What is a Bitcoin investment?

Investing in Bitcoin can seem complicated, but it is much easier when you break it down into steps. You don't have to understand computer programming to realize that banks, businesses, the bold, and the brash are cashing in on cryptocurrencies. This guide will help you to get started, but always remember that Bitcoin investing carries a high degree of speculative risk.

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What Is Bitcoin

It may seem hard to believe that a digital currency could be worth thousands of dollars. Although the lines of code that make up each bitcoin are worthless in and of themselves, markets value each bitcoin at thousands of dollars. Bitcoin has value in part because it has transaction costs that are much lower than credit cards. Bitcoins are also scarce and become more difficult to obtain over time. The rate that bitcoins are produced cuts in half about every four years. This rate is expected to halve again sometime in 2020. The total number of bitcoins in circulation is gradually approaching the limit of 21 million set in 2009 by Bitcoin's creator, Satoshi Nakamoto.

If the demand for bitcoins exceeds the rate at which it can be produced, the price will increase. As of Jan. 2020, 18.15 million, or 86.42%, of total bitcoins have already been created.1 This situation does not guarantee increasing prices. Cryptocurrencies are wildly unpredictable, even ones as popular as Bitcoin. Bitcoin was worth $19,116.98 on Dec. 17, 2017, but the price fell substantially and had yet to recover as of the beginning of 2020.2 The value of Bitcoin is heavily dependent on the faith of investors, its integration into financial markets, and public interest in using it. The performance of Bitcoin compared to other cryptocurrencies, such as Ethereum, is also crucial in determining its value.

Bitcoin operates on a decentralized public ledger technology called the blockchain. When consumers make purchases using the U.S. dollar, banks and credit card companies verify the accuracy of those transactions. Bitcoin performs this same function at a lower cost without these institutions using a system called hashing. When one person pays another using bitcoin, computers on the Bitcoin blockchain rush to check that the transaction is accurate. In order to add new transactions to the blockchain, a computer must solve a complex mathematical problem, called a hash. If a computer is the first to solve the hash, it permanently stores the transactions as a block on the blockchain.

When computers successfully add a block to the blockchain, they are rewarded with bitcoin. This process is known as bitcoin mining. Similar to winning the lottery, solving hashes is mostly a matter of chance. However, there are ways to increase your odds of winning in both contests. With bitcoin, arriving at the right answer before another miner has almost everything to do with how fast your computer can produce hashes. In the early years, bitcoin mining could be performed effectively using open-source software on standard desktop computers. Today, only special-purpose machines known as an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) miners can mine bitcoin cost-effectively. Mining pools and companies now control most bitcoin mining activity.