“Mommy, where do Bitcoins come from?” Well, you see, when a shiny young Bitcoin catches the eyes of an ambitious miner, and because they love each other very much…

Wait, that’s obviously too difficult to solve here. Besides, my whole goal is to keep things simple. Anyway, Bitcoins are made by solving complex math problems. This is done by a powerful machine that is built to solve these math problems. This process is called mining. People who own these machines to make money mining Bitcoins are called miners. When a batch of problems is solved it becomes known as a block. Blocks are verified by other users and once they are verified, they get added to what is called the block chain. This chain continues to grow with a new block being added to it roughly every 10 minutes. This chain is really just a master ledger that will continue to grow and never end.

The very powerful machines that mine zap a lot of power and drive up the miner’s monthly utility bill. The reason it takes so much power is the genius of the mathematics involved. It requires the mining machine to perform complex cryptographic algorithms. Once a math problem is solved by the machine, a block of coins is birthed. Every time 210,000 blocks have been created, the reward to the miner is halved. It takes 4 years to accomplish this. So it’s kind of like a Bitcoin Olympics. Currently the block reward is 12 Bitcoins (on … Read more

For virtual currency investors, the more important question is whether this round of currency price rises is a restart of the bull market or a bear market trap.

Yesterday evening, Bitcoin experienced a soaring price in just one hour. The price rose from the violence of about 6,800 U.S. dollars to a maximum of 8,100 U.S. dollars. It rose by nearly 20% during the day. Under the leadership of Bitcoin, other virtual currencies also ushered in a strong rebound, with single currency gains even exceeding 50%. Faced with the collective warming of the virtual currency market, many investors shouted that “the bull market is back.”

According to data from the CoinMarketCap website, Bitcoin’s market value increased by nearly 20 billion U.S. dollars within a day, and the entire virtual currency market also experienced general market growth. There was no “seeking” effect. According to the daily transaction volume of Bitcoin exceeding 9 billion U.S. dollars, there should be billions of incremental funds entering the market yesterday, instead of stock funds.

In fact, in the time of the booming of Bitcoin, Bitfinex, a digital currency trading platform, also recorded a number of large purchases. With the increase in buying Bitcoins, many shorts were forced to close their positions, further expanding the market’s upward trend. For this phenomenon, Nick Kirk, data director of Cypher Capital, also expressed his approval. At the same time, he also believes that this sharp rebound is more likely to be the response to the release of early regulatory … Read more

Bitcoin… Monetary Nirvana?

If you don’t know what Bitcoin is, do a bit of research on the internet, and you will get plenty… but the short story is that Bitcoin was created as a medium of exchange, without a central bank or bank of issue being involved. Furthermore, Bitcoin transactions are supposed to be private, that is anonymous. Most interestingly, Bitcoins have no real world existence; they exist only in computer software, as a kind of virtual reality.

The general idea is that Bitcoins are ‘mined’… interesting term here… by solving an increasingly difficult mathematical formula -more difficult as more Bitcoins are ‘mined’ into existence; again interesting- on a computer. Once created, the new Bitcoin is put into an electronic ‘wallet’. It is then possible to trade real goods or Fiat currency for Bitcoins… and vice versa. Furthermore, as there is no central issuer of Bitcoins, it is all highly distributed, thus resistant to being ‘managed’ by authority.

Naturally proponents of Bitcoin, those who benefit from the growth of Bitcoin, insist rather loudly that ‘for sure, Bitcoin is money’… and not only that, but ‘it is the best money ever, the money of the future’, etc… Well, the proponents of Fiat shout just as loudly that paper currency is money… and we all know that Fiat paper is not money by any means, as it lacks the most important attributes of real money. The question then is does Bitcoin even qualify as money… never mind it being the money of … Read more