Bitcoin is the first of the cryptocurrencies to come to market. Created by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008, the currency is the brainchild of that libertarian fantasy of taking money and financial institutions back from the banks and elites, and gifting them anonymously to the ‘people’. It uses the mathematical properties of cryptography to record transactions without banks. A core question over Bitcoin has been how to stabilise it, and whether it could be used to facilitate crime and fraud.
Despite scepticism, others have jumped on the Bitcoin bandwagon; Bitcoin was recently adopted as legal tender by El Salvador (on 9 June 2021), and an autonomous zone in Central America called Honduras Próspera adopted it more recently. The cryptocurrency recently reached a new high of $73,000, on the back of what has been described as ‘historic fund flows’ into the market. The price increase reflects growing interest and confidence in crypto assets – fuelled by Bitcoin’s rising institutional adoption, flight to quality in the context of economic uncertainty, and ongoing innovative blockchain technology developments.
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are traded on special portals, whose prices are highly volatile, based on market demand and user participation. Investors should expect high returns on investments in cryptocurrencies, but at the same time, the risks are extremely high and could result in brutal collapses of their savings. Keys of the virtual currencies are stored in wallets – software applications that secure the rights to own and transfer the digital currencies.
Source: infobae
