Bitcoin, seven reasons to buy

Bitcoin is a fairly new in terms of currencies available in the world. So why would you use a digital currency as opposed to a long-established government currency?

It’s an investment, as well as a currency.

Due to the deflationary nature of Bitcoin and some other cryptocurrencies, it should become an excellent store of value. Governments with central banks and printing presses can increase the money supply. This might have benefit for the national economy. But for a store of value, it makes most fiat currencies subject to the whims of people in charge of the government. There are numerous cases of hyperinflation from Germany to Venezuela and they all typically have one thing to blame, poor government policy.

Inflation, no matter the reason, is bad for investors and the typical citizen. The supply increases shifting the supply curve right and lowering the price, or devaluing the currency. If the government doubles the money supply, producers have to double their prices to keep products at the same value. But with a deflationary currency, it slowly gains value because the supply is fixed or diminishing (some cryptocurrencies the money is destroyed). This means that rather than paying 1 BTC for a flat screen TV, in a few years you might only pay .25 BTC for a flat screen.

Besides, the strongest argument is the percent gain in a year. It has gained almost 300%. That’s a excellent return on investment.

Whereas, the US dollar value has been depreciating pretty much constantly throughout the past century.

It’s private.

Most people want anonymity when they buy things. Some examples of what things should be kept private are; credit information, how much they have in their wallets/banks, and the products they buy. Bitcoin does some of these things. Anyone could track down each transaction made into and out of a particular address and then they’d know how much was in the wallet address. But there’s no real way to determine the owner of the address, unlike with traditional banks. And, if one is really privacy ordinated using multiple addresses and spreading out coins is a good option. Alternatively, buying another cryptocurrency that focuses on privacy is likely even better (Monreo or dash).

Trustless payment system.

With traditional banking systems, you have to have faith in the people who handle your money. You have to trust the banking system, the merchant, and the third-party payment processor. All of these companies demand sensitive information from you. But with Bitcoin it’s all decentralized. You don’t need to trust anyone when using it. You send a transaction, it’s signed and secure. Then it’s processed and verified by some unknown miner. Once the hash is found to complete the block, the transaction is completed. The merchant doesn’t even need to know who you are unless you tell them.

You can create your own money.

With my Bitcoin mining article, I mention in more detail, how Bitcoins are minted and how there will only be 21 million of them made. Miners use computer power to solve hash functions and find a nonce which completes the function. After miners complete the function the block is solved and you are rewarded with Bitcoin. You can get into mining Bitcoin but it’s likely not profitable anymore unless your cost of electricity is very low.

Governments can’t take your money away.

If you keep your coins in an offline software, paper, or hardware wallet. And keep your private keys safe there is no way for the government to take your money. Unlike with traditional banks which are required to give into government demands, Bitcoin and other cryptos can’t as they are decentralized. The only way for them to seize your money is if it’s on an exchange (as the private keys are in control of the exchange) or if they forcibly steal it from you through torture or some other means. Making Bitcoin and other crypto currencies extremely secure for political activists with hostile governments or privacy minded individuals.(I don’t condone illegal activity but this article illustrates how powerful cryptos are)

There are no chargebacks.

It’s important to make sure you are sending it to the right address because once the coins are sent, there are no chargebacks. This makes it impossible to recover coins without the recipient’s consent. That fact makes fraud, where you buy products and call the credit card company or bank to reverse the charge, impossible.

It’s cheap and fast.

Finally, Bitcoin transactions are extremely fast with under ten-minute confirmation times. While with typical banks it can be as long as 1-3 days, sometimes longer for confirmation to happen. Some banks require payments of 3 dollars to transfer funds from bank to bank (looking at you Bank of America) but with Bitcoin these fees are often in the range of cents, unless it has to be confirmed quickly and then you can pay the miners more to process it even faster.

Summary:

There are a wide variety of reasons to use Bitcoin and other cryptos. They are cheap, fast, privacy ordinated, safe, secure, and don’t require you to trust anyone else. The crypto world is changing how a lot of things are done. And there is still more room for them to change the world. We are in an early adopter phase, in terms of potential market cap. This graphic shows Bitcoin in comparison to other markets. (graphic is not up to date, Bitcon and Etheruem exceed the total silver market cap, source: The Money Project)