Bitcoin investors hoping to make billions may end up with a sack of fool’s gold

Sifting the Yukon river for gold was a waste of time for most of the 100,000 prospectors seeking to make themselves rich in the 1890s. The same can be said of the bitcoin miners who dream of striking it rich by getting their hands on some of the extremely lucrative and painfully elusive electronic currency.

Relatively few people have managed to decipher the codes needed to extract bitcoins from the 21 million locked inside the mathematical problems set by its creator, the software engineer whose true identity is unknown but who goes by the name Satoshi Nakamoto.

Those who have employed enough computer power and code-cracking know-how can consider themselves rich now that the value of one bitcoin has soared from $753 last December to around $10,000. The rest have deployed huge amounts of energy and time for no return.

Should anyone be worried about this turn of events? Or will it go down as a moment in history when an asset was mined, some people got rich and ... that was it?

Read More Here: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/dec/03/bitcoin-investors-hoping-billions-sack-fools-gold