What is Bitcoin? What is Bitcoin Mining? Safe to invest or not? Bitcoin..Bitcoin.. all around!!!

A buzz word heard from every second person. This coin is covering almost all news coverage. So what's so special with this coin? How it differs from normal currency/coin?

Bitcoin is a kind of coin that doesn't make sound, in other way we can say it's a "Digital currency" or "Cryptocurrency". It is a virtual currency which we cannot see nor touch but can use as money for transactions and purchasing goods. Thus it is an Electronic currency that we can store in our Digital wallet, Cloud or computer. The term Cryptocurrency is used for it, because this coin can only be obtained by solving encrypted algorithms known as Mining. We will come upon mining in the later part of this blog.
 Now let's get back into 2009 when Bitcoin first came into existence. Many of us think the inventor of Bitcoin is Satoshi Nakamoto but the truth is, the creator of Bitcoin is Unknown. No one knows who created Bitcoin. The person or group of people that first did the transaction using Bitcoin used the name , Satoshi Nakamoto as username. 

Now, how it differs from normal currency ?? 

Normal currency such as Rupees, Dollar, Euro, Yen etc are printed currency and is an authorized currency. Reserved banks regulate this currency between people in the market. The transactions between people is regulated or validated by respective banks. Thus there is a transaction fee or processing fee when there is a money transfer between sender and receiver. There is no limitation on printing these currencies as they can be printed as much as required.Whereas Bitcoin is not a printed but a virtual currency. There is no such bank that regulates Bitcoin.No bank or authority comes in between when there is a Bitcoin transaction. Hence no processing fees, no extra procedures to be followed just send or receive money. Transfer of money is done on the basis of belief between people. Bitcoins are fixed in amount, unlike normal currency one cannot have unlimited Bitcoins. One can have 21 Million Bitcoins only. Up till now, 16 Million Bitcoins are available in the market for transactions. 

What's the value of Bitcoin?? 

Bitcoin is a fluctuating currency. Its value is changing day by day. As the amount of Bitcoins are limited it is thought that the value will increase daily and will never fall down. At present, the value of 1 Bitcoin is 1227988.85 Rupees or 19135.01 Dollar. The value of Bitcoin can take up to 8 decimal place such as; we know that 1Rupees=100 paise likewise the smallest unit can go up to 0.00000001 which is known as Satoshi.Thus a person can sell 0.001 Bitcoin,0.1 Bitcoin etc... 

What is Bitcoin Mining and how transactions are done? 

The transfer of Bitcoins takes place in the following manner..... 

The person who is interested in investing into Bitcoin can buy Bitcoins using any Bitcoin exchange methods such as Coinbase, Bitstamp or Bifinex etc or one can send or receive using online payment methods such as Paytm. 

Now the person who has purchased Bitcoins can use this money for purchasing goods or can sell his Bitcoins to the buyer when there is a hike in the price. Buyer and seller are anonymous to each other, they can be known just by their IDs, name or contact number is not disclosed to anyone. While transferring ledger is created where buyer and seller can only view their transactions but people remain unknown to each other. No one knows who sell to whom, they can only be recognized by their IDs. 

When the transfer of money between buyer and seller is taking place, in between some validator is required to know that the transfer and the money is legitimate; for that Bitcoin miners comes in between.When a sender sends money to the buyer , the Bitcoin miners have to solve some mathematical algorithms to get a result up to 64 bits and as soon as the algorithm is solved, the money is transferred to buyer and miner gets some reward in return. The one who solves the algorithm first gets the reward. It can be 1,2 or more bitcoins depending on the difficulty level of algorithms. 

For solving such algorithms Computer CPUs are not enough as while mining, too much electricity consumption is there due to fast and efficient operations. GPUs(Graphics processing unit) and ASICs(Application specific Integrated Circuits ) are being used by miners.

Safe to invest in Bitcoin or not?? 

The most nailbiting question people are having in their mind, whether to buy a Bitcoin or not is totally up to them. As day by day value of Bitcoin is increasing if one wishes one can invest but the main drawback is the person with whom you are dealing with is anonymous to you but on the other side as there are limited number of Bitcoins its value will not fall down thus one can take risk of investing as more risk leads to high returns same as Sensex or Nefty. 

If we talk about future of Bitcoin we can say that no one can predict the future of Bitcoin as no one is holding its authority. Some countries are working upon making this authorized to make it more reliable and many companies have started accepting Bitcoins as well. 

 Is there any other digital currency except Bitcoin??

Yes...there are so many digital/electronic currency available in the market having their different norms in which investors can invest such as Zcash, Ethereum, Dash, Ripple, Litecoin etc.