Hey guys! I’m Coin Girl and this is the first episode from my new series Bitcoin for Beginners. I am also a newbie but in the past months I have been researching and started to invest in several cryptocurrencies, among Bitcoin.
So what is Bitcoin?
I will try to explain it as easy as I can for those who are very very new to this and want to find out more. Back in 2009, a group of unnamed programmers, or maybe just one programmer, under the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto, released Bitcoin technology.
Bitcoin is a form of digital currency, created and held electronically. With its creation it started the term of cryptocurrency. The great thing about it is that NO ONE controls it and it is an open source software to the public.
This system is peer to peer, that means the transactions take place between users directly, with no intermediary such as banks, governments or any other financial institution and are recorded in a public ledger called blockchain.
Bitcoin is created through the process of mining, which is quite complex to cover in this video, but to put it in more simple words, it is solving a mathematical puzzle, using computational power.
The blockchain contains EVERY Bitcoin transaction EVER made and it is verified by miners, who are responsible for approving or disapproving them. Bitcoin is also a limited product as it can only support 21 million units.
In July 2010 one Bitcoin was valued at 8 cents… last year was 750 USD, and now it’s valued at 4,600 USD. Some experts say that by the year 2030 one Bitcoin will cost somewhere around 500,000 USD and this sounds very appealing and very interesting in the same time.
Today, there are about 10 million of Bitcoin users, which means that under 1% percent of the world’s population is using it at this point, but growing.
For you to understand how big its potential is and will be, we must make a familiar comparison.
Today’s crypto market cap is at over 150 billion USD and Bitcoin represents more than half of it, at 77 billion dollars!! Pretty crazy, huh?
A company as McDonald's has a total market cap of 125 billion dollars but think of what long history is behind it...definitely didn’t gain such awareness and market cap over the past 7 years.
The best features of Bitcoin:
- Bitcoins aren’t printed, like any other currency we are familiar with and use day by day, such as dollars, euros, pounds
- Bitcoin is created by miners, independently of any intermediary
- Bitcoin operates with no central authority or banks
- Bitcoin is designed for public and no one owns it
- Everyone can take part to create it and/or to use it
- It has an enormous future
In the next video I will be talking about what exactly is a blockchain in more detail, so stay tuned.
That’s it for now, thanks for watching, I hope you found this video useful, therefore you can hit the like and the subscribe buttons, in case you haven’t already done so :) Don’t forget to leave me any comments you might have, any questions related to this topic and I will try to do my best answering them.
See you soon and bye!