Bitcoin is a new and up-and-coming technology, but its future is still shrouded in obscurity. If you own any bitcoins, then you are part of a tiny minority which has so far chosen to be part of this ground-breaking experiment in the way we understand and use the money. One of the leading causes you may have decided to become an early adopter of bitcoin is the potential to profit from any future rises in value, as well as using it for any intrinsic advantages it has for buying goods and services – whether over the internet or in real life.
What’s a bitcoin worth…?
Bitcoin has hit the headlines in recent times for its meteoric rise in value. Just a few short years ago, you could buy a bitcoin for a few cents – or mine them yourself for next to nothing. Over the course of a few months, they soared in value by over a hundred times to a few dollars each. Through much of 2011 and 2012, they were trading in single digits. At the beginning of 2013 they were worth $13; twelve months later they topped out at nearly $1,300, before crashing to the low $400s. Along the way there have been periodic bubbles as successive waves of speculative money poured in and out of the market, looking for the enormous returns that bitcoin seemed to promise. And yet, despite these spikes and crashes, relatively few people even own bitcoins at all. Only a fraction of a percent of the population have bought bitcoins in any number – perhaps no more than 2 million in total.
One of the problems with bitcoin is that it is so new that it’s almost impossible to evaluate what it’s genuinely worth – and what it might one day be worth. It’s so different to any payment system the world has seen before that it’s difficult to understand precisely how it works at all.
Confused? Start here.
BtcSlice.com is dedicated to explaining how bitcoin works and what its unique technology might mean for its value. We teach what bitcoins are (hint: if you’re thinking about them like any regular currency, you’re in for a big surprise); how to buy and sell them; and how to store them safely. We also look at bitcoin’s growing adoption and analyze the economic factors that lie behind the protocol – as well as what that points to for future price rises.
In doing so, we hope to take the risk out of buying and trading bitcoins for you. We look at the easiest and safest ways to get hold of this and other cryptocurrencies and suggest a few basic principles for keeping your investment secure.
Some people think bitcoin is the future of money. Others see it as a scam or speculative bubble. Most simply don’t understand it correctly at all. We hope that if you make your first tentative purchase of this new, disruptive and remarkable technology, we will have enabled you to do it with all the information you need to be confident you made the right decision.
Contact Us if you have any questions.