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Every day more and more people are using Bitcoin in their day-to-day lives. It’s increasingly accepted in business, not only small, independent ones, but massive corporations such as Tesla are allowing customers to pay for their products using Bitcoin. Created in 2008 and launched in 2009 by an unknown person under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, the purpose of bitcoin was to create a way for people to send each other money over the internet without the need for a central authority.
Starting off being worth fractions of a penny, Bitcoin is currently worth over $40,000 at the time of writing (though if you know anything about Bitcoin you’ll know that this is likely to change by the time you read it!). So how has it seen such a meteoric rise in the past 13/14 years, and why are people convinced that it’s the currency of the future?
Bitcoin was created to be a means of sending money electronically, without the need for a central authority – and it’s that last part of the sentence that’s key to why Bitcoin is revolutionary. You see, for years there have been ways to send money to people electronically. Online banking has been around for the past couple of decades, and eWallets such as Skrill and PayPal are more prevalent than ever. However, all of these methods are reliant on the central authority, such as your bank, facilitating the transfer.
The problem that people face is that they are completely at the mercy of these central authorities, even if it’s their own money. There have been reports of banks refusing to complete transactions on crypto exchanges such as Coinbase, even though it’s completely legal to buy and own cryptocurrency. It’s this 3rd party restriction of your own money that’s driving more and more people to use Bitcoin and boycott banks that control how you spend your money.
Another selling point that Bitcoin has over eWallets and online banking is the potential to be completely anonymous. When using your bank account to send money, you need to know a lot of details about the person you’re spending money to, including their name and their local bank, and in turn, they will have that information about you. Additionally, when signing up for services such as PayPal, you need to verify your identity to be able to use it. Some of the more privacy-minded people in the world are not so comfortable with their personal details being out in the open like this.
By buying bitcoin, you give yourself the ability to be completely anonymous when making transactions online. For example, there are a number of people that like to gamble online, but it should be up to you whether or not that information should be out on the internet. There are some online casinos that allow you to deposit and withdraw using bitcoin, so there is no need for your bank to know about it. You can still play the same great games such as blackjack, baccarat, and online slots – there are so many to choose from. The best online casinos will even have generous welcome offers that allow players to get the most from the money they deposit. And there are review sites that have all the information you need to know about playing safely online. Using bitcoin for these transactions is not only fast, but allows for complete anonymity.
However, in order to remain anonymous when buying Bitcoin, it must be done a certain way. If you were to buy it from one of the popular crypto exchanges, you’ll need to comply with their KYC policies. “Know Your Customer” policies like this are a way to ensure that the exchanges are confident that the people who are signing up and making these transactions can afford them. Unfortunately for us, this undermines our need for privacy, so the best way to buy bitcoin anonymously is to use a Bitcoin ATM.
When using one of these machines, you don’t need to provide any personal information to it, only the wallet address that you will be sending the bitcoin. You can even buy it using cash – so no credit/debit cards are necessary!
Finally, what makes Bitcoin work as a decentralized payment platform is the immutability of the blockchain. Without relying on a central authority to make the decisions on how payments are processed, you need to be able to send money in a way that cannot be exploited. This is where Bitcoin’s blockchain ledger comes into play. The blockchain is a distributed public ledger that records all transactions and ownership of Bitcoin. Transactions are grouped together into “blocks” that are added in order to a chain of blocks. There are identical copies of this chain of blocks hosted on computers all over the world, and the design ensures that no one central authority can govern it or change historical data – meaning that once a transaction has taken place, it cannot be changed back.
These three features combine to make a payment method that is secure, private, and in the hands of the people. No wonder more and more people are buying Bitcoin every day.
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