adminWhat is the Bitcoin?
Click to Tip the Photographer Jaafar Alnasser / Flickr.com – Creative Common License 2.0
Placed on the net in 2009, initially only used by a handful of geeks, today a mass -heavy mass phenomenon: What exactly is the Bitcoin actually? The question is more difficult than it sounds at first and does not answer in the beginning with the name as a “currency”. The attempt to definition.
Virtual currencies, especially the Bitcoin, irritate the imagination of some, spread fear among others and confuse the rest of us terribly.”
-Thomas Carper, US Senator
Yes, it is difficult to define this thing that actually does not exist, but it is currently being sold for a few hundred euros per piece. Is it a currency, digital gold, a payment system or a piece of software? The Bitcoin does not fit completely into any of these categories, but somehow into everyone. This not only confuses Senator Carper, but everyone who begins to deal with the virtual currency. Jörg Patzer, host of the Room77, the “pub at the end of capitalism”, and one of the most important German voices of Bitcoin, might get to the point: “You should stop trying to put a completely new model in old drawers.”
We try it anyway. Some categories that could hit Bitcoin. We start with the most common:
(1) As a currency: This definition is pragmatic. After all, the Bitcoin behaves like a foreign currency: you can change euros to Bitcoin to the respective course, as you buy Swedish crowns. Since the Bitcoin is “the currency from the Internet”, you do not do this with a bank, but on the Internet. Mostly on a marketplace or stock exchange.
On the wallet, too, the Bitcoin behaves like a currency in a bank account: it is a number that can be divided and sent. With a foreign currency you can pay anywhere if you are in the currency area. With Bitcoin this is everywhere and at the same time nowhere: at every place with the Internet and nowhere. It is not anchored in any economy and is not supported by any state. Some say that he couldn’t be a real currency because of this. Maybe he would be if it would accept any state, but that goes too far.
Like many other currencies, the Bitcoin is freely convertable. The final interrelation is still unclear. 100 euros? 10.000? Or 0? If there will ever be such a definitive interrelation. From 2009 to the present, the tendency is steeply steeply up. From $ 0.0001 to up to 1.200. However, the course is unsteady; It is nothing special when he loses five-zeen percent night. Critics say that because of this extreme volatility, Bitcoin is unsuitable as a means of payment.
(2) As a payment system: From the perspective of dealers and customers, it is practical to understand Bitcoin as a payment system like PayPal or a credit card: Customers have to pay something – they buy Bitcoins – to pay on the Internet. Nothing different from the effort than with a PayPal account, and also comparable in effect: Customers can pay from a digital wallet on the Internet to (more or less) real time.
For dealers, bitcoins are usually cheaper than other systems because it is their nature to flow through the network. The database behind them controls itself every ten minutes. Payment systems on the Internet replace money with a token that can be transported efficiently. However, while PayPal, as the inventor of the token, requires a monopoly to process the transactions, the Bitcoin is open. Say: Anyone who wants can use the tokens as he wants, he can send it without needing another company, and he can make his own payment service provider to make it easier for others. Bitcoins is not a company for a money token for the Internet, but an entire ecosystem.
The problem is volatility. You can rely on a currency for online purchases if you don’t know what it will be worth tomorrow? As mentioned above, critics say that the Bitcoin is unsuitable as a means of payment. However, there are Bitcoin payment service providers who offer to exchange bitcoins directly in euros or dollars for the course when purchasing. The conditions are significantly cheaper than most other providers, if not more equivalent -if not higher -quality, because it is not higher -quality,.
However, these advantages for traders have no influence on the customer’s decision for a payment system.
(3) As a digital gold: Since the Bitcoin is limited to 21 million units, it has an analogy to gold. This makes it a very special type of system that is borne by the hope that the price knows only one direction due to the limited offer and increasing demand – upwards. Even if this assumption has been confirmed so far and the Bitcoin with increases in value of several thousand percent was probably the most profitable investment in financial history, it is not free of risks and is therefore considered highly speculative.
(4) As software that creates something that behaves like money: the Bitcoin software produces a medium that fulfills all the requirements for money brilliantly: Bitcoins are almost desirable, spatially and transferable, in principle as long as the internet, is limited in quantity, absolutely falsely and fungeable, which means that the units are identical. Bitcoins may be better than any other previous medium to take the role of money. However, they are just as little a currency as a software for a social network per se is a social network.
(5) As a decentralized network: The Bitcoin transmits the principles of decentralized networks to a currency as in file sharing: The blockchain of all transactions is saved by all users of the Bitcoin client, and the Miner network ensures that all transactions obey the protocol. This means that the Bitcoin cannot be killed, since there is no “single-point-of-temple”, i.e. no central point of attack and no button to switch off. Authorities have been repeatedly against Filesharer and have, for example, Megaupload or Cinema.Tot from the network without making the files sharing even minimally.
(6) As an experiment: Put yourself on the net and watch out what people do with it-this is how you could describe the Bitcoin test structure. It is possible that the virtual currency is once discussed as the largest socio-economic experiment in history in which it can be observed how a currency grows on the market, which makes human greed with a new currency and how an unregulated, partially anonymous market behaves.
(7) As a movement: You could understand Bitcoin so that a new generation creates its own currency. Sacred principles are decentralized, open source and privacy. The Bitcoin is a movement against the debt money that has been inflated over the decades and against the banks that have been used so far to transfer money. As a movement, the Bitcoin, the peer-to-peer principle, i.e. the trade without intermediate dealers, tries to transfer to the money.
(8) As a snowball system: In a way, the Bitcoin behaves like a snowball system, pyramid game and Ponzischema: Those who get in first are rewarded with exponential profits because later people are added and investing money. The value of a bitcoin only increases when more people buy bitcoins. However, this behavior does not make the bitcoins a snowball system as little as a share. However, it is a feature that is unfortunately central to some investors.