Created in 2009, bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency, and remains the most widely known and valuable. It is a digital or virtual asset, operating outside of the traditional banking system, and its influence has soared, with a growing number of companies now accepting it for payments.
Each bitcoin is essentially a digital token containing a secret key that proves to anyone in the network whom it belongs to. Effectively, each bitcoin is a collective agreement of every other computer on the bitcoin network that the token is real, created by a bitcoin “miner,” and then acquired through a series of legitimate transactions.
Each time bitcoins are spent, it becomes known to the entire network that their ownership has been transferred. Every transaction is stored in a lasting public record called a blockchain, which underpins the entire system, making it possible to trace a coin’s history and preventing people from spending coins they do not own.
For bitcoin’s many advocates, there are several advantages to the virtual system — from the way the blockchain can be used to track things other than simple money, to support for “smart contracts,” which execute automatically when certain conditions are met.
However, bitcoin’s biggest advantage is that it is decentralized and so extremely resistant to censorship or regulatory control by a single entity. It is possible to observe a bitcoin payment in process, but no one can stop it. This has made governments wary: In a conventional financial system, banks can freeze accounts, vet payments for money laundering or enforce regulations.
Thanks to the decentralized nature of cryptocurrency networks, people have been able to make international payments from closed or tightly restricted economies, but this has also made them a haven for illegal activities, from cybercrime to money laundering and drug trading.
Another concern about bitcoins is that they damage the environment. Bitcoin mining — the process in which a bitcoin is awarded to a computer that solves a complex series of algorithms — consumes vast amounts of energy. Miners set up large computer rigs to maximize the chances of being awarded bitcoins. The carbon footprint of this “mining” is now similar to Chile’s, according to the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, a tool from the University of Cambridge that measures the currency’s energy usage.
Advocates of bitcoin say the mining is increasingly being done with electricity from renewable sources. While the amount of energy consumed by bitcoin has dropped significantly this year, concerns remain. Environmentalists say miners tend to set up wherever electricity is cheapest, which may be in places with coal-generated power.
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