What is BITCOIN, how come a virtual coin (cryptocurency) ended up being valued at over 10k and is it too late to invest? - Basic explanation -

I will answer the questions from last to the first.

3. It’s not late at all to invest in blockchain built - virtual coins. The most important thing, though, is to understand what this technology consists of, at this phase, when the development it’s still at the beginning. Accounting that Facebook was launched after 14 years (2004) of the Internet (WWW- World Wide Web), you could be an early bird into the cryptocurency and blockchain world. The mainstream scepticism was also met by the early Internet pioneers when the world condemned the criminality that could be masked behind it. Nevertheless, this scepticism was washed away by the two million videos of cats, later uploaded all across the cyber space. (Andreas Antonopoulos, 2017). I would be happy to discuss more on the topic so please feel free to ask.
What is blockchain? - this is the technology that decentralizes transactions and protects the personal data: that means, if I want to send a BITCOIN (at this moment is valued at 12K euro - can also be bought/divided/sold in fractions - ex. 0.002 BTC = 240 euro) to a friend in India, I would:

Step 1. He gives me his virtual wallet address (this is the equivalent of a bank account which is not owned by a bank – it’s only yours and therefore your personal data stay with you)

Step 2. I will send the BITCOIN and almost instantly the coin gets to him - the decentralization means that the cryptocoin or the fraction of it that I’ve just sent, passes the computers (PCs) of @miners. The miners (not the ones that intervened in the 1989 Romania revolution) are people all across the world that have installed in their (computers) PCs a software that will lead the transaction to my friend in India leaving no trace of my identity. Also, the transaction passes through a few different countries and miners “working sites”

An example of this would be: BITCOIN leaves my wallet, is verified by miners in China, then verified by miners in Finland, then verified by miners in Canada, then verified by miners anywhere in the world, then reaches my friend’s wallet in India – instant transfer, protected identity, decentralized system. What’s the gain of “miners” then?

For their service the miners receive BITCOIN payment according to the capacity of the tools they’ve put available for the mining process (the transfer of data). They basically “dig” the cyberspace using the algorithm and build Megabytes of data block (MB of data). In 1 MB can be fitted a certain number of transactions: when a miner builds 1 MB, he aligns it in a string and receives BITCOIN as payment (hence, the name blockchain).
In this way the control of the coin that comes into the market is very accurate and directly proportional with the use of it. This is why I think it’s never too late to invest in this field. The mainstream banking system will end up using the best technology available and THIS IS IT!!

Whoever says it’s a”financial bubble” completely missed the point. If you are a sceptic and go as far as to ask “what if the internet goes completely down?” – Well, if the internet goes down, BITCOIN will be the last concern, imagine the lines at the banks, only cash payments everywhere, no cats videos on Facebook – will be indeed apocalyptical.
Understanding this concept now is like understanding Facebook’s potential in 1995 when the vast majority of people were concerned with something totally different. It’s a huge deal to be able to participate in such projects now in such a simple manner. Also, you need to know about the subject can easily be found online.

If this makes sense, the best of it it’s that there’s already enthusiastic teams of experts that are looking forward into innovating and researching this technology aiming most diverse fields. This said every new company develops a coin that can be bought since their start and as the project develops the coin value grows as well. It’s very similar to owning stocks on the stock market. Be aware that like in various others domains the naivety seekers that look to make profit out of people that are not familiar yet with what’s going on is also present. Try to understand what’s going on first, before making any investment.

How can you invest? Let’s say you don’t have 12 k euro to buy a full BITCOIN but you only have 200 euro. With the 200 euro you can still buy a fraction of the BITCOIN which you can invest in a start-up. If the start-up is in the initial phase you should look for certain characteristics behind the projects: per say, their team gives you trust through a certain vision, the concept of the project is really impressive, there’s good reviews from more experienced people. Let’s say you buy with the BITCOIN fraction worth 200 euro the coin of a start-up (these are called tokens). We can presume as in many cases that it’s valued at 0.1 EUR (Month of January had an enormous amount of new projects/start-ups). In half a year the chance that the price of the token reaches 1 euro is huge – this translates as 10 times your investment. Why such a huge increase? The token (the coin) ends up in the crypto market after the project starts (Bittrex.com, Binance.com, Conswitch.co) – Also on these exchanges you can speculate or just look into projects that have a medium term perspective and look solid. There’s a huge chance that you invest in a project that will have 100 times its initial value in 6 months (medium term). If you want to follow the crypto market you could check it here (https://coinmarketcap.com/).
If you got the idea you only have to research what suits you best. New project that are just starting can be checked here (https://topicolist.com/)

P.S. A very good friend purchased coins (tokens) for a project in June 2017. The token price at that time was around 7 euro. The price is now 100 euro (I’m talking about NEO). Why so? Because the project looked solid, the idea behind it had a good vision and the team gave a lot of confidence by pointing very specific targets. She also “predicts” that NEO will hit 1000 euro margin and I understand why she sees so. Ethereum and BITCOIN are already examples of this huge increase of value that completely changed the concept of cyber space, Internet, security, personal data, speed, etc.
This being said, it doesn’t matter BITCOIN is expensive; there’s a huge number of other projects that deserve real attention.

Facebook was launched only 14 years (2004) after the WWW. World Wide Web – the good thing is that you can buy the token (coin) of any project and the team behind it will do the job for you and therefore the value of the token will increase over time. In that moment you can exchange it for other coins, other projects or withdraw it in fiat.

Happy to answer any questions!

2. BITCOIN is so expensive because it was the first coin built on block chain with the qualities I mentioned above. Since then it was the most used and the easiest entry point in the market. Also, to avoid inflation, the creator limited the number of coins to 21 million; this is done by an algorithm. Also these can only be mined by 2140 (Nathan Reiff, 2017)

1. BITCOIN is the creation of a publicly unknown person (Satoshi Nakamoto – Pseudo name) that started the algorithm and disappeared. Once started this generated the influx of development we now witness in cyberspace on the blockchain technology. The value of the coins is direct representations of the quality of the projects, of the teams and visions topped with no sort of exterior pressure whatsoever.

P.S. Why is the article on this website? This website it’s a project like the ones mentioned above. It has its own coin (token –called STEEM) and there are miners that ensure transactions work fine in a decentralized manner. Instead of a “like” button there’s an “up vote” that ends up in fractions of payment for your blog posts. If you make an account and create blog or comments you receive the appreciation in STEEM tokens (The value of a STEEM token is – 5.60 USD right now).

These coins stay in your wallet (STEEM wallet that comes with the account) and you can then send them on coin exchanges then transform in cash or send in a bank account.
This is the broad idea behind blockchain.

The power to create it’s in our hands, the hands of many.