Why Is Bitcoin Gaining Popularity

                Bitcoin popularity has seen a huge rise in past 2 months, mainly due to the price jump which resulted due to China buying huge amount of the first crypto currency. More and more places start to accept bitcoins as a legit payment method, alongside credit cards, cash and PayPal – it has relatively small transaction fees, compared to 2-3% of CC processors, which adds to the incentive. The price is oscillating at the level of 800 USD at the moment, seeing a huge rise since six months ago, when I was barely worth 150$.

                A bit of history first. 3^rd January 2009 is the date of introduction of the Bitcoin protocol, done by pseudonymous developer Satoshi Nakamoto. At first, it has been widely recognized as something that criminals used. The famous Silk Road used it as primary currency, but it has been shutdown in 2013 by FBI, who seized what is now estimated to be worth 28.5 million USD of bitcoins. The start of BTC was marked with early technical problems, for example in 2009 an exploit existed, that allowed the creation of unlimited bitcoins. In relation to other currencies, BTC has appreciated rapidly. In 2011, first boom happened, when the value of one coin went from 30 cents to a bit over 30 dollars, then dropped back to 2$.

                One of the reasons Bitcoin is gaining popularity is because of all the fuss media has made in the last months, along with the price jump. Ordinary people, who haven’t heard about it before, suddenly are told that BTC is semi-viable alternative to Euro our British Pound. This contributes to the attention the crypto currency gets, therefore resulting in rise of the value.

                Another reason is because you don’t even have to work to gain the currency. All you have to do is setup your computer to “mine” the coins – there’s zero effort in doing that, and we’ll cover how to do so in future article. Of course, you won’t be gaining 100$ per hour out of nowhere – if you want to start mining seriously, you will need to invest in GPUs suitable to mine.

                Bitcoin is also popular thanks due to the anonymity it provides, while maintaining platform secure enough to prevent chargebacks or frauds. Of course, the platform could be a victim of a hacker attack, but those are pretty rare and success of those depends on how the user secures their own wallet.

                All in all, BTC is gaining popularity because it’s a good alternative to real-world currencies, which are controlled by huge institutions and banks. If only more shops and services supported payments in bitcoins!