Is Bitcoin As Good As Gold?

Gold and Bitcoin have been used synonymously as safe havens and currencies. What is a safe haven? It is a place to park wealth or money when there is a high degree of uncertainty in the environment. It has to be something that everyone can believe in even if the current institutions, governments or players in the business game are not available. The wealth has to be kept safe in times of trouble. What are the risks to someone's wealth? There is theft by robbery if it is a physical asset. There is damage by fire, flood or other elements. There is the legal issue in not being able to determine if the asset is really yours or not. There is access risk in that you may own the asset but may not be able to get your hands on it. You may own the asset but may not be able to use it due to some restriction. Who else do you have to rely on to be able to use your wealth - spending it, investing it or converting it into different units of measure (currencies)?

In cases like cash or currencies, you may have the asset and can freely use it, but it does not have value due to a systemic issue. There may be too many units of the currency such that using them would not purchase very much (hyperinflation). There is also devaluation - where a currency is arbitrarily devalued due to some economic or institution issue. Most of these issues come from too much debt and not enough assets to pay for them. A currency devaluation is like a partial or slow motion bankruptcy for a government or issuer. In a foreclosure scenario, the creditors (or users of the currency) would be getting a fraction of what the asset (or currency) was originally worth.

No Liability

One key aspect for both bitcoin and gold is that in creating either of them, there is no liability involved. National currencies are issued with interest attached, which means there is a liability to the issuer of the currency. The currencies due to being centralized can also be "delisted" or have their value altered, devalued or swapped for other currencies. With Bitcoin, there would have to be consensus among the players for this to happen. Gold is nature's money, and since it was found, there is no one really in charge of how it works. Gold also has the history of being used as money for thousands of years in virtually every culture and society. Bitcoin does not have this reputation. The internet, technology and power grid are needed for Bitcoin to function, whereas gold just is. The value of gold is based on what it is being exchanged for. The value of Bitcoin is similar to buying a stock or a good: It is determined by what the buyer and seller agree it is worth.

Bitcoin Issues

Are there regulatory, institutional or systemic risks with Bitcoin? The answer is yes. What if a bunch of central banks or governments took over the Bitcoin issuance? Would this not lead to control issues that could either stop the Bitcoin transactions or impair them? What if the justification was to stop terrorism or illegal activities? There are also technology issues like who controls the internet, the electrical energy involved in mining Bitcoins, or other issues in infrastructure (the electrical grid, the nuclear grid, the internet servers, the telecom companies etc.) Regulatory risks can also run the gamut from restricting who buys Bitcoins, how many can trade each day or perhaps issuing trillions of units of fiat currency and buying and selling Bitcoins with them which would cause convulsions in the prices of the unit, leading to mistrust and lack of use? Gold does not have these shortcomings. Once it is mined, it cannot get destroyed. It is not reliant on technology, infrastructure or any institution to make it valid. Since it is small and portable, it can be taken anywhere and still be useful without any other mechanism needed. The prevailing institutions can be changed many times and gold will still be valuable.

Gold is a classic safe haven because it does not need institutions to exist, is very hard to forge, cannot be destroyed by the elements and does not have issues of access or restrictions. Physical theft and restriction may be factors, but gold fares better than currencies or digital currencies at this point in time.

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What Cryptocurrencies Are Good to Invest in?

This year the value of Bitcoin has soared, even past one gold-ounce. There are also new cryptocurrencies on the market, which is even more surprising which brings cryptocoins' worth up to more than one hundred billion. On the other hand, the longer term cryptocurrency-outlook is somewhat of a blur. There are squabbles of lack of progress among its core developers which make it less alluring as a long term investment and as a system of payment.

Bitcoin

Still the most popular, Bitcoin is the cryptocurrency that started all of it. It is currently the biggest market cap at around $41 billion and has been around for the past 8 years. Around the world, Bitcoin has been widely used and so far there is no easy to exploit weakness in the method it works. Both as a payment system and as a stored value, Bitcoin enables users to easily receive and send bitcoins. The concept of the blockchain is the basis in which Bitcoin is based. It is necessary to understand the blockchain concept to get a sense of what the cryptocurrencies are all about.

To put it simply, blockchain is a database distribution that stores every network transaction as a data-chunk called a "block." Each user has blockchain copies so when Alice sends 1 bitcoin to Mark, every person on the network knows it.

Litecoin

One alternative to Bitcoin, Litecoin attempts to resolve many of the issues that hold Bitcoin down. It is not quite as resilient as Ethereum with its value derived mostly from adoption of solid users. It pays to note that Charlie Lee, ex-Googler leads Litecoin. He is also practicing transparency with what he is doing with Litecoin and is quite active on Twitter.

Litecoin was Bitcoin's second fiddle for quite some time but things started changing early in the year of 2017. First, Litecoin was adopted by Coinbase along with Ethereum and Bitcoin. Next, Litecoin fixed the Bitcoin issue by adopting the technology of Segregated Witness. This gave it the capacity to lower transaction fees and do more. The deciding factor, however, was when Charlie Lee decided to put his sole focus on Litecoin and even left Coinbase, where're he was the Engineering Director, just for Litecoin. Due to this, the price of Litecoin rose in the last couple of months with its strongest factor being the fact that it could be a true alternative to Bitcoin.

Ethereum

Vitalik Buterin, superstar programmer thought up Ethereum, which can do everything Bitcoin is able to do. However its purpose, primarily, is to be a platform to build decentralized applications. The blockchains are where the differences between the two lie. Basically, the blockchain of Bitcoin records a contract-type, one that states whether funds have been moved from one digital address to another address. However, there is significant expansion with Ethereum as it has a more advanced language script and has a more complex, broader scope of applications.

Projects began to sprout on top of Ethereum when developers began noticing its better qualities. Through token crowd sales, some have even raised dollars by the millions and this is still an ongoing trend even to this day. The fact that you can build wonderful things on the Ethereum platform makes it almost like the internet itself. This caused a skyrocketing in the price so if you purchased a hundred dollars' worth of Ethereum early this year, it would not be valued at almost $3000.

Monero

Monero aims to solve the issue of anonymous transactions. Even if this currency was perceived to be a method of laundering money, Monero aims to change this. Basically, the difference between Monero and Bitcoin is that Bitcoin features a transparent blockchain with every transaction public and recorded. With Bitcoin, anyone can see how and where the money was moved. There is some somewhat imperfect anonymity on Bitcoin, however. In contrast, Monero has an opaque rather than transparent transaction method. No one is quite sold on this method but since some folks love privacy for whatever purpose, Monero is here to stay.

Zcash

Not unlike Monero, Zcash also aims to solve the issues that Bitcoin has. The difference is that rather than being completely transparent, Monero is only partially public in its blockchain style. Zcash also aims to solve the problem of anonymous transactions. After all, no every person loves showing how much money they actually spent on memorabilia by Star Wars. Thus, the conclusion is that this type of cryptocoin really does have an audience and a demand, although it's hard to point out which cryptocurrency that focuses on privacy will eventually come out on top of the pile.

Bancor

Also known as a "smart token," Bancor is the new generation standard of cryptocurrencies which can hold more than one token on reserve. Basically, Bancor attempts to make it easy to trade, manage and create tokens by increasing their level of liquidity and letting them have a market price that is automated. At the moment, Bancor has a product on the front-end that includes a wallet and the creation of a smart token. There are also features in the community such as stats, profiles and discussions. In a nutshell, the protocol of Bancor enables the discovery of a price built-in as well as a mechanism for liquidity for smart contractual tokens through a mechanism of innovative reserve. Through smart contract, you can instantly liquidate or purchase any of the tokens within the reserve of Bancor. With Bancor, you can create new cryptocoins with ease. Now who wouldn't want that?

EOS

Another competitor of Ethereum, EOS promises to solve the scaling issue of Ethereum through the provision of a set of tools that are more robust to run and create apps on the platform.

Tezos

An alternative to Ethereum, Tezos can be consensually upgraded without too much effort. This new blockchain is decentralized in the sense that it is self-governing through the establishment of a digital true commonwealth. It facilitates the mathematical technique called formal verification and has security-boosting features of the most financially weighed, sensitive smart contract. Definitely a great investment in the months to come.

Verdict

It is incredibly hard to predict which Bitcoin in the list will become the next superstar. However, user adoption has always be one key success factor when it came to cryptocurrencies. Both Ethereum and Bitcoin have this and even if there is a lot of support from early adopters of every cryptocurrency in the list, some have yet to prove their staying power. Nonetheless, these are the ones to invest in and watch out for in the coming months.

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What is Bitcoin and How it's going to change the world's financial Structure - Money Making Way

Bitcoin is a Digital Currency and a payment system which was created by a programmer name Satoshi Nakamoto. It was introduced in October 2008. Bitcoin is the first decentralize cryptocurrency where no physical paper and bank was required in order to make the transaction. This is what it makes so popular and robust itself which predicts it’s upcoming future. Most of the flaws which we currently have in our monetary system can control under bitcoins. For example like our current biggest problem in the economy is fake currency where we can print paper currency more than it’s actual value and we don’t have any control over it . In Bitcoins this is not possible because we already know there are 21 billion bitcoins we can ever produce. So we have open ledger to identify any fake transaction.

Since Bit coins numbers are already fixed so generating fake is not at all possible in this system. Now the question arises if numbers are fixed then how can it be possible for entire world to use this currency. Then solution is already available it has divided up to eight digit and lowest digit is called satoshi. This means as soon as the uses increases value of each Satoshi is going to be increase. That’s why we see lots of ups and downs in Bitcoin value on daily basis.
Now the next question is how to buy bitcoins ? There are lots of vendors available who provide wallets. Given link will provide you all details about bitcoin wallets. 

Every one has its own view but future is not certain for this digital currency. With numerous benefits it has some serious flaws. Due to decentralization tracking payment and its source of origin could be difficult task as we completely need a different management for this. Most of people finding this as a good finance system for illegal activities which is a raising alarm of its controlling and tracking. And due to this some of the countries have banned the bitcoins. But as per the experts this is the future currency which we are going to use and have unlimited benefits. It works 24*7 with less fee and peer to peer instant transfer as compare to bank where there is working time slot , transfer takes time and it cost lot of money as well.

So there is race of collecting bitcoins as many as we can. We never know how much rise it can take in future and how much profit we can earn with few numbers of bitcoin. In year 2009 1 Bitcoin was some where $6 and in 2017 it reached at $1100 by looking this it seems it has a great future. At this point of time Bitcoin investment will definitely give us good return as compare to any other investment but we need to make sure to follow the bitcoin price chart in order to estimate the future. It gives an idea of rise and fall of the currency and duration of its stability

The biggest debate over this is how it is going to handle the volume of transaction. like it’s competitor visa handles around two to three thousand transaction per second. And It has potential to handle over 60,000 transaction per second. whereas bit coin supports only seven transaction per second. This means as soon as volume increases payment confirmation duration will also increase. Imagine you went a grocery shop and made the payment via bitcoin and it taking more than half an hour for payment confirmation. We surely don’t want any such currency at the cost of our time. Before we start consider this as a future currency. We need to understand it should have at-least all the features which we are currently have in our monetary system.

Now the only solution is that they have to increase the size of block. But we can’t increase more than 1 mega byte from its current size. So the maximum it is going to handle is 27 transactions per seconds. This is still not enough to meet our market demands. As per the experts we need to change the bit coin block structure completely before we accept this as a global currency. So it is too early to say that it is going to be our main stream currency.

It is the next most challenging and serious issue associated with this currency. A Trojan is able to capture the wallet details store in hard disk and can get access in your account. There were many news in the past where bit coins were stolen. Some secure hardware wallets are available but those are quite expensive and still out of reach from common people. This is an area where we need improvement on immediate basis. No one would like to have that currency which has security issue.

 

We all are aware thing which is our greatest strength is also responsible for our weakness. And same goes this with bitcoin. Due to its decentralization smugglers and drug dealers using this currency as payment method. Here we are not compel to provide any explanation no need to file any paper against the payment transfer . We can simply transfer money to the recipient without any interference. Currently there is no solution in this area. But we surely need to work on this. Otherwise the dream of making its main stream currency will never be possible

What Are Top 5 Cryptocurrencies Other Than Bitcoin?

Bitcoin has lead the crypto world for so long, and so dominantly that the terms crypto and Bitcoin are often used interchangeably. However, the truth is, the digital currency does not only comprise of Bitcoin. There are numerous other crypto currencies that are part of the crypto world. The purpose of this post is to educate our readers on cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin to provide them with a wide range of options to choose from - if they intend on making crypto-investments.

So let's get started with the first name on our list, that is:

Litecoin:

Launched in 2011, Litecoin is often referred to as 'silver to Bitcoin's gold.' Charlie Lee - MIT graduate and former engineer at Google - is the founder of Litecoin.

Similar to Bitcoin, Litecoin is a decentralized, open source payment network which functions without a central authority.

Litecoin is similar to Bitcoin in many ways and often leads people to think: "Why not go with Bitcoin? Both are similar!". Here's a catch: the block generation of Litecoin is much faster than that of Bitcoin! and this is the main reason why merchants around the world are becoming more open to accepting Litecoin.

Ethereum:

Another open source, decentralized software platform. The currency was launched in 2015 and enables Smart Contracts and Distributed Applications to be built and run without any downtime.

The applications on Ethereum platform require a specific cryptographic token - Ether. According to the core developers of Ethereum, the token can be used to trade, secure, and decentralize just about anything.

Ethereum experienced an attack in 2016 which saw the currency split into two parts: Ethereum and Ethereum Classic.

In the race of leading cryptocurrencies, Ethereum is second most popular and is right behind Bitcoin.

Zcash:

Zcash came out in the later part of 2016. The currency defines itself as: "if Bitcoin is like http for money, Zcash is https".

Zcash promises to provide transparency, security, and privacy of transactions. The currency also offers the option of 'shielded' transaction so the users can transfer data in the form of encrypted code.

Dash:

Dash is originally a secretive version of Bitcoin. It is also known as 'Darkcoin' due to its secretive nature.

Dash is popular for offering an expanded anonymity which allows its users to make transactions impossible to trace.

The currency first appeared on the canvas of digital market in the year 2014. Since then, it has experienced a large fan following over a very short span of time.

Ripple:

With a market capitalization of over $1bn, Ripple is the last name on our list. The currency was launched in 2012 and offers instant, secure, and low-cost payments.

The consensus ledger of Ripple doesn't require mining, a feature which makes it different from Bitcoin and other mainstream crypto currencies.

The lack of mining reduces the computing power which ultimately minimizes the latency and makes transactions faster.

Wrap Up:

Although Bitcoin continues to lead the pack of crypto, the rivals are picking up the pace. Currencies like Ethereum and Ripple have surpassed Bitcoin in enterprise solutions and are growing in popularity each day. Going by the trend, the other cryptos are here to stay and will soon be giving Bitcoin a real tough time to maintain its stature.

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