Bitcoin (BTC) is the world’s first and largest cryptocurrency. Bitcoin was created by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008, in 2009 first Bitcoins were mined.
What are the benefits of Bitcoin? Here are just a few of them to give you a better idea of what Bitcoin brings to the world:
- Bitcoin is permissionless: Traditional currencies and forms of money require permission to use (from banks, financial institutions, governments). Bitcoin requires no permission from anyone and is free and open to use globally.
- Bitcoin is censorship resistant:Using a computational algorithm called proof-of-work (PoW), no one is able to block or censor your transactions.
- Bitcoin is immune to seizure: Nobody can confiscate your Bitcoin since you own it; it’s not housed at any central bank or company.
- Bitcoin is decentralized: The network is distributed globally among many thousands of nodes (computers) and millions of users where you don’t have to rely on trusted third-parties.
- Bitcoin has a limited supply: There will only ever be 21 million bitcoins created and are generated at a predictable rate. Bitcoin is scarce and deflationary.
- Bitcoin is fast and easy to use: since BTC is a digital peer-to-peer currency as outlined in the original Satoshi Nakamoto whitepaper, transactions are near instant and are very low-cost, much less than central payment networks such as PayPal, Visa or Mastercard.
- Bitcoin is open source: Anyone can contribute to developing Bitcoin in a myriad of areas including different Bitcoin software clients.
- Bitcoin is a push system: With Bitcoin, there is no risk of charge-backs because once Bitcoin are sent, the transaction cannot be reversed. Bitcoin is akin to cash — once you give someone cash, you cannot get it back (unless they give it back to you).
- Bitcoin is real money: Bitcoin is used around the world to pay for things such as coffee, food, electronics, travel, and more. For example, Ohio accepts Bitcoin for tax bills.
- Bitcoin provides anonymity: If used correctly, Bitcoin can be used as an anonymous currency. When you use Bitcoin,you don’t need to provide your email, name, social security number, or any other identifying information when making peer-to-peer Bitcoin transactions. Bitcoin is just numbers, 1’s and 0’s, traveling through the internet. If not used correctly though, Bitcoin can just be psuedo-anonymous providing people with a lot more privacy than using traditional currencies.
Conclusion
Bitcoin is freedom: using Bitcoin gives you the financial freedom to transact globally using all the properties mentioned above. As such, Bitcoin provides economic stability and newfound freedoms to the world.
