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In recent months, the Bitcoin payment system has attracted to a lot of attention: the rate of virtual coins jumped sharply with $ 200 in September to $ 1,200 by the end of November 2013. On the today, bitcoins are trading at 922 dollars apiece (trading platform MtGox). Someone thinks that money existing only in cyberspace – this is another “bubble”, and trust them should not, others – that the future of electronic payments is behind them. Vesti.Hitek collected 12 of the most curious facts about the rising price cryptocurrency. 1. Who is behind the creation of Bitcoin, still remains a mystery. According to the most common version, by the author virtual money is a certain programmer Satoshi Nakamoto. IN 2008, he (or a group of like-minded people hiding under this pseudonym) published a specification of a cryptographic protocol, and in 2009, developed the first Bitcoin client and launched the network. Year later, Nakamoto left the project, transferring authority to further improving electronic money systems to Gavin Andresen. Though rumors that Nakamoto himself owns a million bitcoins. If it is true, then his fortune can be estimated at almost 850 million dollars (for Coindesk.com exchange rate on January 18).
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2. Unlike paper money, which issue governments of different countries, bitcoins are not controlled by any to the regulator. Currency has no administrator and is completely autonomous, therefore, no one can forbid her to use it. Can say that Bitcoin is a set of numbers that can be transmitted from one computer to another, with transaction information stored in encrypted form for all participants in the system. So that’s why Bitcoins are often referred to as a “decentralized cryptocurrency.”
3. A single center responsible for the “issue” of virtual money, also no. From here follows the second feature of Bitcoin: users systems can independently “mine” coins, using for this video card in their own computers that are calculating block header hashes. Mining – that is, receiving money actually from the air – it happens very slowly and requires tremendous computing power as well as cost electricity. I must say that the complexity of this process automatically increases with each new member so if to supercomputer will join production, everyone will soon find out system participants. However, this does not stop some: individual enthusiasts continue to create whole “farms” for bitcoin production.
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4. The Bitcoin algorithm has one very important circumstance: the total number of coins should not exceed 21 million. Upon reaching this mark, their emission will be stopped. FROM In 2009, more than half of bitcoins were produced – approximately 12 millions. According to forecasts taking into account the increasing complexity of production, the currency resource can be exhausted by 2140.
5. The legal status of bitcoins is interpreted everywhere differently, and this makes the system extremely vulnerable. At the beginning of December last year The People’s Bank of China has banned its departments from conducting transactions with bitcoins, and the Central Bank of France called “cryptocurrency” speculative financial instrument prone to high volatility. Did not like Bitcoin in Thailand: in the summer of 2013, the bank of this country did not recognize virtual coins as an independent currency. In general, while bitcoins are not regulated in any way government level. In Germany, for example, it was considered that Bitcoin falls under the definition of private money, while in Singapore it falls under digital goods.
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6. Using Bitcoins, you can buy electronics, clothes, books and other goods on the Internet, as well as pay for various services. The number of exchangers where you can convert electronic coins in “regular” money, as well as outlets accepting “cryptocurrency” is growing steadily. And in October in Canada appeared the first ATM in the world to convert local dollars into Bitcoins and back. Robocoin identifies a person based on the palm print. You can deposit money in cash as well and credit card. Up to 3 operations can be performed per day thousand Canadian dollars (about 2900 US dollars).
7. Like any other money, Bitcoin is subject to theft. Such incidents are difficult to confirm, but sometimes they happen: for example, in June 2011, one of the users said that with his wallet 25 thousand bitcoins disappeared, and in March 2012 as a result hacker attack on webhost hosting company was stolen almost 50 thousand coins (or about 230 thousand dollars at that time).
8. Bitcoin is far from the only “cryptocurrency”, but the first one, which gained wide popularity. Among the alternatives – Litecoin, which can be mined almost four times faster, Peercoin (no production limit set), Namecoin applying modified Bitcoin algorithms, and dozens of others.
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9. Anonymity of payments makes the Bitcoin system attractive in criminal environment. The most famous example is an online store for drug sale Silk Road, closed by the FBI in October. Project was implemented on the anonymous Tor network – part of the Internet that is not indexed by search engines. In addition to psychotropic substances (including LSD, marijuana, heroin), sold at the site electronics, pornographic materials, and prohibited books. The owner of the resource, Ross William Ulbricht, was detained, and his servers together with the bitcoins stored on them, were seized. Interesting that a couple days ago, US authorities arrested another wallet through which Silk Road operations were carried out. Almost 30 were found on it. thousand bitcoins, or about 25 million dollars.
10. In the fall of 2013 on the same closed network Tor earned a website Assasination Market, whose visitors are offered to chip in Bitcoins for the murder of major political figures. So that the killer could receive money, before completing the order he must make a donation of 1 bitcoin, encrypted in his date for the alleged assassination attempt. After the murder he will remuneration is transferred, and the founders of the resource will take themselves 1% of this amount as a commission.
11. British resident James Howells “mined” with his laptop with 7,500 bitcoins in 2009 when coin mining was still very simple. After a British IT specialist accidentally spilled lemonade on the laptop, he decided to take it apart so that save hard drive with virtual coins. In the summer of 2013, the Howells sorting things out, threw the old hard drive into the trash. About his the programmer very sorry in the fall when the course “cryptocurrencies” soared to thousands of dollars, which could bring him 6 million dollars. Howells attempts to find a disc in a landfill proved futile.
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12. Three years ago, almost nothing is possible on bitcoins had to buy. In May 2010, an American programmer from Florida Lazlo Hanech decided to prove the solvency of “cryptocurrency.” is he gave 10 thousand coins to one of the participants in the Bitcoin Internet forum (at that time – $ 25) in exchange for the delivery of two pizzas. The rapid growth in the rate of virtual money made lunch Hanecha the most expensive in history: now it can be estimated at 8.5 million dollars.
US money
