Based Mining – This is where you outsource the mining work to someone else and share profit. So the cloud operator manages and maintains the equipment professionally and takes his cut out of your earnings. One has to excerxise caution as the business of Cloud based mining has seen many frauds and fakes. Few of the most popular options are listed as follows:
The usual contract return on alternative currency can be upto 70%
STORE Bitcoin – Once you’ve purchased or earned your Bitcoins, you got to store them away at a safe place. Bitcoin is not a physical coin or paper currency which can be kept safe in your home vault or bank locker. As it is digital in nature, it is subject to internet frauds and hacking. Never stor eyour coins on an exchange. Several exchanges has been hacked and millions of coins been robbed.
Always store Bitcoins in separate secure lockers with private keys. Exchanges are too vulnerable. And never store too mny coins in one wallet, spread your holdings.
- Popular Online Wallets- Coinbase , Blockchain , Xapo
- Windows / Android based wallets – Copay,Mycelium Wallet
- Hardware wallets – KeepKey, TREZOR, Ledger Wallet
As Google CEO, Eric Schmidt puts it “Bitcoin is a remarkable cryptographic achievement and the ability to create something that is not duplicable in the digital world has enormous value”
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