Evolution of bitcoin
on January 3, 2009, Nakamoto g up the first batch of 50 bitcoins on a small server in Helsinki, Finland
on May 21, 2010, the first bitcoin transaction: Laszlo hanyecz, a Florida programmer, bought a $25 pizza coupon with 10000 BTC
on July 16, 2010, the price of BTC rose by US $0.08 from US $0.008. The first sharp price fluctuation shows the rise of new things
on July 17, 2010, the first bitcoin platform was established
on November 6, 2010, the price on mtgox reached $0.5, and the bitcoin economy reached $1 million
on December 7, 2010, the first portable device to portable device transaction was realized on Nokia 900, with a transaction volume of 0.42btc
on February 9, 2011, the price reached US $1 for the first time, which is equivalent to US $1. The news that BTC is equivalent to us dollar has been widely reported by the media, which has aroused people's great attention, and the number of new users has increased greatly. In the next two months, bitcoin and pound sterling, Brazilian currency, Polish currency exchange trading platform has opened
on March 18, 2011, the BTC / USD exchange rate hit a seven week low, falling to US $0.7
on August 20, 2011, the first bitcoin conference and World Expo were held in New York. Among Google trend counties, bitcoin's attention reached a new high, with a price of $11 at that time
on November 14, 2011, the price of bitcoin hit a new half year low of $1.99
on September 15, 2012, the bitcoin conference was held in London. At this time, the price of bitcoin was $11.8
on September 27, 2012, bitcoin fund was founded, and the price of bitcoin was $12.46
on November 25, 2012, the first bitcoin conference in Europe was held in Prague, Czech Republic. At this time, the price of bitcoin was $12.6
on February 19, 2013, bitcoin client v8.0 was released. At this time, the price of bitcoin was $28.66
on April 10, 2013, BTC set a record high price of $110
on May 9, 2013, BTC Chinese, the largest bitcoin reporting website www.sosobtc.com The company obtained the investment fund Union Square's US $5 million round a investment, and the price of bitcoin was US $112.09 at this time< On May 28, 2013, the Department of Homeland Security banned the virtual currency service of Liberty Reserve, a Costa Rican exchange company, for its suspected xiqian and unlicensed fund transfer business, U.S. prosecutors said that this will become the largest international xiqian lawsuit in history, with the scale of absorbing money reaching 6 billion US dollars. A large number of users, including China, will lose all their money. At this time, the price of bitcoin is 128 US dollars
in June 2013, Netcom said that the United States will withdraw from qe3, deflationary bitcoin and quantitative easing monetary policy, which are the relationship between the two
on June 27, 2013, the German Conference made a decision: holding bitcoin for more than one year will be tax-free, which is considered by the instry to recognize the legal status of bitcoin. At this time, the price of bitcoin is $102.24
on June 28, 2013, mtgox obtained the monetary service license issued by the financial crime enforcement network office of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Transaction standardization may mean that bitcoin is on the right track, government risk is reced, and its pace of integration into the display economy will be accelerated. At the same time, it will play an exemplary role in other virtual currencies. At this time, the price of bitcoin is $97.99
on November 28, 2013, the bitcoin trading price of Mt. GOx, a popular bitcoin exchange, broke through $1000, reaching a record high of $1073
on November 29, 2013, the trading price of bitcoin on Mt. GOx, a popular exchange, hit a record high of US $1242, while the price of gold was US $1241.98 an ounce, surpassing that of gold for the first time.
Many people think that the reason why bitcoin is valuable is because it is "rare", and if bitcoin is no longer "rare", then it will not have value
this is a misunderstanding. Let's consider a question: what is the essence of all "currencies"
the answer is trust. The biggest reason for the value of the dollar is because of the credibility established for the dollar under the Bretton Woods Agreement, rather than the so-called equivalent exchange with gold (although others say so). The main reason why RMB is valuable is because of the trust system of RMB in China and neighboring countries, rather than the exchange with us dollar reserves (see offshore RMB). This can explain why the currencies of some countries (such as the ruble of Russia, as well as the Zimbabwean currency as you all know) have been greatly devalued, because the government and the current world situation have led to a trust system that does not support the existence of this currency. The so-called economic sanctions and currency speculation are very superficial and superficial reasons
the essence of money is trust
What about bitcoin
bitcoin has no centralized Trust Measurement institution. The value of bitcoin, namely its "credit system", comes from distrust of centralized units. Every country finds that seigniorage is too easy to collect, which leads to the increasingly poor trust between countries. Even the people of all countries do not trust the national currency
and trust, like quality, is conserved. Trust in centralized money decreases, while trust in decentralized money increases naturally
this is the essential reason why the value of bitcoin continues to rise. Therefore, for digital currencies such as bitcoin, there are only two outcomes. Either countries want to understand that they will no longer issue excess currencies, issue additional currencies in a scientific and reasonable way, unify stable exchange rates, and maintain the credit system of centralized currencies, then the value of bitcoin will be infinitely close to zero. Or countries will continue to drink water to quench their thirst, and more frantically use the method of issuing excess currency to collect seigniorage from everyone, then the trust in the centralized currency will be lower and lower, and the total value of bitcoin, a decentralized currency, will be infinitely close to the gross labor value of all the units that do not trust the government and other governments, but need international trade
either the price is crazy or it's worthless
after understanding these, we can answer this question. Will bitcoin be replaced by other digital currencies
swindlers like * * and even the old Wang next door can come and yell, "I spent 10 minutes to change bitcoin's core and create a new digital currency called SBC. Come and join my ICO and pay me seigniorage ~". So, if this happens, will you immediately choose to use Lao Wang's SBC next door
the answer is that some speculators will participate, but the market will not. The reason is very simple, the new cryptocurrency has not been recognized by the market, the application has not been proced, this kind of currency has no way to exchange for means of proction. Then this kind of currency is not money, but a virtual commodity for speculation. In other words, even if old Wang ICO next door has an SBC, no one will choose this kind of currency except those speculators who have no brains
in the current market, there are many other digital currencies, such as Ethereum, EOS, XRP, and so on, which may have technological advantages in some aspects (in fact, BTC has been evolving, and it will also learn from the advanced technologies of other digital currencies that have been successfully proved by the market. LTC and other currencies can be said to be the experimental currencies of BTC's advanced technologies.), There may be more application scenarios than BTC in the future, but they are not likely to challenge the status of BTC. BTC will always be the first consensus in the currency circle, which is the belief of many people. BTC will exist for a long time as the gold in the currency market, not mainly for the circulation of digital currency
political events: most of these events involve the government's attitude towards bitcoin, such as the Federal Reserve's recognition of bitcoin as a financial instrument, Germany's recognition of bitcoin as a currency, China's prohibition of financial institutions from participating in bitcoin trading, and Russia's prohibition of using bitcoin and participating in bitcoin mining. Although bitcoin itself is a neutral technology, it is not affected by politics, but the price of bitcoin will fluctuate dramatically because of such events. So far, this is the biggest factor affecting the price of bitcoin
exchange events: Although bitcoin is a decentralized currency, bitcoin transactions mainly take place in centralized exchanges. Since the birth of bitcoin, many exchanges have been stolen. For example, mtgox, the largest Japanese exchange, lost 700000 bitcoins. Recently, bitfinex, the Hong Kong exchange, lost 120000 bitcoins. Bitstamp, the Slovenian exchange, was attacked and lost 19000 bitcoins. Whenever such an event occurs, the risk of bitcoin trading increases sharply, and bitcoin will often usher in a larger decline
financial events: such events often come from the instability of the real financial world, such as the default of the Central Bank of Cyprus, which leads to zero savings of more than 100000 euros of the country's depositors, serious devaluation of Ukraine's currency under the pressure of war, and brexit of the UK, which weakens the stability of the euro area. Bitcoin, as a safe haven asset, is gaining more and more market recognition. At present, the trading volume of bitcoin in the world has exceeded that of gold ETF, and the instability of fiat money has caused the continuous rise of bitcoin
Technical events: as a decentralized open source network protocol, bitcoin's code is far from perfect. There have been several crises in bitcoin's protocol. For example, a certain upgrade of bitcoin protocol has not been unanimously recognized by the whole network. In the end, there is a double flower problem. The scalability of bitcoin's transaction makes it easy for hackers to attack and steal, At one time, it forced several bitcoin exchanges to suspend trading. Recently, there has been a heated debate about expansion in the bitcoin community, and no effective solution has been available, which has cast a shadow on the future of bitcoin. Whether the bitcoin protocol can continue to evolve is a long-term impact on the price of bitcoin.
historical background
bitcoin is one of the first currencies to realize the concept of "cryptocurrency". In 1998, Wei Dai first expounded the concept of "cryptocurrency" in cypherpunks mailing list. Based on the basic concept of money, which is used to pay for goods, services and debt or any form of records in a given country or economy, bitcoin is a new form of money. Its original design is to integrate the idea of not relying on the central authority, using the principle of cryptography to control the issuance and transaction of money
in 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto published the first bitcoin specification and its proof of concept in the cryptography mailing list. At the end of 2010, Nakamoto claimed that he had transferred to other affairs and left the project. The creator of bitcoin never revealed his true identity, but left his invention to the world. Today, the origin and motivation of the invention of bitcoin is still a mysterious story
since 2010, many developers have devoted themselves to this project, and the bitcoin community has grown rapidly. Between June and July 2011, bitcoin suddenly gained media attention, leading to large-scale buying. The resulting bubble led to the continued decline in the price of bitcoin in the second half of 2011. After that, the price of bitcoin graally rose to the height of 2011
in order to regulate, protect and promote the development of bitcoin, the bitcoin foundation was established on September 27, 2012. Nowadays, with the increasing number of bitcoin users, bitcoin economy is developing rapidly
technical features
any network like bitcoin has the following basic features:
bitcoin can be transferred between any node of the network
the transaction is irreversible
the use of block chain avoids the occurrence of double consumption
the transaction will spread out in a few seconds and pass validation in 10 to 60 minutes
transaction processing and currency issuance are carried out through mining
bitcoin can be received at any time whether it is online or not<
economic rules
the whole bitcoin network jointly implements the following rules:
the total amount of bitcoin issued is about 21 million
a bitcoin can be divided into 8 decimal places, with a total of about 21 × 1014 monetary units
transaction costs are very low and most of them are free
statistics
bitcoin network has been running continuously for more than 48 months. In the past year, bitcoin's security features have attracted attention and developed significantly. As of April 2013:
the longest block chain has more than 232000 blocks
one of the largest distributed computing networks in the world, with more than 65 trillion hashes per second
there are 50000 transactions every day, with a total amount of several million US dollars
the total value of bitcoin in circulation exceeds US $1.3 billion
there is only one major security incident in the protocol, which was resolved in August 2010
other information can be referred to:
Network: http://ke..com/view/5784548.htm
bitcoin official website: http://bitcoin.org/zh_ CN/
in other words, once an investor invests in bitcoin, it will appreciate. Once a large number of bitcoin are sold for cash, its price will drop sharply. But this is only an ideal situation, because at present, the number of bitcoin has been increasing slowly, and its value is determined by the number of bitcoin and the legal tender in circulation. Therefore, the value of bitcoin will fluctuate greatly, which is also the reason why bitcoin has a strong investment attribute.
CPU mining → GPU mining → professional miner mining → mine pool mining
on January 3, 2009, the founder of bitcoin, Nakamoto Tsung, g up the first batch of bitcoin with computer CPU
with the recognition of bitcoin, more and more people are mining, the computing power of the whole network is rising, and the difficulty of mining is graally rising
the first graphics card mining software was released on September 18, 2010. A graphics card is equivalent to dozens of CPUs, and the mining capacity has been significantly improved
later, someone invented a professional mining equipment based on mining chip, namely mining machine. At present, the instry-leading ant miner is equipped with nearly 200 bm1387 chips, which is equivalent to the computing power of more than 30000 GPUs
as more mining machines are added to mining, it is difficult for a single mining machine to dig bitcoin. As a result, the miners concentrated their mining machines and formed mines and pools.