Bitcoin is not money in itself, but a concept that fulfills all the criteria of money.
Human civilisation is more than six thousand years old. We have survived and strived for these years as social beings. When we look back to our history, one thing that connects with the entire civilisation of humankind is money. Though the modern concept of money was not there six thousand years ago, the idea of the exchange of goods and services was certainly one way to understand human progress.
As humanity progressed, the idea of a nation-state led to wars and conflicts solely to control more land and power. Throughout history, we have seen money in different forms, from the barter system to the primitive system, commodity-based to government-based. While we have seen both revolutions and innovations in exchanging goods and services, we are currently at the new phase of the history of money — money, based on mathematics. However, the question remains, how do we define money and even sound money?
Throughout human history, we have defined money in different ways. Today, the modern concept of money is defined with six characteristics; Acceptability, Divisibility, Durability, Scarcity, Portability and Uniformity. While history remembered using money in different forms and objects, three functions always stick with what money is — store of value, a unit of account, and medium of exchange. Today, our modern financial system and money have failed to satisfy its characteristics and traits.
Today, as we know it, money has become the most significant element that connects and runs the world. While we want to dig directly into bitcoin, the answer and explanation for ‘What is bitcoin?’ come from the disciplines of economy, law, computer science, finance, civil society, history, geopolitics, mathematics and many more. In addition, bitcoin is still at an infant stage. It is challenging to know all about bitcoin in one setting. However, we want to start with some foundation, the principles bitcoin stands for, and the concepts bitcoin holds for money.
Bitcoin was invented due to the fragile financial system. Though the concept of money was used long back, until 1971, every currency was backed by something of real value. Every paper money was backed/pegged to gold in a reserve vault as per the gold standard. After the withdrawal of the convertibility of gold into dollars by the then U.S President in 1971, the Federal Reserve got the freedom to print any amount of banknotes they wanted. It was the beginning of a new era in the history of finances. Moreover, since that moment in history, government-based money has lost one of its characteristics — Limited supply. Fiat currency — money based solely on a government mandate was born.
The core financial problem that bitcoin addresses are because it is Censorship-Resistance, Decentralised, Distributed, and Open-Source. For the first time in human history, we have sound money, which does not decrease its value. Instead, it increases over time because of its fixed supply. If someone takes the U.S dollar into perspective, the purchasing power has decreased 96% since 1913, which means if someone could buy an article for $4 in 1913, it would be worth $100 today. It is mainly because of the infinite supply of currency without any backing to real value. There are many more to talk about bitcoin. However, going to the technicality without understanding the fundamental principle is not worth it. And hence here is a detailed explanation of the economic principle of bitcoin.
Coming to an exciting point of bitcoin, who founded bitcoin? Or who started it?
No one knows, and it is not even essential to know. Even though bitcoin was launched in the aftermath of the 2008 economic recession, the idea of having an electronic peer-to-peer transaction system with absolute privacy came to light in 1993. Eric Hughes introduced the concept of having a censorship resistance system in communication in the Cypherpunk manifesto. Our banking system work with a concept of a ledger that keeps the records of all the transactions. A third party institution maintains these ledgers, and it is prone to be corrupted. For the record, the money in our banks is just a number and nothing of value linked to them. This double-spending problem is called the famous Byzantine General problem. Bitcoin implements an idea of timestamps to solve it.
The world does not know how bitcoin will evolve as money or as technology, but the bitcoin we know of today is an incorruptible piece of technology — a protocol that gives the concept of sound money. This network of technology is distributed, decentralised, open and is censorship-resistant. The Bitcoin network does not discriminate against someone of their creed, caste, nationality, or gender. Today, with bitcoin, we have a system where anybody in the world from anywhere can participate in the actual market economy — a genuinely open market. Nothing apart from bitcoin offers these. If someone wants to read more about bitcoin, please read it out:
- Don’t buy bitcoin. Buy Satoshi
- What can you do for bitcoin and crypto today?
- Five things to know before investing in Bitcoin and Crypto for absolute beginners
- The Bitcoin Network is getting better with every block
You can also read Will Ethereum overtake Bitcoin? to know the narrative of bitcoin.
Stats of bitcoin
Price (At the time of writing this) — $43,889 BTC/USD
Market Cap (At the time of writing this) — $832,078,310,843
Circulated supply — 18,958,675 BTC
Maximum supply — 21,000,000 BTC
Where to trade bitcoin
To trade bitcoin at Unocoin, you can download the Unocoin application or sign up at www.unocoin.com. For every unique sign up during the second month of this new year, 2022, new users will get a welcome bonus of INR 100 worth of bitcoin.
What is more? With Unocoin, you can earn Satoshis by just shaking your phone. All you need to do is, download the latest version of the Unocoin application, shake your phone and earn Satoshis for free!
Unocoin is India’s first and the most secure bitcoin trading app. This exchange app was founded in 2013. You can buy and sell
bitcoin instantly using the Instant Buy and Sell feature. Not just this, you can also buy ETH and Sell ETH in no time. With more than eighty-seven coins listed on this best cryptocurrency exchange in India, you can also accept bitcoin from your friends from any location. You can also know which cryptocurrency works best for you with the price ticker and notifications. The most popular cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), USDT (Tether), BNB, Ripple (XRP), Cardano (ADA), Solana (SOL), Binance USD (BUSD), Dogecoin (DOGE), Polkadot (DOT) and other popular altcoins can be traded on the go. The new Android and iOS applications make Unocoin the best cryptocurrency app. With the unique feature of the Systematic Buying Plan, you can buy and sell bitcoin and Ether periodically. What more? You can start your crypto journey using SBP for as little as INR 10. With another exciting feature called Crypto Basket, you can diversify your crypto portfolio based on market capitalisation (Market Cap) or Volume. These two excellent features make Unocoin the best cryptocurrency platform.
Love Crypto Coins. Love Unocoin.
Please find the list of authentic Unocoin accounts for all your queries below:
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Crypto products are unregulated as of this date in India. They could be highly volatile. At Unocoin, we understand that there is a need to protect consumer interests as this form of trading and investment has risks that consumers may not be aware of. To ensure that consumers who deal in crypto products are not misled, they are advised to DYOR (Do Your Own Research).