Happy Birthday, Bitcoin! 10 Years Old!

As of October 31, 2018 Bitcoin will officially be a decade old, and what a decade it has been. In that time Bitcoin has single-handedly changed the financial landscape of our world by innovating one of the oldest assets we have — money.

As foreign as a gift economy would be for many people today, cryptocurrency and blockchain technology was at one time equally as foreign to all of us. Whether you believe these innovations are helpful to society or not you can’t argue that they have made a massive impact in today’s world.

Financial innovations like Bitcoin can create many questions, not only about how it works and its potential application but also raises moral and ethical questions to how it is and can be used. In the same way, traditional currency transformed the bartering system of societies past, Bitcoin can open a number of doors allowing things in the financial world to operate in a new way, better perhaps in some regard, especially on an individual basis. While the advantages of using Bitcoin and cryptocurrency can be positive, there still remains the possibility/reality for misuse.

On one side of the coin, you have people using Bitcoin in ethically sound ways. Charitable applications, everyday transactions, and myriad of other useful and legal ways which allow the individual more personal freedom when it comes to their finances and how they use them. The flip side of that coin has some people using Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in less appropriate ways, perhaps by using it as a means to acquire illegal goods or to launder money and avoid taxation.

Of course, there will be the good and the bad with anything made available to the masses, but that hasn’t stopped Bitcoin from establishing itself as the leader of the crypto space in its entirety. Although other innovative projects have come along in the crypto space such as Ethereum, EOS, Ripple, and many others, Bitcoin leads the way with the concept of operating independently from the traditional financial world.

Bitcoin wasn’t the first to attempt the creation of a digital currency, but certainly was the first to become a fully developed and functioning concept that appealed to the masses, and since then the growth of the crypto space has exploded. According to investing.com the number of cryptocurrencies currently sits at 2,447. Although the overall value of the crypto market has seen a sharp correction and the market remains bearish, the past decade has been an incredibly exciting time.

With the creation of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies came the emergence of many different products and services as well as an opportunity for business owners and individuals to adopt the currency as a viable and acceptable alternative to that of traditional currency. Everything from crypto exchanges to Bitcoin ATM’s are growing ever more common in the world today. There are now more individuals and businesses open to the idea of accepting cryptocurrency than ever before, and most of them seem to prefer Bitcoin.

Now that the crypto space has corrected and matured, prospects for the future of Bitcoin are more exciting than ever. As the methodology becomes more refined around the use of Bitcoin we could see not only broader adoption but also an increase in the overall value of Bitcoin itself. This is good news not only for Bitcoin but also for many other cryptocurrencies as they seem to fluctuate in tandem.

While the market may seem quiet now, predictions for Bitcoin as well as a number of other cryptocurrencies are plentiful. Now more than ever people are making better-informed predictions based on a wealth of data. These high-quality predictions are something that we at Rublix want to harness and share with our community. We created Hedge to provide a marketplace for these predictions and to bridge the gap in knowledge between those who are confident about their predictions and those who are looking to become more so. By gaining access to quality information our decisions become more educated, and we become more knowledgeable. With Hedge, becoming more educated means becoming better at seeing the signs of the market, and being able to capitalize on them.