Ask any Bollywood enthusiast Indian what the meaning of being wealthy was, and they would have said, “Having an account in one of those infamous Swiss banks”. But this was a case about more than a few years ago.
But if you ask any Indian today, who has been keeping up with the current market scenario and has even the most remote knowledge about economics, they would say, “Being wealthy means being able to own your very own Bitcoins.” But before we go into the whole what and how about it, it is important to be aware that our country, has is yet to accept this cryptocurrency as a legal tender.
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The term bitcoin was coined in the year 2008, by a person who went by the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto. Bitcoin is basically a virtual currency or a decentralized cryptocurrency, which started off just as an unimportant form of virtual currency, but soon gathered momentum and was transformed into a more mainstream form of currency in the successive years.
What sets this cryptocurrency apart and what caught the attention of the whole world was something called as the blockchain technology.
This blockchain technology refers to a digital ledger, but it is quite unlike any sort of digital ledger that has existed. Here the record of the various transactions which are carried out in bitcoin is maintained in such a way, that there is a great amount of transparency and accountability between the parties involved.
The information of the transactions is then distributed among a certain number of computers, all of which are participants of the transaction and no one else but them. Thus this rules out any requirement of a third party, which generally would have acted as the intermediary.
The blockchain technology can very well go on to disrupt the way banks have been essaying the role of an intermediary for centuries now. This is because it will totally do away with the need for any kind of intermediary.
A number of financial technology or Fintech start-ups today have come up and begun using this blockchain technology and are trying to apply it to many more fields than just that of banking or bitcoins.
Now coming to the most important question. Is investing in Bitcoin a good investment? Well the fact that our country has still not legalized it as a mainstream currency, it seems prudent to apply certain amounts of caution.
At the same time, because this field is entirely new but, at the same time can actually give results, like in the case of one lucky Norwegian man who overnight became richer by 5,54,30,625.00 Indian Rupees, because of his long-ago investment in Bitcoins. There is quite a craze of investing in and trading in bitcoins as well as bitcoin mining, in order to multiply one’s monetary assets.
Bitcoin trading is not quite synonymous with the general trading of stocks that takes place, neither is bitcoin mining the same as data mining.
With the rising risk of frauds and instances of bitcoins being a bad investment, it is up to the discretion of the investor as to how much risk he/she is willing to take and how much he/she is willing to lose if not all in order to play this game of digital stash.
