Bitcoin

Overview of Bitcoin

  • Bitcoin is particularly interesting: this week, we learned that 88% of all bitcoins that will ever circulate have been mined, a milestone that could indicate a progressive stabilization of its value in the long term: taking into account that the total supply of bitcoins is limited and predefined in the Bitcoin Protocol at 21 million, the reward given for mining one decreases over time (the Bitcoin reward is divided by 2 every 210, 000 blocks, approximately every four years), and that some bitcoins in circulation are likely to be lost forever or unusable due to errors such as lost passwords, incorrect output addresses or errors in the output scripts.
  • Bitcoin Magazine in 2012 later began publishing a print edition and has been referred to as the first serious publication dedicated to cryptocurrencies.[20] While working for Bitcoin Magazine, Buterin reached out to Jed McCaleb for a job at Ripple who accepted.[21] However, their proposed employment fell apart after Ripple was unable to support a U.S.
  • Bitcoin operates on a shared public ledger technology called the “blockchain.” The easiest way to visualize the blockchain is to picture a spreadsheet that is duplicated thousands of times across a network of computers, where the network of computers is programed to regularly update each copy of the spreadsheet so that they are identical.
  • Bitcoin’s anonymous design creates challenges for estate planning because 1) there is no personally identifiable information associated with your Bitcoin; 2) Bitcoin is a virtual asset that may not be readily identifiable to your heirs; and 3) all Bitcoin transactions require the individual’s private key.
  • Bitcoin hogged the headlines in the last week with its sprint past R700 000 on news that electric car company Tesla had invested $1.5 billion in the crypto, but a potentially more interesting story is playing out among three of the smaller cryptocurrencies – Ethereum, Cardano and Polkadot.
  • Bitcoin is back paddling in the warm waters around the $40k level and just closed the week at its highest price in history, Ether’s (ETH) bull run continues apace with prices soaring past $1,700 to new all-time highs, and Cardano (ADA) just flipped XRP and is currently trading at over $0.66.
  • Bitcoin, which has been rallying over the last few weeks after being trapped in a more than year-long bear market, remains far below its all-time high of near $20,000 per bitcoin as traders and investors wait for major financial institutions and retailers to wade into cryptocurrencies.
  • Bitcoin is not a bad investment if you do it right, and with nation-crypto() com platform you can invest in bitcoins or other crypto and actually have your coins insured to avoid any total losses, try investing with them today, their investment rates are flexible too.
  • Bitcoin’s slump has dragged on other top 10 cryptocurrencies, with ethereum, Ripple’s XRP, litecoin and cardano all down between 5% and 10%—although polkadot, a rival to the second biggest cryptocurrency ethereum, has managed to hold onto its recent gains.

Transactions

In other parts of the world, such as Africa, the use of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin is growing significantly because it protects users from losing money from fluctuations of their currencies’ to the dollar, which has led to monthly transfers of cryptocurrencies to and from Africa of less than $10,000, usually by individuals and small businesses, increasing by more than 55% in one year, to reach $316 million last June, while the number of transactions grew by 50% to around 600,000. The European Union last week outlined a regulatory framework for assets in crypto- and stablecoins.

Network

In May 2020, a user on the cybercriminal forum Altenen shared an article discussing why cybercriminals reportedly preferred “less anonymous” cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, over “privacy coins” offering more anonymity. The user highlighted a point made in the report saying that “criminals may believe there is safety in numbers when working on the Bitcoin network.” Although not discussing Monero, but another “anonymous” cryptocurrency, Zcash, it was highlighted that despite offering more anonymity, only “1% of dark web postings referring to crypto payment make mention of zcash, and […] 0.15% of dark web-associated wallets are ZEC accounts”. This might indicate that overall, the cybercriminal community as a whole understands the limitations imposed by privacy-based cryptocurrency coins, with services opting not to widely implement the payment methods at this time when there is limited demand.

Mine

But this is possible only when the miners can actually see what the inputs of the transaction actually is and who the sender is. In Monero, this is all hidden and cloaked thanks to the ring signatures. So how do they prevent double spends? So suppose, A were to send 1 bitcoin to B and then he sends the same coin to C, the miners would put in one transaction inside the block and, in the process, overwrite the other one, preventing double-spending in the process.

Blockchain

Bitcoin has pioneered the crypto space from the outset as the original blockchain-based asset, while Ethereum redefined the parameters of what is possible by introducing smart contracts and hosting thousands of new ERC20 protocols that continue to move the industry forward to this day.   The 2010s, the first full decade of the cryptocurrency, has largely been dominated by Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Support

As this feature makes it extremely useful to conduct illegal transactions and criminal activities, it put bitcoin into bad light and make consumer not want to be associated with bitcoins. Bitcoin also needs to improve on its transaction performance to compete with competitors like credit cards that can perform 10,000 transactions per seconds to attract the support and interest from businesses with high transactional volume [7]. Bitcoin has the obvious firstmover advantage as compared to alt-coins in terms of market capitalization, market price, average daily transactions and being the preferred crypto currency of choice [33-36]. Currently, most countries are accepting bitcoins as a form of payment medium [21] but due to governments and other associates concern in its risks, regulations are inevitable. Firstly, for bitcoins to be adopted in day-to-day use, the price stability of the coins is an important factor to be taken into consideration when businesses and consumers make plans on savings and consumption. For example in 2014 the Public bank of China (PBOC) ordered commercial banks and payment companies to close bitcoin trading accounts in 2 weeks’ time [23]. Furthermore in February PBOC issued a statement that it would block access to all domestic and foreign crypto currency exchanges and ICO websites [22]. However, for bitcoins to maintain its first mover advantages, it needs to be flexible and adjust to the needs of its customer and keep on making improvement as the market changes [37-39]. However, it was found out in the literature review that bitcoins is highly volatile [9] and its value can be affected by a small event or trade [17]. However, these tumblers are necessary for bitcoins to sustain in the longer run as cleared regulatory are needed to reduce the numbers of criminal activities and risk so ask to safeguard consumer’s interests. It was also discovered by Grinberg that most consumers do not have issue over anonymity and inflation and make it difficult for bitcoins to make an impact in the traditional e-commerce market [8]. Price of the bitcoins can also potentially be affected by regulatory news on bitcoins due to it volatility which will affect business and consumer greatly [27]. Secondly, the anonymity characteristic of bitcoins that was identified to be one of its competitive advantages is unfortunately found to be also a liability in this paper [17]. Such risks could potentially discourage potential consumers and merchants in transacting with bitcoins. The first mover advantage has allowed bitcoins to create barrier of entries to other crypto currencies and resulting in consumer having less incentive to experiment with other crypto currencies if bitcoins works well [24]. The potential anonymity failure could cause damage in the value of bitcoins and greatly affect businesses and consumers who are holding the coins [7]. The regulations on the bitcoins exchange could potentially offset bitcoins competitive advantage as transaction may need to be more transparent and transactions fees are expected to increase due to increase cost. Thirdly, bitcoins show inferiority when compared to traditional payment system and is not likely to make it in the traditional payment market unless it is able to offer what consumers considered as value adding services which for example, Anti-fraud capabilities and customer support [8]. When compared to the other crypto currencies [28-32].

Regulation

In the light of this outbreak, there has been a lot of positive and negative discourse on the value of crypto-currencies to the Nigerian fiscal system. Investors have in their masses invested in crypto currencies, the most common being Bitcoins all in a bid to some sort of recoup interests in the nearest future. Over time the awareness that bitcoins like most crypto currencies operates independently and outside the control or regulation of any intermediaries such as banks, financial institutions, or the government triggered a wakeup call directed to the risks investors may be exposed to when involved in this venture. The global financial system is no doubt embracing the current transition from physical currency to almost virtual currencies through the medium of technology. This wave has ushered in the birth of crypto currencies.

History of Bitcoin

  • In 2008 during the global financial crisis a white paper called Bitcoin-A Peer to Peer Electronic Cash System was released.It was made for people to control their money themselves.Bitcoin came into existence in the Crypto-currency market since 2009.
  • In 2008, an unknown developer (or group of developers) published the Bitcoin whitepaper under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto.
  • In 2008, when the Bitcoin protocol was created by the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto (who may be an individual or a collective), describing it as a maths-based crypto-currency was enough to keep it esoteric.
  • In 2009, Bitcoin and blockchain appeared.
  • In 2010, Jed McCaleb founded Mt.
  • In 2011, Buterin began writing for a publication called Bitcoin Weekly after meeting a person on a bitcoin forum in order to earn bitcoin.[17] The owner offered five bitcoin (about $3.50 at the time) to anyone who would write an article for him.[18] Buterin wrote for the site until its website shut down soon thereafter due to insufficient revenue.[19] In September 2011, Mihai Alisie reached out to Buterin about starting a new print publication called Bitcoin Magazine, a position which Buterin would accept as the first co-founder, and contribute as a leading writer.[17]
  • In 2011, the year Buterin first grew interested in Bitcoin, Buterin co-founded the online news website Bitcoin Magazine, writing hundreds of articles on the cryptocurrency world.
  • In 2012, aged 17, Vitalik Buterin was introduced to Bitcoin by his father and became very interested in its technology.
  • In 2013 Hoskinson quit a consulting job to begin a project called the Bitcoin Education Project.
  • In 2013, a group of MIT students founded a company called Tidbit, which offered a web service to mine Bitcoins.
  • In 2013, Vitalik published the Ethereum whitepaper.
  • In 2014, Bitcointalk forum user thankful_for_today forked the codebase of Bytecoin into the name BitMonero, which is a compound of bit (as in Bitcoin) and monero (literally meaning “coin” in Esperanto).[4] The release of BitMonero was poorly received by the community that initially backed it.
  • In 2014, Jed McCaleb, founder of Mt.
  • In 2014, Pierce became the director of the Bitcoin Foundation, a nonprofit established to help improve and promote Bitcoin.
  • In 2016 administrators of the now defunct criminal marketplace AlphaBay attempted to manipulate the price of Monero, encouraging mass buying of the currency.
  • In 2016 Reuters reported that since its inception in 2009, 33% of all bitcoin exchanges have been hacked.
  • In 2016, $50 million in Ether was stolen by an anonymous hacker which resulted in questions about the platform’s security.
  • In 2016, Ethereum was split into two separate blockchains, Ethereum, and Ethereum Classic, after a malicious actor stole more than $50 million worth of funds which had been raised on the DAO, a set of smart contracts originating from Ethereum’s software platform.
  • In 2016, prominent technology consulting firm Deloitte also announced a partnership with Stellar to develop a payments app.
  • In 2016, someone hacked into Bitfinex and stole 120,000 Bitcoins, which resulted in Bitfinex cutting more than a third of the value off each customer’s account—although, reportedly, not for a favored few.
  • In 2017, Alex Pickard had made so much money from Bitcoin that he quit his job in finance and moved to Washington state to mine digital coins full time.
  • In 2017, China suspended cryptocurrency trading on Chinese exchanges, making ICO fundraising illegal, curving consumer demand, and triggering a strong overall decline in cryptocurrency markets.
  • In 2017, CZ noticed the sudden rise in coin offerings and decided to make a coin of his own.
  • In 2017, the original blockchain network underpinning bitcoin saw two hard forks that led to offshoots of the world’s largest cryptocurrency.
  • In 2017, the value of Bitcoin surged as hype and speculation about its potential shot into overdrive, forcing up the value of a coin to almost $20,000 before it eventually crashed.
  • In 2018 and in 2019, he was ranked as one of the “top 30” economists by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), a major newspaper in Germany.
  • In 2019, company announced Binance Jersey, an independent entity from its parent Binance.com exchange, with the aim to expand its European influence.
  • In 2019, it was $3,399.47. 
  • In 2020, it rallied from $130 to around $600.
  • In 2020, its closest competitors include Ethereum, Ripple (XRP) and Tether.
  • In 2021 Ethereum plans to change its consensus algorithm from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake.
  • In the 1990s, due to their mistrust of corporate access to individual buying habits and government control of centralized banking, a small group of self-described “cyberpunks” took it upon themselves to defend economic privacy across the Internet.
  • On 6 February 2018, the Stock Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) took the stance that “we owe it to this young generation to value their passion for virtual currencies, with a reflective and reasonable approach and not a dismissive one.” The US has adopted an approach to promote blockchain and cryptocurrency innovation and development while shielding investors from elevated risks and fraud.
  • Bitcoin is particularly interesting: this week, we learned that 88% of all bitcoins that will ever circulate have been mined, a milestone that could indicate a progressive stabilization of its value in the long term: taking into account that the total supply of bitcoins is limited and predefined in the Bitcoin Protocol at 21 million, the reward given for mining one decreases over time (the Bitcoin reward is divided by 2 every 210, 000 blocks, approximately every four years), and that some bitcoins in circulation are likely to be lost forever or unusable due to errors such as lost passwords, incorrect output addresses or errors in the output scripts.
  • Bitcoin (BTC/USDT), Ethereum(ETH/USDT), Litecoin (LTC/USDT), Ripple(XRP/USDT), Dash (DASH/USDT), BitcoinCash (BCH/USDT), Chainlink (LINK/USDT), Ethereum Classic (ETC/USDT), Tron(TRX/USDT), Cardano(ADA/USDT), EOS(EOS/USDT), Cosmo Atom (ATOM/USDT), Polkadot (DOT/USDT), Kyber Network(KNC/USDT), Uniswap (UNI/USDT), Stellar Lumens (XLM/USDT), Ox (ZRX/USDT), Tezos (XTZ/USD), Basic Attention Token(BAT/USDT).
  • Bitcoin Magazine in 2012 later began publishing a print edition and has been referred to as the first serious publication dedicated to cryptocurrencies.[20] While working for Bitcoin Magazine, Buterin reached out to Jed McCaleb for a job at Ripple who accepted.[21] However, their proposed employment fell apart after Ripple was unable to support a U.S.
  • Bitcoin operates on a shared public ledger technology called the “blockchain.” The easiest way to visualize the blockchain is to picture a spreadsheet that is duplicated thousands of times across a network of computers, where the network of computers is programed to regularly update each copy of the spreadsheet so that they are identical.
  • Bitcoin’s anonymous design creates challenges for estate planning because 1) there is no personally identifiable information associated with your Bitcoin; 2) Bitcoin is a virtual asset that may not be readily identifiable to your heirs; and 3) all Bitcoin transactions require the individual’s private key.
  • Bitcoin hogged the headlines in the last week with its sprint past R700 000 on news that electric car company Tesla had invested $1.5 billion in the crypto, but a potentially more interesting story is playing out among three of the smaller cryptocurrencies – Ethereum, Cardano and Polkadot.
  • Bitcoin is back paddling in the warm waters around the $40k level and just closed the week at its highest price in history, Ether’s (ETH) bull run continues apace with prices soaring past $1,700 to new all-time highs, and Cardano (ADA) just flipped XRP and is currently trading at over $0.66.
  • Bitcoin, which has been rallying over the last few weeks after being trapped in a more than year-long bear market, remains far below its all-time high of near $20,000 per bitcoin as traders and investors wait for major financial institutions and retailers to wade into cryptocurrencies.
  • Bitcoin is not a bad investment if you do it right, and with nation-crypto() com platform you can invest in bitcoins or other crypto and actually have your coins insured to avoid any total losses, try investing with them today, their investment rates are flexible too.
  • Bitcoin’s slump has dragged on other top 10 cryptocurrencies, with ethereum, Ripple’s XRP, litecoin and cardano all down between 5% and 10%—although polkadot, a rival to the second biggest cryptocurrency ethereum, has managed to hold onto its recent gains.

Transactions

In other parts of the world, such as Africa, the use of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin is growing significantly because it protects users from losing money from fluctuations of their currencies’ to the dollar, which has led to monthly transfers of cryptocurrencies to and from Africa of less than $10,000, usually by individuals and small businesses, increasing by more than 55% in one year, to reach $316 million last June, while the number of transactions grew by 50% to around 600,000. The European Union last week outlined a regulatory framework for assets in crypto- and stablecoins.

Network

In May 2020, a user on the cybercriminal forum Altenen shared an article discussing why cybercriminals reportedly preferred “less anonymous” cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, over “privacy coins” offering more anonymity. The user highlighted a point made in the report saying that “criminals may believe there is safety in numbers when working on the Bitcoin network.” Although not discussing Monero, but another “anonymous” cryptocurrency, Zcash, it was highlighted that despite offering more anonymity, only “1% of dark web postings referring to crypto payment make mention of zcash, and […] 0.15% of dark web-associated wallets are ZEC accounts”. This might indicate that overall, the cybercriminal community as a whole understands the limitations imposed by privacy-based cryptocurrency coins, with services opting not to widely implement the payment methods at this time when there is limited demand.

Mine

But this is possible only when the miners can actually see what the inputs of the transaction actually is and who the sender is. In Monero, this is all hidden and cloaked thanks to the ring signatures. So how do they prevent double spends? So suppose, A were to send 1 bitcoin to B and then he sends the same coin to C, the miners would put in one transaction inside the block and, in the process, overwrite the other one, preventing double-spending in the process.

Blockchain

Bitcoin has pioneered the crypto space from the outset as the original blockchain-based asset, while Ethereum redefined the parameters of what is possible by introducing smart contracts and hosting thousands of new ERC20 protocols that continue to move the industry forward to this day.   The 2010s, the first full decade of the cryptocurrency, has largely been dominated by Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Support

As this feature makes it extremely useful to conduct illegal transactions and criminal activities, it put bitcoin into bad light and make consumer not want to be associated with bitcoins. Bitcoin also needs to improve on its transaction performance to compete with competitors like credit cards that can perform 10,000 transactions per seconds to attract the support and interest from businesses with high transactional volume [7]. Bitcoin has the obvious firstmover advantage as compared to alt-coins in terms of market capitalization, market price, average daily transactions and being the preferred crypto currency of choice [33-36]. Currently, most countries are accepting bitcoins as a form of payment medium [21] but due to governments and other associates concern in its risks, regulations are inevitable. Firstly, for bitcoins to be adopted in day-to-day use, the price stability of the coins is an important factor to be taken into consideration when businesses and consumers make plans on savings and consumption. For example in 2014 the Public bank of China (PBOC) ordered commercial banks and payment companies to close bitcoin trading accounts in 2 weeks’ time [23]. Furthermore in February PBOC issued a statement that it would block access to all domestic and foreign crypto currency exchanges and ICO websites [22]. However, for bitcoins to maintain its first mover advantages, it needs to be flexible and adjust to the needs of its customer and keep on making improvement as the market changes [37-39]. However, it was found out in the literature review that bitcoins is highly volatile [9] and its value can be affected by a small event or trade [17]. However, these tumblers are necessary for bitcoins to sustain in the longer run as cleared regulatory are needed to reduce the numbers of criminal activities and risk so ask to safeguard consumer’s interests. It was also discovered by Grinberg that most consumers do not have issue over anonymity and inflation and make it difficult for bitcoins to make an impact in the traditional e-commerce market [8]. Price of the bitcoins can also potentially be affected by regulatory news on bitcoins due to it volatility which will affect business and consumer greatly [27]. Secondly, the anonymity characteristic of bitcoins that was identified to be one of its competitive advantages is unfortunately found to be also a liability in this paper [17]. Such risks could potentially discourage potential consumers and merchants in transacting with bitcoins. The first mover advantage has allowed bitcoins to create barrier of entries to other crypto currencies and resulting in consumer having less incentive to experiment with other crypto currencies if bitcoins works well [24]. The potential anonymity failure could cause damage in the value of bitcoins and greatly affect businesses and consumers who are holding the coins [7]. The regulations on the bitcoins exchange could potentially offset bitcoins competitive advantage as transaction may need to be more transparent and transactions fees are expected to increase due to increase cost. Thirdly, bitcoins show inferiority when compared to traditional payment system and is not likely to make it in the traditional payment market unless it is able to offer what consumers considered as value adding services which for example, Anti-fraud capabilities and customer support [8]. When compared to the other crypto currencies [28-32].

Regulation

In the light of this outbreak, there has been a lot of positive and negative discourse on the value of crypto-currencies to the Nigerian fiscal system. Investors have in their masses invested in crypto currencies, the most common being Bitcoins all in a bid to some sort of recoup interests in the nearest future. Over time the awareness that bitcoins like most crypto currencies operates independently and outside the control or regulation of any intermediaries such as banks, financial institutions, or the government triggered a wakeup call directed to the risks investors may be exposed to when involved in this venture. The global financial system is no doubt embracing the current transition from physical currency to almost virtual currencies through the medium of technology. This wave has ushered in the birth of crypto currencies.

Encryption

History of Bitcoin

  • In 2008 during the global financial crisis a white paper called Bitcoin-A Peer to Peer Electronic Cash System was released.It was made for people to control their money themselves.Bitcoin came into existence in the Crypto-currency market since 2009.
  • In 2008, an unknown developer (or group of developers) published the Bitcoin whitepaper under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto.
  • In 2008, when the Bitcoin protocol was created by the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto (who may be an individual or a collective), describing it as a maths-based crypto-currency was enough to keep it esoteric.
  • In 2009, Bitcoin and blockchain appeared.
  • In 2010, Jed McCaleb founded Mt.
  • In 2011, Buterin began writing for a publication called Bitcoin Weekly after meeting a person on a bitcoin forum in order to earn bitcoin.[17] The owner offered five bitcoin (about $3.50 at the time) to anyone who would write an article for him.[18] Buterin wrote for the site until its website shut down soon thereafter due to insufficient revenue.[19] In September 2011, Mihai Alisie reached out to Buterin about starting a new print publication called Bitcoin Magazine, a position which Buterin would accept as the first co-founder, and contribute as a leading writer.[17]
  • In 2011, the year Buterin first grew interested in Bitcoin, Buterin co-founded the online news website Bitcoin Magazine, writing hundreds of articles on the cryptocurrency world.
  • In 2012, aged 17, Vitalik Buterin was introduced to Bitcoin by his father and became very interested in its technology.
  • In 2013 Hoskinson quit a consulting job to begin a project called the Bitcoin Education Project.
  • In 2013, a group of MIT students founded a company called Tidbit, which offered a web service to mine Bitcoins.
  • In 2013, Vitalik published the Ethereum whitepaper.
  • In 2014, Bitcointalk forum user thankful_for_today forked the codebase of Bytecoin into the name BitMonero, which is a compound of bit (as in Bitcoin) and monero (literally meaning “coin” in Esperanto).[4] The release of BitMonero was poorly received by the community that initially backed it.
  • In 2014, Jed McCaleb, founder of Mt.
  • In 2014, Pierce became the director of the Bitcoin Foundation, a nonprofit established to help improve and promote Bitcoin.
  • In 2016 administrators of the now defunct criminal marketplace AlphaBay attempted to manipulate the price of Monero, encouraging mass buying of the currency.
  • In 2016 Reuters reported that since its inception in 2009, 33% of all bitcoin exchanges have been hacked.
  • In 2016, $50 million in Ether was stolen by an anonymous hacker which resulted in questions about the platform’s security.
  • In 2016, Ethereum was split into two separate blockchains, Ethereum, and Ethereum Classic, after a malicious actor stole more than $50 million worth of funds which had been raised on the DAO, a set of smart contracts originating from Ethereum’s software platform.
  • In 2016, prominent technology consulting firm Deloitte also announced a partnership with Stellar to develop a payments app.
  • In 2016, someone hacked into Bitfinex and stole 120,000 Bitcoins, which resulted in Bitfinex cutting more than a third of the value off each customer’s account—although, reportedly, not for a favored few.
  • In 2017, Alex Pickard had made so much money from Bitcoin that he quit his job in finance and moved to Washington state to mine digital coins full time.
  • In 2017, China suspended cryptocurrency trading on Chinese exchanges, making ICO fundraising illegal, curving consumer demand, and triggering a strong overall decline in cryptocurrency markets.
  • In 2017, CZ noticed the sudden rise in coin offerings and decided to make a coin of his own.
  • In 2017, the original blockchain network underpinning bitcoin saw two hard forks that led to offshoots of the world’s largest cryptocurrency.
  • In 2017, the value of Bitcoin surged as hype and speculation about its potential shot into overdrive, forcing up the value of a coin to almost $20,000 before it eventually crashed.
  • In 2018 and in 2019, he was ranked as one of the “top 30” economists by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), a major newspaper in Germany.
  • In 2019, company announced Binance Jersey, an independent entity from its parent Binance.com exchange, with the aim to expand its European influence.
  • In 2019, it was $3,399.47. 
  • In 2020, it rallied from $130 to around $600.
  • In 2020, its closest competitors include Ethereum, Ripple (XRP) and Tether.
  • In 2021 Ethereum plans to change its consensus algorithm from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake.
  • In the 1990s, due to their mistrust of corporate access to individual buying habits and government control of centralized banking, a small group of self-described “cyberpunks” took it upon themselves to defend economic privacy across the Internet.
  • On 6 February 2018, the Stock Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) took the stance that “we owe it to this young generation to value their passion for virtual currencies, with a reflective and reasonable approach and not a dismissive one.” The US has adopted an approach to promote blockchain and cryptocurrency innovation and development while shielding investors from elevated risks and fraud.

References