I have stumbled across something called Bitcoin? What is it? What is Bitcoin mining? Thanks in advance
ok. my explanation is not 100% accurate but here goes. With bitcoin, its an online currency. You can essientially convert real money into bitcoins, which can be used to buy and sell goods, as well as send to other bitcoin users. Fees are very little.You will need a bitcoin wallet as well I recommend reading guides on getting started with bitcoin before you decide if its right for you or not. There are some real pros and cons about getting into bitcoins. the real strength with bitcoins is that users that form the core of the bitcoin network use their computer to run the bitcoin program. While their computer runs the bitcoin program, their computer earns from processing transaction data (and earns data fees) and thier computer also "makes" the coins which are sold and converted into real cash. For example, some users earn hundreds a day from their computer running this program. The value of bitcoin does fluctuate, and has been known to go up and down dramatically. This can be good and bad. Some people do trade in bitcoins to profit from the increase or decrease in value. People that mine coins have bills that tend to be fixed. So changes in bitcoin value can have a drastic impact on whether or not bitcoin mining is profitable. Getting into bitcoin mining is a good, yet bad idea. It is hard to explain this without going into detail. In short, bitcoin limits just how many coins are made daily. As more people start to use their home computer, or build a gaming type computer with high end graphics card to earn money, it means that other users earn less but costs such as power remain the same. Like if you doubled the combined processing power that is currently on the bitcoin network, everyone would earn half what they do now, yet some only earn 30% profit after factoring in power costs - they would make 30% loss if the processing power on the network was to double.... one example, guy earns $3000 per month (40k spent on machines) power bill for those machines is $2200... if you join the program, he will earn less... In fact, that guy that spent $40K on machines and will soon be making a loss each time he turns them on, just hopefully he earnt enough in the good time to pay off his 40k investment, otherwise thats 40k down the drain. I am personally going to invest over $10k into specialized hardware for this process. I expect the hardware to pay itself off within 9 days, and within maybe 2 years, I would expect soo many new people on the system, (and so many new hardware options) that I am certain that the hardware I would have would be useless. There is a guy who is investing $300k on these machines, as they pay themseleves off in under 2 weeks... I wish i had $300k!
BitCoin isn't a payment processor, it's a currency. That's an important thing to remember. BitCoins have no real value... You can't take them to a bank, for example.
I think the good thing about Bitcoins is banks don't get their hands on it, and there are no processing fee's. This is because your 'wallet' is a file on your computer! I hope it takes off.
For online businesses, Bitcoin is a way to attract new customers. The community of "Bitcoiners" is quite large today and many people prefer it due to low payment fees. Implementation is quite easy and we have successfully implemented it to our business a few months ago.
1 Bitcoin is definitely not $1, not today. There are markets that determine the current price. For example, see http://www.coindesk.com/price/
Bitcoin also uses POW to confirm all the transactions on the blockchain and is estimated to cost millions of dollars a month in electricity. Bitshares a new crypto equity has proposed a new solution to this problem and its called DPOS. So far the market reaction to the news has been positive as BTSX has recently climbed into the 3rd position on http://coinmarketcap.com surpassing NXT, and Ripple in the last few days This is the community where it all happens https://bitsharestalk.org
Bitcoin might be the global currency of the world, but it also can be a bubble, that inflated above $1000 last winter, but can very well burst to zero. Here you can track the info about prices, capitalization, etc: http://coinmarketcap.com/ https://btc-e.com/exchange
Now Google shows U the Bitcoin price against various FIAT currency. Here is the link to check in INR => https://www.google.co.in/webhp?#q=1+btc+in+inr