Bitcoin is a Decentralized Cryptocurrency without a central bank or single administrator that can be sent from user to user on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network. Peer to peer connections are the connection between two computers without any intermediaries. So there would be No Transaction fees and it would be Highly Secure. Bitcoin was invented in 2008 by an unknown person or group of people using the name Satoshi Nakamoto. The total number of bitcoins could never exceed 21 million. Once 21 million coins are generated, the network will stop producing more.
Value of 1₿ is approximately ₹6.5 lakhs or $8,855 (As of May 11,2020). There are some Units in bitcoin. They are 1/10th (deci-bitcoins, dBTC), 1/100th (centi-bitcoins, cBTC), 1/1000th (milli-bitcoins, mBTC), and 1/1000000th (micro-bitcoins, μBTC) and 1/100000000th (Satoshi).
There are Three ways to obtain bitcoins: buying, accepting them for goods and services, and mining new ones. “Mining” is the discovery of new bitcoins just like finding gold. In reality, it’s simply the verification of bitcoin transactions. For example, X buys a TV from Y with a bitcoin. In order to make sure his bitcoin is a genuine bitcoin, miners begin to verify the transaction. It’s not just one transaction individuals are trying to verify; it’s many. All the transactions are gathered into boxes with a virtual padlock on them called “block chains.” Miners run software to find the key that will open that padlock. Once their computer finds it, the transactions are verified. For finding that “needle in a haystack” key, the miner gets a reward. The difficulty of the criteria for the hash is continually adjusted based on how frequently blocks are appearing, so more competition equals more work needed to find a block.
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| Bitcoin Working Process |
A group of Bitcoin transactions, chosen from the list of all currently pending transactions and recorded by a miner into the ever-growing record of blocks known as the blockchain.
New bitcoins are issued as a reward by the Bitcoin network every 10 minutes. For the first four years of Bitcoin's existence, the amount of new bitcoins issued every 10 minutes was 50₿. Every Four years, this number is cut in half. The day the amount halves is called a "halving" or "halvening". Now in 2020 , halvening is going to take place in few days.
You may think about mining yourself. But mining is very hard. It takes a setup of 25 Bitmain AntMiner S17+ (73TH) models 30 days to mine 1 BTC. After calculating the electricity costs, which vary by country, one is left with approximately 0.1 BTC per month in pure profit. To purchase 1 BitMain AntMiner S17+ (73TH) it will cost you about $2,900. That sums up to a total investment of approximately $72,500 to generate 1 Bitcoin per month. That is very huge investment. I may recommend to join a pool. Pools are a collective group of bitcoin miners from around the globe who literally pool their computer power together to mine. Pools allow small-time miners to receive percentages of bitcoins when they add their computer power to the group. The faster your computer can mine and the more power it is contributing to the pool, the larger percentage of bitcoins received. Mining in pool could generate very less amount of bitcoins as they are divided among pool members. But you could mine for fun but not as profession. Joining a pool means you can also use cheaper hardware. USB ASIC miners which plug into any standard USB port cost as little as $20. “For a few hundred dollars you could make a couple of dollars a day,” according to Brice Colbert, a North Carolina-based miner of cryptocurrencies and operator of the site cryptojunky.com. The below table depicts the rate of bitcoin at start of every year.
| YEAR | PRICE($) | PRICE(₹) |
| 2010 | $0.0015 | ₹0.1 |
| 2011 | $0.31 | ₹23 |
| 2012 | $6 | ₹450 |
| 2013 | $13 | ₹975 |
| 2014 | $750 | ₹56,250 |
| 2015 | $285 | ₹21,375 |
| 2016 | $435 | ₹32,645 |
| 2017 | $950 | ₹71,250 |
| 2018 | $15000 | ₹11.25 Lakhs |
| 2019 | $3800 | ₹2.85 Lakhs |
| 2020 | $8000 | ₹6 Lakhs |
Bitcoin's prices were rose up in December , 2017 to an extent of ₹15 Lakhs or $20,000. Below are some fun facts regarding bitcoin.
1. On 22 May 2010, Two Papa John’s Pizzas were exchanged by Laszlo Hanyecz for 10,000₿. This was the first official documented purchase of goods using bitcoins. At that time, the worth of 10,000₿ was $41 or around ₹1800 ($1=₹45 in 2010) but today it is ₹682 Crores or $90 Million. So, May 22 is celebrated as Bitcoin Pizza Day.
2. The inventor of Bitcoin is a mystery. The inventer anonymously named himself as Satoshi Nakamoto. Some even suggest that Samsung, Toshiba, Nakamichi, and Motorola together created Bitcoin.
Samsung and Toshiba - Satoshi
Nakamichi and Motorola - Nakamoto
3. If you lose your Bitcoin private key, you lose your bitcoins. James Howells, an IT guy, lost 7,500 bitcoins in November 2013. While he was cleaning his desk at home, he threw away his hard disk containing the private keys of bitcoins which he had mined in 2010. This is around ₹509 Crores or $67 Million.
4. There will only ever be 21 million bitcoins. At present, 16.3 million have already been mined and are being traded. The last bitcoin will be mined in 2140. After that, no new bitcoins can be mined.
5. To carry out a transaction with bitcoin, you have to generate two keys, which are referred to as public and private keys. Both keys are large integer and are usually represented in figures and letters, and without them, transactions can’t be carried out.
6. The estimated year that the last bitcoin will be mined is 2140, based on the Bitcoin block having a dividing frequency of four years.
7. Satoshi(1 Satoshi = 0.00000001₿) is the smallest unit of bitcoin, thus being the smallest denomination with which transactions can be carried out. This unit is referred to as satoshi to serve as a reference to Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous creator of Bitcoin.
Some of the Free bitcoin mining sites without deposits are Crypto Tab and kryptex