원문 보기
you know what a bitcoin is but do you really know it because what is usually known is that it is an electronic currency that would be to make particular transactions on the computer and that it is independent from all other currencies but how do bitcoins work if you go to look closely how they work you realize that they are a very complete thing certainly totally innovative low that you have to understand well before using bitcoins are protected by a 200-digit code that no hacker has managed to decree and for now they concern a limited market of users some of whom have become considerably rich but what risks can you run is it a reliable system giovanni carrada in the service created with andrea pasquini tried to clarify some key elements of this virtual currency an initial look at the world all to be discovered let's see we are in the head of the bank of italy rome 2 half of the national gold reserve is kept 1,200 tons of gross gold millennia a wealth a form of wealth accepted by all in gold have been minted for centuries and all the most precious coins today but there is something that many consider a sort of new gold very lighter than this, in fact in gold that weighs nothing, it was made only by Peterson, bitcoins which is a cryptocurrency that many people will make very rich even in the summer, but what are the leak cori and above all really a new gold, they are also another financial bubble, bitcoins are an electronic currency made only of bits which, unlike those we all know and use, are in limited number and cannot be duplicated, bitcoins can be exchanged on the internet quickly at any time and from any place without the need for a bank or another financial intermediary, all you need is a computer or a smartphone and a personal access code, no one knows their mysterious inventor who goes by the name Satoshi Nakamoto on the internet and who began minting it in 2009, but you can create value from nothing in a certain sense, yes, as long as there is trust in gold, after all, it is only a metal, we could very well do without it, the euros that are in our pockets are made of paper, those we have in the bank are made of bits, what is trust in bitcoins based on instead trust in bitcoins is born from the software created by Satoshi Nakamoto The software and puts a limited number of bitcoins and is also a sort of electronic ledger on which all bitcoin exchanges are recorded.
A ledger that everyone can read but that no one can counterfeit. In ten years, no one has ever managed to get hold of it. Every 10 minutes or so, the block of the latest transactions recorded on the ledger is given definitively with a complex cryptographic calculation. If someone tries to spend more bitcoins than they have or tries to spend them twice, the transaction cannot be validated.
The ones who perform the calculation are the so-called entrepreneurial miners equipped with computers with specialized cards for this task that consume an enormous amount of energy. There are thousands of miners in the world and it is estimated that the global electricity consumption of this activity is equal to that of the whole of Ireland.
Why do they do it? Because every time a block of transactions is validated, the software mints 12.5 new bitcoins which it divides among the miners in proportion to their contribution to the calculation. In short, it is the work of the miners that guarantees the transactions and therefore the value of bitcoins and therefore trust.
Creating value from nothing seems almost too good to be true. To understand more, we have happened in the Control room of the Bank of Italy's payment system, as if to say, we have come to our super ledger of the Italian economy. Every year in Italy we make around 6 billion payments and between one account and another something like 8 trillion euros move but not a single one is lost.
The Bank of Italy's system ensures that whoever pays actually has the sum and whoever is paid receives what is due. If we can be certain that a euro today will have the same value tomorrow, it is because our central bank regulates the amount of money in circulation. In a crisis, it is the state itself that defends its value and the law requires everyone to accept our euros as a means of payment.
Our trust in bitcoins is based on this. Instead, there is only a software, they are not a currency with which we can do shopping. No one is obliged to accept them as payment. If we make a mistake in a transaction, there is no way to repair it. If someone cheats us, we are not protected, and if we lose the code, we lose all our bitcoins.
Those who buy bitcoins do so in the hope that their value will increase in the future and to make a profit, and indeed in the past, the value Bitcoin has increased significantly, but this is not always the case. Let's give an example. A year ago, the value of bitcoin was equal to 2,500 dollars. This value increased by a thousand dollars in November of last year and then even up to 20,000 dollars.
This means that last December. This means that anyone who had invested a thousand euros at the beginning of the period would subsequently find themselves holding 8,000 euros. After December, the value of bitcoin has plummeted vertically from 20,000 dollars to 20,000 dollars. This means that the same saver who had invested a thousand euros to buy bitcoin today would find himself with a sum equal to a third of just over 300 euros.
Bitcoin is, in short, a speculative asset. If their value were to drop too much, the first to back out could be the miners themselves, when the reward received no longer covered their costs. To continue guaranteeing the operations, they would have to ask for very high commissions that only the wealthiest investors could afford.
Bitcoin is not an ideal instrument for investing savings for small savers, for those who who have sums to invest wisely with diligence with care of bitcoin is a tool refrigerator of a gamble like roulette but even a little worse because unlike other forms of gambling you are not able to calculate the probabilities to estimate the expected losses and gains I believe that the fundamental advice is not to invest in bitcoin more than you can afford to lose the future of bitcoin itself is not a given so far almost 17 million have been minted but the software will not be able to produce more than 21 when in a few years the problem of rewarding the miners will arise anyway in theory you could continue to mint by changing the software but this is only possible if the vast majority of the approximately 24 million bitcoin holders agree on whether and how to do it and if they fail to do so the future of bitcoin is open but as we have seen this is also a game in which it is very easy to get burned so if we want to invest something let's first try to understand these bit funds well understand how they work because the first advice for every investor is always the same but investing in a financial instrument that does not understand
Comments 0