Bitcoin

Cryptocurrency is the new age of the financial market and the path to involve technology in our lives including the way we operate with our money. The credit of the popularity that cryptocurrency has gained, can be given to its technology that makes it impossible to be counterfeited or spent more than once. This has further led it to become one of the most potential replacements to our commonly used Fiat money. This allows the new security to gain a lot of interest and traction from the financial markets. However, time and again the analysts and governments have often warned the investors that because they are a new type of security and extremely new in the market, they will be extremely volatile in nature and can lead to heavy losses if they are invested in just because of the trend going on. The most popular cryptocurrency has been bitcoins. In this article we will read more about Bitcoin, how was it originates, how can you buy or mine them, and its future.

Where did Bitcoin come from?

When the global economy was in shackles with the great market crash of 2007-09, the first digital paper on Bitcoin came to the surface by a pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. However, as complex and mysterious as the development of bitcoin has been, it only makes sense that the origin story and founders be shrouded in mystery. In these research papers, Satoshi laid out a concept of a decentralized form of currency that does not involve any administrator and the transactions can be done from the peer-to-peer bitcoin network. The analysts of blockchain have estimated that Nakamoto mined about one million bitcoins before disappearing in 2010. He handed the network alert key to Gavin Andresen who is now the lead developer of Bitcoin Foundation.

Important Facts to note about the Bitcoin

Bitcoin’s maximum supply is 21 million and that is all there ever will be.
No government, person, or group of people can ever change the supply of Bitcoins after it is released. It is impossible to be recreated or duplicated.
Bitcoins can even be stored on a USB stick
New Bitcoin is discovered and made available to buy via the digital mining process that sets an amount of Bitcoin.
Today about 900 Bitcoins enter into circulation every day through mining.
Every four years, the number of new bitcoins that shall enter into the circulation gets halved.

How do you mine Bitcoin?

Using the processing power of Bitcoin, miners repeatedly track the newly entered transactions into the block and the nodes that react to them. Consequently, they track the nodes back to their origin to get a new block of bitcoins. Each Bitcoin has a hash of cryptography starting with SHA-256. To be accepted by the rest of the network, a new block must contain a proof-of-work (PoW). This proof of work system alongside the blockchain technology allows the modification to the chain extremely hard and an attacker has to go through every node in the chain to make any change. With time when the bitcoins are more an more in circulation, these changes biome even more difficult as new and new nodes keep on adding to the chain.

How can you buy Bitcoin?

In India, there exist many cryptocurrency exchanges that have been designed to sell the different cryptocurrencies without the overlook of the Government of India, or any other central authority like SEBI. The Top 5 Cryptocurrency exchanges in India are CoinSWITCH Kuber, CoinDCX, WazirX, ZebPay, and Vauld.

In order to purchase a bitcoin follow the following steps:

Submit the basic identification documents like Aadhar Card, and PAN Card to the cryptocurrency exchange you decided to choose to trade in. This is required for the KYC process
For purchasin Bitcoin, you need to place a buy order from the platform
After the order is placed, the transfer of money from the wallet of the app, NEFT, RTGS, IMPS, or UPI should be made, as per the features of the cryptocurrency exchange platform. Card Payments, Net Banking, etc options are also available and they change from platform to platform.
After the trade is executed, these cryptocurrencies are securely stored in the wallet provided by the platform

Bitcoin in India

A thorough analysis in Bitcoin investment is extremely necessary The cryptocurrencies are one of the most volatile commodities to exchange in the world currently. They are extremely risky and an investment without a comprehensive research can cause heavy losses
Investment in different crypto exchange platforms can give different prices. So investment in multiple online platforms is advised
Bitcoin, as a medium of payment, has not been authorized or regulated by any central authority in India